Cloud9, Digital Marketing agency Dubai. With such a huge emphasis on digital marketing today. A lot of persons who creating new business. Seem to struggle with finding the right agency. Why? Well, for starters, the pool of marketers never been larger. Means that there’s more room for people. Whose chops aren’t up to par, to put it politely.
However, it’s not just about expertise. While it’s true that the Digital Marketing is getting saturated. It’s also true that a lot depends on the business needs of the entrepreneur, the industry they are working in. And the results they are looking to achieve.
That is why in this article we are going to look into the dos and don’ts of hiring a digital marketing agency.
In most cases, companies look for digital marketing agency when they
- Want to induce growth in the company
- Need the necessary tools to build a better online presence
Before you get started, this should be your first question. Do you have the budget to run different ads on different platforms? Is your website up-to-date? Is your team ready to support the improved online presence? Are you ready to sometimes “take orders”? Or criticism from a group of people. To Whom you pay to strengthen your brand on the internet? These are all important things. In case, you find yourself struggling to accept them. You might be better off leaving digital marketing. Out of your overall business strategy. Or do what you can by yourself.
What You need to do?
Instead of a legion of salesmen, look for an Digital Marketing agency with a legion of professionals. This might mean you won’t understand all the tech-talk they use at first. But at least you know that their work is being done and you don’t have to deal with a brand development manager who’s sugarcoating everything. Sometimes, a smaller agency, specialized for only a few things can give you better results than a complete digital marketing plan. If you know what you’re after that is.
Your overall costs will be less, you will become more recognizable online and you’re working with a group of professionals which can always lead to new business ideas and potential partnerships.
At the same time, it gives you and your team a great opportunity to learn more about everything digital and to turn online leads into customers.
Are you a business owner or a digital marketer with a dilemma: to invest in pay-per-click search engine campaigns or to go for social media advertising? To advertise on Facebook or not? To create a long-term blogging plan or to go for ad hoc video production?
Digital marketing channels have taken over the throne, so nowadays everyone is talking about email marketing, social media ads, Google Ads, SEO techniques, content marketing, and all other types of digital business promotion.
But, where to start? Should you go with the flow or would it think and create a meaningful digital marketing strategy? Well, a strategy is a better idea.
Benefits Of Digital Marking
Having long-term goals, specific pans, and content calendars aligned with your business goals is going to make it easier for you to stand out among your competitors.
No matter if you are a small business owner, solo-marketer, or you work for a large corporate team, digital marketing tactics will help your company to:
- Get found online
- Promote your products and services
- Raise brand awareness
- Attract more potential customers
- Grow your conversion rates
- Make people trust your brand
Creating and executing a strategy might feel a bit intimidating, but when you make a solid ground, clearly define your goals, and take it one step at the time, you could conquer this digital marketing sphere with ease.
6 STEPS FOR AN EFFICIENT DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
1. DEFINE YOUR GOALS
This is the first and most important step. You need to articulate your goals and define the exact aim of your marketing activities before you start.
This goes in two ways:
- Defining specific goals for every marketing campaign
- Aligning your marketing goals with your business goals
Both of these issues can include short-term and long-term goals.
Short-term marketing goals might include, for example, promotion of new products/services in your offer, enlarging the number of time-sensitive discount coupons used, or selling more tickets during the early-bird period.
On the other hand, long-term marketing goals might include growing your mailing list from 1,000 to 100,000 people, for instance, or raising the conversion rates through PPC advertising, gaining more social media followers, positioning your CEO as an industry taught leader, or optimizing your website to rank higher in search results.
While setting up all those marketing goals, make sure to follow your business values, style guide, voice, and tone, and align them all with short-term and long-term business growth projections.
- What is your company’s mission?
- Where do you see your company in 5, 10, 20 years?
- Do you prefer growing your business slowly, or you aim for rapid scaling?
- Is your content branded, does it consistently speak the core values to your audience?
Answering these questions might be truly helpful.
Setting SMART goals can be very useful in this phase of strategy making. SMART stands for making your goals Specific. Also, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
2. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
This is the first and most important step. You need to articulate your goals and define the exact aim of your marketing activities before you start.
This goes in two ways:
- Defining specific goals for every marketing campaign
- Aligning your marketing goals with your business goals
Both of these issues can include short-term and long-term goals.
Short-term marketing goals might include, for example, promotion of new products/services in your offer, enlarging the number of time-sensitive discount coupons used, or selling more tickets during the early-bird period.
On the other hand, long-term marketing goals. Might include growing your mailing list. From 1,000 to 100,000 people. For instance, or raising the conversion rates through PPC advertising. Gaining more social media followers. Positioning your CEO as an industry taught leader. Or optimizing your website to rank higher in search results.
While setting up all those marketing goals, make sure to follow your business values, style guide, voice, and tone, and align them all with short-term and long-term business growth projections.
- What is your company’s mission?
- Where do you see your company in 5, 10, 20 years?
- Do you prefer growing your business slowly, or you aim for rapid scaling?
- Is your content branded, does it consistently speak the core values to your audience?
Answering these questions might be truly helpful.
Setting SMART goals can also be very useful in this phase of strategy making. SMART stands for making your goals Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
3. FIND YOUR CHANNELS
Now, here follows the question – where to advertise?
Which digital channels should you choose for your online business promotion? Should you go only with Facebook ads or to include LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube marketing solutions as well? Is omnichannel marketing really your thing?
Is it better to set up an SEO strategy and gain higher positions in SERPs over the next year or two, or to go for a Google Ads campaign for every relevant keyword and quickly (but not as firmly) outperform your competitors?
For that matter, do you know where do your competitors advertise? Can you see through their digital marketing strategy? Which channels do they prefer? Is there a sweet spot for you to position your brand and stand out? Could you outsmart the competition and create a campaign that will launch your business into the skies?
Answers to all of these questions will depend on a single thing – where is your audience?
If your potential clients are mostly on LinkedIn, then learn the ins and outs of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, read their free e-books on advertising throughout this network, and create a strategy accordingly.
On the other hand, if you own an e-shop and you want to expand your client base and grow your online sales, then consider having a Google Ads campaign or any other form of a targeted PPC campaign.
How To Race Marketing channel?.
4. CREATE A CONTENT PLAN
If you run a corporate blog, it is always a good idea to keep a consistent editorial calendar. You can use Google Sheets for this purpose and simply outline weekly, monthly, quarterly plans for future blog posts.
If you struggle to find inspiration for topics, we recommend you carefully research the keywords you want to rank higher for, and then outline the SEO-friendly articles.
We also advise you to stay in the loop of all the happenings, news, events, and trends within your industry and your specific niche. That way, you will easily get the bigger picture of what should you cover in your topics, from which angels, and in what context.
A social media marketing calendar is the next big thing. For you to master. It’s going to be a tremendously useful tool. That will help you plan and schedule all your social media content in advance. It will save you loads of time. And make your social posts well-organized, consistent, and more creative.
Email newsletters and promotional email marketing campaigns are also an important part of your content marketing strategy.
What is the difference between these two?
Well, an email newsletter is what you send out to your mailing list on a regular basis. It may be every day, once a week, twice a month, or every now and then – whichever suits your business needs best. You can send over corporate announcements, new blog posts, links to articles from respected sources in your industry, and other relevant content for your subscribers. It can also include a dedicated space for banner ads or any kind of affiliate marketing. It is also a good way to award your subscribers with specific coupons and free goodies.
Your email marketing campaigns, on the other hand, are what you send with a specific goal. It can be a promotion of an upcoming webinar, your new book, the start of the enrollment period for your online course, a deadline for your NGO’s open call, or a crowd-funding campaign.
Usually, promotional emails are set up in sequels. You can send them weekly at first, and then, as the deadline is approaching, you can opt for several emails per day. Just make sure to stay relevant for your readers, and try not to become too spammy.
5. EXECUTE YOUR PLAN
Once you have all the plans, sheets, and calendars prepared, don’t stop there. Your mission is not over yet. Execution of the marketing strategy is starting out, and it is an invaluable step in the process.
Should you manage everything by yourself personally or with the help of your team? It is up to you to decide, and it depends on your brand scale. If you are about to promote your own graphic design services as a freelancer, you can start doing it right away, all by yourself.
But, if you want to execute a corporate digital strategy for a multinational company that is rapidly growing, you might want to consider hiring a team of content specialists, copywriters, bloggers, social media gurus, email ninjas, design unicorns, and – well – all other professionals that you need.
So, for the large-scale strategies you have two options:
- Hire/outsource a team of experts from a digital marketing agency
- Use automation tools to put your plans in motion and get the wheels turning
For the former, try to find a creative team that is aligned with your brand’s vision, people who share the same values as you, and are strongly devoted to surpassing your expectations on digital advertising and content strategizing.
For the latter, try using specifically designed tools, software, and applications for different goals.
6. MONITOR, EVALUATE, AND MEASURE
You can use different tools to get insight into the overview of your audience interaction with your digital ads, website, app, or social media profiles.
For this purpose, you can go with Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Instagram Insights, or any other analytics tool to catch the real-time engagements, likes, and shares, and to determine audience demographics, habits, behaviors, locations, devices, referring links, and much more.
By monitoring your marketing channels, you will gain enough information about the performance of each and every one of them. Use the insights to track your advertisements, evaluate your campaigns, and measure the results.
That way, you will learn which channels are bringing you the best ROI, and you will know how to tweak your marketing strategy for future endeavors and gain even more traction with your digital campaigns.
In this phase, Google’s HEART metrics could be a helpful tool. The HEART framework includes the measurement of Happiness. For instance, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. Although Google has developed the HEART system. To measure user experience. It is easily adjustable to measuring campaign outcomes. Also, progress towards goals, and overall customer satisfaction. It is a great way to describe. The subjective experience and visual appeal. Predict the level of engagement. Also, address the key problems, and estimate campaign effectiveness.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it all up, we can summarize several well-known principles about the digital marketing strategy:
- Set SMART goals – make them Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely
- Use RACE framework – use your content to Reach, Act, Convert and Engage
- Measure with HEART – Google’s metrics can help you evaluate Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success
In other words, set the short-term and long-term digital marketing goals, align them with the business goals, define your audience, create buyer personas, learn your customer journeys, follow your audience and find the online channels that perfectly fit your goals. Then, manage content creations, make editorial plans and social media calendars, use different tools to keep it all running smoothly, and, finally, evaluate and measure your success.
May we just add that you might have stumbled upon your future digital marketing partners over here, as we are proud to say that Cloud9 has recently been recognized as one of the Top Digital Agencies. And we are eager to hear all about your projects, so feel free to get in touch with us. Cloud9, Digital Marketing agency Dubai can provide services outside India also. Our services comes with E-Commerce websites, Graphic Design and SEO . Also Solutions like ERP. Ex. institute Management.