Before embarking on a digital marketing effort, the first think you should do as a business owner is to think through and delineate your digital marketing goals. Many businesses make the mistake of jumping in the game without being clear on their short term and long term objectives. Most often, everyone wants to start marketing and hope for the cash to start rolling in. This rarely happens.
You digital marketing goals could vary depend on your business but in most cases, they center around four specific themes. When discussing with many businesses on their goals, the answer we usually get is that “we want to accomplish all of it.” That’s fine but with the limited marketing budget available, the question then comes down to “how much do you want to spend around each of the marketing themes?” This question sends most businesses to the drawing board to determine their underlying goals and objectives.
The four themes related to digital marketing (and other type off marketing) are described in the following:
Increase Brand Exposure
Efforts and capital spent around this theme means that you want your brand name in front of as many people as possible. If this is where you want to spend your marketing dollars then you are better off starting with digital marketing channels such as the Display Network of Google Adwords or marketing on Facebook through content marketing efforts and initiatives.
When trying to increase your brand exposure, your efforts should be to maximize your reach with your dollars. Your focus should be get the messages related to your brand out in the market as effectively as possible.
Increase Sales
This is one of the most basic and obvious themes. The end goal of most businesses is to maximize their sales. Some usually want to achieve this by directly advertising their products to the e-marketplace. Depending on the competition though your biggest challenge here would be to balance the marketing dollars spent against achieving right level of conversions. If you can’t convert your marketing dollars at a rate that is profitable for your business, this method is not sustainable. Eventually, you will have to start focusing on other efforts to increase sales.
Capture Leads
This marketing theme is usually centered around capturing as many leads as possible and to focus on their conversion later. Depending on your product and your industry that you compete in, this method can be very effective.
Research
Many businesses also pay to advertize their products and services simply to gauge online market reaction. For example, if you are planning to create a product, you could create a mock up product and start advertising it for a few days or weeks and invite people to provide you with their contact information if they like the product. This can help you gauge the interest around your idea. Depending on how many people show interest in your idea, this can help you adjust your product or service development plans.
— End