We are now in the mid-year of 2017 and it’s vital for any business with an online presence to have some sort of digital marketing strategy in place. If your business is facing digital channel issues, then perhaps it is time to consider a strategic review of your digital efforts. Here are 7 popular reasons that you actually require a digital marketing strategy.

1. You Don’t Know Your Online Market Share: Do you know how many of your sales are generated via online digital channels? You should definitely research this as you can easily underestimate customer demand for your online services. By implementing a digital strategy, you’re able to understand your place in the online marketplace and the dynamics of operating within digital channels. You’ll be privy to your online customers’ profiles, their behaviour, your competitors’ actions and options within the overall market for customers.
2. You Lack What It Takes To Stand Out: What makes you stand out and differentiates you from other online services? You need to ascertain what encourages existing and new customers to engage with your brand and stay customers.
3. You Don’t Know Your Audience: You must understand who and where your audience is on your digital channels, such as different social media platforms. Digital is often considered one of the most measurable mediums out there. Utilize feedback and native analytics on all your platforms to see who your primary audience is. They are the people you should be targeting with your tailored content.
4. Are You Integrated? : Very commonly in businesses, we see that digital marketing activities are commonly actioned in different silos. A team member doing digital marketing activities, an IT guy in another department helping out and even agency involvement as well. However, your digital media work should all be integrated across all channels and people involved. This is why a digital media strategy is a necessity as it unifies everything.
5. Minimize Duplication and Waste: Digital marketing can quickly become complex, with different parts of the business creating content, managing social media accounts, and gathering information on customers. Without a clear strategy, you’re at risk for wasting resources and duplicating efforts.
6. Build A Better Customer Experience: Digital transformations are a hot topic because they’re letting companies develop more effective customer experiences. A digital strategy defines what your ideal customer experience looks like and provides the roadmap to get there.
7. Optimize Like You Mean It: Your company website has analytics, but isn’t reviewing and acting upon the insights and data gained. With a digital strategy in place, regular reviews of insights and data occur regularly to a plan. You and your team will be able to consistently improve and optimize key elements of your digital media approach. Soon you will be optimizing your website for search engines, implementing paid media campaigns, referring your website’s user experience and perfecting your email marketing campaigns.

Customer Value Optimization: How to Build an Unstoppable Business

Having a perfect mix of product, people and place become imperative while you are running your own business. But are these enough? Considering that competition is fierce and consumers have too many choices, you need to be offering something better to stay ahead in the grind.

As a business owner, the accountability to achieve your goals rests on your shoulders. At the same time struggle in business is inevitable. To help ease out the stress, let’s discuss some ingredients that can help you take your business to the next level and add taste to the recipe for success.

It is essential to know the purpose of your business and to have a vision of how things will shape up. For starters, a one-page business plan may suffice, but it’s imperative to chalk out the basic product details, marketing strategy, sales strategy, all of this in detail before you get started. At the same time if you are seeking to raise funds you will need to have a comprehensive business plan that includes numbers, growth plans, market size, expected turnover and so on.

What is the problem that your business addresses? Who is your competition? Who is your target consumer? You need to have well-researched answers for these questions. You also need to know your product and the market it will operate in, in and out. Making note of these tiny details and analysis will make your business appealing and will play an important role in creating a niche.

Marketing is often overlooked or taken for granted by business owners. However, it is a very important component of running a business. The marketing strategy should always be ‘outside-in’ and not ‘inside out’. The product should be about consumers. With changing times, you need to evolve and ensure they are interacting with consumers at multiple touchpoints.

Each quarter assigns a certain budget dedicated towards your marketing spends. Keep updating your products based on current consumer trends. Your big data may show that 18-35-year-olds frequent your store. Ensure that you revolve your communication around them. Concentrate your effort into using the channels they frequent rather than those they don’t. Studying consumer behaviour and their buying habits will help you concentrate on what consumers want. Always remember ‘consumer is king.’