Have you ever wondered, "how do I go about building an effective digital strategy for my business?" With more than half of the world's population using the Internet to buy or get information online, digital marketing is an essential ‘need’ for every online business owner. And it's no longer a secret: to successfully develop your online business, you need to know how to use different digital marketing channels. How to build a powerful brand, maximize social networks, create a high performing website or a sales funnel and manage your online community with content marketing… But what are the main steps of setting up a powerful online presence that really works? Let's see together in this article, the 4 Simple Steps to Digital Marketing Success.
1. Your brand image: having authentic and coherent branding
Branding a business is the first step to creating online digital marketing success. Your brand image sets you apart from the competition and helps your customers recognize you quickly. You need a brilliant and attractive brand to market yourself sustainably on the Web: communicating through different media channels whether on print media (flyers, business cards, signs, etc.) or web media (Facebook page, LinkedIn account, Instagram page, TikTok, YouTube, etc.) you need a recognizable brand image everywhere. But building brand awareness is not an easy task! You need to develop a cohesive visual language that expresses your company's brand personality, provides an attractive online presence and helps create a positive emotional connection with your customer base. Branding also plays an important role in search engine optimization (SEO). A properly thought-out branding strategy can help you improve your search rankings by making your website more discoverable by search engines (as well as by potential customers). Having your branding worked out, helps your future customers gain trust in your company (rather than another… because the competition is tough for everyone!). Your entire brand ecosystem on the web must be aligned with your brand identity. Obviously, when we talk about branding, we are not just talking about your logo! It's about your entire brand universe: your photos, your style, your icons, your tone of voice, your messages... all these elements together form your branding and your unique visual identity. Are you looking to create a professional and memorable brand for your small business, company or clients? Our creative studio teAM has put together special Branding Packs for you with the selection of our best-selling brand creation services for your business success.
2. Your digital communication: developing an effective strategy on social media networks
Have you ever heard anyone say: "the social media strategy is not the reflection of a brand, but it becomes one itself" ? For an online business owner, this statement makes an important point in emphasizing how important Social Media Marketing is for a company. By choosing the right communication channels and content strategy, you can build relationships with current and potential customers. Social Media Marketing is also an efficient channel to enhance your brand image and help promote your offer of products and services on the Web. But be careful, this can only work if you have clearly defined who you are or your branding! Your Social Media Marketing is the second essential step in developing effective digital marketing. It can be summed up in these key points, mainly:
Your web branding: colors, typography, video styles, preferred content types, your tone-of-voice, photo filters... all of this defines who you are in the eyes of the general public and makes you visible on Social Media.
Your content strategy: essential to creating the ‘like’, ‘know’ and ‘trust’ factor essential in online selling, using an effective content strategy also reinforces searchable keywords or SEO references from your web content (your products, values, messages, benefits and so on).
Your sales funnel: from the moment someone discovers your brand to the moment they purchase from you. This is your sales funnel. Often starting with a freebie or lead magnet, followed by nurturing via email marketing and finally selling, your sales funnel can guide your potential customers to your website, to subscribe to your email marketing to the point of purchase (or repeat purchases).
Your online audience: you must feed Social Media platforms with engaging content and take the time to interact with your audience to fully understand their needs, pain points and be able to meet them with relevant solutions.
This is exactly what we do for our clients on a monthly basis. Do you want to entrust your monthly Social Media management to professionals? Discover our Social Packs right here.
3. Your business website: your company's online store front
Your website is the most reliable and relevant digital storefront for your business for the majority of people! You need to be presented in a unique and professional way on the Web. And your best digital marketing tool is above all your business website, or your e-commerce site if you sell products online, or your learning management system if you sell online courses. To build trust with Internet users and encourage them to invest sustainably with you, there is only one way: you must invest in a truly professional website. The latter allows you to assert your positioning and build your brand image with professionalism. This is the 3rd step to success in your digital marketing: the quality of your website must reflect a positive and remarkable image of your business. All Internet users (who are potentially interested in your products or services) must be able to:
find you easily on Google,
recognize your brand personality,
consult relevant and aesthetic content,
buy or contact you easily with clear calls-to-actions
Your website is the center of your online business: all your other communication channels will direct traffic to your website... with a single goal: to lead visitors on a strategic journey that guides them step by step from simply consulting information to ready to buy! This is the “funnel” or sales funnel, which begins with:
a well-built landing page on your website (it can be an opt-in landing page or sales page),
a “Services” page presenting your main areas of expertise,
an “About” page that inspires trust and desire,
a “Contact” page which makes it easy to contact you.
Without forgetting a strategy to collect the email addresses of your visitors and grow your email marketing list, you also need to observe user behavior from your website visitors (most frequented pages, bounce rate, traffic acquisition channels, etc). By using Google Analytics for example, you can track all the statistics of your website. This will allow you to better know who your potential customers are and therefore know how to address them.
4. Your content-marketing strategy: diversify your digital presence
Your 4th step to digital marketing success is to implement a 360° content-marketing strategy that is distributed through several channels. All your communication / content must be strategic, regular and sustainable. In content strategy, we talk a lot today about “evergreen” content. In other words, these are blog articles, videos or even infographics that do not expire over time because they are built around the key subjects and basic themes of your business. Once these elements are defined, it is a question of diversifying your distribution tools in digital marketing. Among the best, we can mention emailing, blog articles, podcast channels, YouTube tutorial videos or advertising videos. But all this takes a lot of time and energy! Like us, you can choose to focus on the platforms and media that suit you best to be the most effective, and never be discouraged in the creation of regular strategic content. As for the AM Studio, we recommend:
2 or 3 social media platforms: for us, these are our Facebook and Instagram pages, but we also use Pinterest and LinkedIn.
1 or 2 monthly blog articles published around strategic themes for your audience and for searchable keywords (SEO).
weekly, bi-weekly or monthly Emails or newsletters to your subscribers to share your best offers, content and news.
regularly updating your website with fresh and relevant content (like when we added our biggest and best projects onto our website in the form of a Portfolio Page). coupled with a regularly monitored SEO strategy.
We say it so often to our customers: effective digital marketing is not done in a day, or in a month! It grows (best) over time by using the above 4 steps and strategies. Think of all the big brands you know: they invest a lot of resources in their digital marketing, to be constantly visible. If we cannot necessarily imitate them, we can on the other hand be strategic and define a marketing action plan in the medium and long term. Why? Because it allows you to activate these 4 steps simultaneously or at specific intervals, depending on the development phases of your company (launch your new branding, create an irresistible new offer, publish news on your newsletter, create an online event, etc.).
If you need support to define the digital strategy that will make your business successful on the Internet, feel free to contact our teAM!