A recent study commission by Adobe showed that new digital technologies and social media are keeping marketers up at night. Less than half (48%) of the 1000 marketers surveyed feel they understand digital marketing and can get results. 82% have had no formal education in digital marketing and have to learn ‘on the job’.
So their lack of skills is quite understandable – there are new technologies and platforms popping up all the time. Just keeping up is a full-time job, never mind evaluating which ones would be best for your business goals.
A simple Digital Marketing Road Map that makes it easy to plan, implement and measure digital marketing is sorely needed.
PLANNING YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING
- Do your homework before you dive in. While Facebook is effective for many businesses it’s not the best solution for everyone. Find out where your ideal customers hang out online. You need to “fish where the fish are”.
- Monitor what is being said online about your brand, your competitors. Listen to what your customers are interested in right now.
- Analyze this content and establish interests, intent,sentiment, trends, opportunities and threats.
- Set goals for your digital marketing based on your research and your business goals.
IMPLEMENTING THE DIGITAL MARKETING PROGRAM
- Decide on the content you need to develop, based on your research in phase 1.
- Choose the right channels and platforms, based on the digital footprint of your ideal customers.
- Publish your content on those networks and channels, taking into account the best time to post.
- Get organized. Use a dashboard that makes it quick and easy to post the right content to the right audience and keep track of responses.
- Amplify content that’s getting attention with paid social syndication.
- Identify and build relationships with industry and media influencers. Use them to spread the content to new audiences.
- Watch for comments and engagement and respond as fast as possible.
- Use these engagements to start positive conversations and build a community of interested, supportive fans.
MEASURING RESULTS
- Monitor the traffic you get to all content published.
- Monitor engagement on all content.
- Use this data to drive your content strategy going forward.
- Track successful actions that drive traffic to your blog and social accounts.
- Track which social and digital channels are referring traffic back to the website or newsroom.
- Track where those visitors go on your website, time on site and bounce rate.
- Track downloads, leads and conversions.
There’s ample evidence that a company that has a successful digital marketing program in place does better than one that does not. Your team might need training in order to put this digital road map in place, but now that you know what they need to know make this a priority for 2014.