[7-Step] How To Build a Digital Marketing Strategy?

We will show you how to build a digital marketing strategy in 7 doable steps (with specific examples).

There are plenty of how-to guides on creating a digital marketing strategy. Only some offer no-nonsense advice that works.

At Prodima, we care about campaign efficiency. We have distilled an optimized roadmap for planning a strategy that delivers on its promise.

Step 1: Specify Your S.M.A.R.T. Goals

S.M.A.R.T. goals make your campaign more manageable and effective.

This acronym stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

How to set S.M.A.R.T. marketing goals?

Start with your business goals, and let marketing serve them. For example:

• Business goal: Increase the net revenue

To make it S.M.A.R.T., let’s check each item of the framework.

• Specific: Net revenue on web sales
• Measurable: $50,000
• Achievable: Our website makes $1,000 every 5,000 visits, so we need at least 250,000 visits, while we have 140,000 today
• Relevant: It makes sense to leverage our e-commerce website
• Time-bound: We target $50,000 net monthly revenue

Thanks to this breakdown, the S.M.A.R.T. target becomes:

• S.M.A.R.T.: increase the net monthly revenue to $50,000 from our web sales

Note that we can be more specific by listing the exact products we expect to see this growth in.

Based on this S.M.A.R.T. objective, we can begin developing the digital marketing strategy. For this, let’s go to step #2.

Step 2: Define Your Target Audience

We have a goal. Now, we need to identify the target audience we aim to reach.

Types of Audience

Is your business:

• B2B?
• B2C?
• A mix of both?

B2B customers take their time considering your offerings. Give them plenty of reasons to choose you through blog posts, white papers, educational content, freebies, and trade shows.

B2C customers are influenced by people with similar profiles. Personalize your campaign for different shapes to reach high-quality leads.

Once you clarify this, define your target audience profile. To do it, you must understand the customer journey. Are your potential customers:

• In the awareness stage?
• Willing to browse for ideas?
• Comparing all available products?
• Ready to purchase?
• Etc.

And then, you must identify their profiles. They all fall into the following criteria:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Interests
• Behaviors

Conducting this research will significantly strengthen our digital marketing strategy as we move to the next step.

How to Do Audience Research?

To do audience research, you must focus on these two types of data:

• Quantitative
• Qualitative

For both, the first source of information should be your online asset analytics.

For example, you can get good profile data from your Facebook or LinkedIn page. Of course, the laws about digital confidentiality don’t allow us to access personal user data.

Additionally, you can leverage your website analytics using Google Analytics 4 or Google Search Console.

The most important information you need to collect is:

• Product interest (search volumes)
• User intent (informational, transactional, etc.)

For more qualitative data, you can also go to forums, events, or meetups.

B2B companies usually attend trade shows and industry conferences. B2C brands should cooperate with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs).

Your competitors are also a wealth of information, especially the ones that have been in the market for a long time.

By doing all this, create a highly detailed audience persona.

Why is Audience Research Important?

Customers are increasingly informed. They quickly compare brands, products, and prices. With more competition, being audience-centric pays off.

Brands must differentiate themselves with good customer service. Be curious and empathetic. Think like your audience, walk in their shoes, and see your business and offerings from their perspective.

Moreover, companies know that retaining clients costs less than attracting new ones.

Refrain from assuming all your customers come to you for the same old reasons. There may be a new opportunity for you. The best way to find out is to be open to the possibility that your customers see a different way of doing business with you than you envision. Pivot when necessary.

Consider rational and emotional reasons that may attract your customers. B2B audiences may be expected to make sound, well-informed decisions, but they are also human beings, so acknowledge their professional obligations and address their concerns. They may be angling for a promotion, struggling to connect with their coworkers, or putting out fires for their staff.

Hitting the right note with your audience is the best way to leave a lasting impression. The more granular detail you have about your target audience, the better.

Dedicated Strategy for Each Audience Profile

Finally, refine your goal based on the new audience insights.

We highly recommend crafting a dedicated digital marketing strategy for each audience profile. Sure, it is a lot of work and may stretch your resources, but you know your money is well spent.

A well-targeted strategy is also easier to execute, allowing more accurate return forecasts. It sets you apart from the competition.

A well-targeted strategy also supports the optimization process. When we segment the audience into small groups and apply a dedicated plan to each group, it becomes easier to identify which strategies and audiences work best. This insight allows us to adjust, improve, or stop a non-performing strategy/audience segment.

Step 3: Benchmark Your Competitors

Who are your competitors?

They are the businesses competing for:

• The same products or services in your industry
• Your SEO rankings
• Ad prices
• Audience attention
• etc.

Depending on your campaign, your business competitors may differ from your marketing competitors. Let’s explain the difference below.

Example A: Top 10 Lists

Say you run a hotel.

Your website may not compete with other hotels on Google, but rather with the “top 10 hotels in AAA location” listings from blogs, travel agencies, or ticket booking platforms.

You cannot consider a travel agency a competitor in your business, right?

However, it is your marketing competitor for this specific “top 10 listing,” and you cannot ignore it.

Example B: Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs)

You sell sports products.

Your product pages may compete against KOLs, such as fitness bloggers and communities.

They discuss similar topics, but they are not your direct competitors. You must still pay attention to what they do.

Meanwhile, your products compete with other sports goods companies.

How to Benchmark?

First, shortlist the most relevant competitors by segmenting them as follows:

• Top performers
• Closest to your business

Then, follow these three steps:

1. Choose relevant metrics 
2. Choose the tools to track those metrics
3. Compare the competitors’ metrics against your own

Those insights are valuable for identifying market opportunities. The goal is to deliver actual business benefits.

Be careful, though, because comparison can easily slip into obsession. The point is to achieve your own business objectives.

Step 4: Budget

Your digital marketing budget depends on your goals.

It is possible to do digital marketing for free, especially when you are a solopreneur who does everything by yourself.

For example, it is free to post on the company’s social media accounts.

Some tools have no paywall, like Google Search Console, which does excellent marketing.

However, you are also limited in what you can do and the results you may expect. You may start with nothing, but it is unsustainable to keep insisting on “free marketing.”

Very quickly, having no marketing budget results in low performance and no ability to scale. To grow, all businesses need to invest at some point.

To define your budget, lay out the components, break down each cost, and assemble a rough estimate. Even a bad budget is always better than no budget at all! 

Step 5: Plan a Roadmap

You have S.M.A.R.T. goals, an audience, competitors, and a budget. Now, it’s time to use your project management skills.

To build a plan, you need at least three essential components:

• Tasks
• Resources
• Timelines

Prodima recommends that digital marketers use Gantt charts. It is a time-tested tool perfect for this.

While a simple Excel file or Google Sheets is enough, you can also create your Gantt with suitable software (for example, check this free Gantt chart tool).

Tasks

Based on your business goals, break down your project into smaller pieces.

You must list all deliverables to be completed. It includes all jobs from start to finish, including any parallel tasks.

Project managers know that plans never resist reality. New tasks accumulate; there are updates, delays, and sometimes a complete change to the entire scope.

In all cases, you must start somewhere. A Gantt chart needs to be updated anyway.

Resources

For each task, assign a person-in-charge (PIC). It can be an individual or a team.

Explain who will do what, and how they will do it. Clarity is crucial for the success of your digital marketing strategy.

Also, ensure each PIC is accountable for their assigned job. Responsibility, skills, and commitment are mandatory.

Timelines

Each task has its PIC. It must also have timelines, meaning start and end dates.

The start of each item usually depends on the others. For example, we may not be able to launch a new job if the previous one is not yet complete.

So, delays on one task may affect subsequent tasks.

End dates, or deadlines, are extremely important. Without deadlines, the job may never end. Set clear timelines for all tasks of your digital marketing strategy.

Step 6: Execute

You are now ready to put the plan into action.

Each PIC should be properly informed about their tasks. The manager should avoid micromanaging and instead assist each PIC in doing their job well.

It includes the following project management tasks:

• Periodic support
• Deadline updates
• Reporting to upper management
• Find resources if needed
• Quality check
• Solve bottlenecks

A wisdom we have gathered over the years: adapt.

Despite our planning, execution never goes as planned. There will always be conditions, updates, and changing environments. Resist the urge to stick to the plan at any cost. Flexibility is key.

Always move forward. In most cases, we would face challenges such as:

• No more budget
• Another team is stealing our resources
• Timelines changes
• Unexpected tech issue
• Miscommunication
• Wrong coordination
• And much more.

Some are out of control. Others can be handled.

Focus only on the execution. Never blame others. Never complain about unfairness. Find solutions.

Move to step 7. 

Step 7: Evaluate and Modify

“Half of my advertising spend is wasted. The trouble is I don’t know which half.”

To run cost-effective campaigns, you must measure their performance and then optimize them.

Make the best use of the available tools to track your campaign metrics and adjust accordingly.

Ultimately, your KPIs, cost efficiency, and, of course, client satisfaction matter the most. 

Case Study for Effective Digital Marketing Strategies

Let’s take a fictional jewelry brand for our case study.

We apply the following four strategies: SEO, Facebook, Google Ads, and email marketing. 

Strategy 1: Improve SEO Rankings

As a first digital marketing strategy, we want to rank for keywords related to our jewelry products.

We must consider many tasks:

• Competitive benchmark
• Market analysis
• Keyword research
• Website technical optimizations
• On-page content updates
• Blogging
• Link-building

Each task will have a PIC and a deadline. The goal is to ensure that online users looking for our products will easily find our web pages. 

Strategy 2: Run a Facebook Campaign

Then, we can also run a Facebook Ads campaign.

If our jewelry brand is new, we may need to run awareness ads first. After one or two months, we may switch this campaign to online sales (conversions).

To achieve this, we need:

• Product pictures
• Clear deal offer
• Setting up the Meta account
• Uploading the products to the Store feed
• Spend the net media budget on ads

This second strategy differs from the first. It will certainly require additional resources.

Strategy 3: Run a Google Ads Campaign

Supplement SEO ranking by running Google Ads. It is a great strategy to dominate the Google first page.

Google Ads appear above the organic results (sourced by SEO = the first strategy explained above).

To activate them, you need to prepare:

• Ad account setup
• Tracking
• Ad copies
• Campaign execution
• Optimizations
• Measuring the performance
• Reporting

Jewelry works well on Google Ads. You can also leverage the collected data to boost your Facebook Ads (see strategy 2 above). 

Strategy 4: Run an Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is very cost-effective.

We nurture loyal customers with unique offers, such as a birthday discount.

They are also good at reaching new clients. The hardest part is building a customer list, which is especially challenging for small businesses.

An email marketing campaign implies:

• Building a customer list
• Segmenting it by profiles
• Setting goals for each profile
• Crafting the email copy and design
• Activating the email marketing campaign
• Tracking the metrics
• Adjusting accordingly

Email marketing delivers one of the best ROIs among digital marketing strategies, along with SEO.

5 Common Digital Marketing Strategy Mistakes (and Fixes)

When things get messy and confusing, because they will, follow our advice and avoid these 5 pitfalls.

#1 Not Having a Clear Goal

Mistake:

• Businesses don’t know what they want for their marketing campaigns
• But they want it very hard!
• They define vague targets like “More revenue.”
• It doesn’t help in building an efficient digital marketing strategy

Fix:

• Apply the S.M.A.R.T. goals introduced in this article
• Focus on realistic expectations
• Base any decisions on facts and data rather than assumptions or emotions

#2 Not Identifying the Proper Channels to Focus On 

Mistake:

• Businesses waste time and money on the wrong channels
• They blindly copy what other companies do
• What may be good for a competitor may not be suitable for you (especially if this competitor is well-established while you are a newcomer)

Fix:

• Define a clear budget (being under a strong budget constraint doesn’t mean we cannot run a marketing strategy)
• Consider the target audience, market, services, competition, and demand
• Choose one or maximum two channels that are the most likely to perform

#3 Not Having Realistic Expectations 

Mistake:

• Businesses want fast results
• And those fast results must be affordable
• Cheap and quick strategy

Fix:

• Acknowledge there is no such thing as “quick wins at low cost” (if it were the case, everybody would already be doing it)
• Choose the most suitable strategy for your goals (for example, if you want fast results, drop SEO and run ADS instead)
• Keep realistic expectations and focus on small but significant wins before scaling up

#4 Not A/B Testing 

Mistake:

• Businesses run ads with a single creative (text and/or visual)
• They think “it is the best way to promote our product” and stick to it
• It means they cannot optimize
• Neither see opportunities

Fix:

• Run as many ad copy variations you can (it doesn’t cost more budget)
• Segment your audiences in groups as small as possible (for example, male 18-20 based in location ABC with interest for XYZ)
• Test and reassess the ads based on actual performance
• Add new ad variations as often as possible

#5 Not Leveraging Data & Measuring Performance 

Mistake:

• Businesses run digital campaigns and only focus on sales conversions
• They ignore the customer journey
• They care about the end result, not about the client touch points

Fix:

• Acknowledge that confirmed sales don’t mean they will last
• Understand how to reproduce the good results
• Use the analytic tools available to track how your clients interact with your brand

Outsourcing vs. In-House Digital Marketing

Should you build your digital marketing strategies in-house? Or is it more efficient to hire an agency?

We broke down the pros and cons for you.

In-House

Here are the advantages of keeping everything in-house:

• Brand consistency
• Control over processes
• Company information confidentiality

Now, here are the drawbacks:

• Digital project management coordination
• Staff management
• Lack of expertise
• Higher costs (human resources and tools)
• Challenging to scale up

Outsource

There are many pros of outsourcing digital marketing to professional agencies:

• No staff turnover management
• More time to focus on core business activities
• Domain expertise
• Full suite of tools
• Scalable

However, there are a few cons to consider:

• Limited branding knowledge
• Confidentiality and access/permissions
• Communication issues

The efficiency of digital marketing agencies mostly depends on their level of expertise. Prodima never recommends companies working with inexperienced freelancers.

Choose the right partner to move the needle!

Set the Stage

An excellent digital marketing campaign boosts your business performance. You only need to follow the right processes we described above.

Leverage the tools we introduced:

• S.M.A.R.T. goals
• Audience segmentation
• Market and competitors analysis
• Gantt charts

And follow our advice to build your digital marketing strategy.