Digital marketing is a highly effective strategy used by businesses to reach prospects by featuring brand messages on websites the prospects read or social platforms they follow.
Unlike traditional PR, which focuses on coverage in newspapers, magazines, and television, digital marketing campaigns mainly seek to secure coverage in relevant websites.
Digital marketing service providers coordinate with digital medias who publish their brand journalism on hundreds of top websites to generate sales leads and improve their SEO.
Why is Digital Marketing Important?
In simple terms, digital marketing is basically brand stories that seek to connect on a personal level with the audience. It is designed to create a favourable impression of the brand.
The overall goal of a digital campaign is to convey your brand’s personality. It builds awareness and affinity for your brand.
Digital campaign is about framing and directing your message.
Securing favourable coverage will nurture your brand image over time. Besides, appearing on high quality websites will signal Google that you are a credible source of information within your industry thereby boosting your SEO efforts.
A successful digital marketing campaign should generate warm sales leads, and well-crafted landing pages on your website should channel those leads through a conversion funnel and turn them into customers.
There are several ways digital campaigns can be implemented. Some of the most common digital public relations include networking with online journalists to gain coverage in websites, and influencer outreach to gain mentions on influential social media accounts.
If you are planning to create a digital marketing campaign to gain favourable coverage, boost your SEO, or to increase website traffic and revenue, follow this seven-step strategy:
1. Define Your Goals
Start by outlining what you hope to gain from your campaign. Are you seeking to gain social mentions in a popular social account? Do you hope to rank better on Google?
It is important to define your goals before the start of a campaign to help you measure the success or failure of your digital campaign.
2. Define Your Audience
Once you define the goals of your campaign, it is now time to define the persona of your audience.
Do some research to find out where your prospects hang out online, the type of content they engage with and the brands they interact with.
3. Find Your Brand’s Tone and Voice
This is one of the most important parts of a digital marketing strategy. “Tone and voice” refer to the persona your content takes on. It is the way you speak with your audience.
Are you aspiring to educate, persuade, or inspire? Do you want to speak as an authority or do you want to engage in a conversational relationship? Answers to these questions will help you determine your ideal tone and voice – including diction and syntax.
4. Create Editorial Calendar
An editorial calendar is a publishing schedule that helps you to keep track of what you want to write about, and when you want to do it.
Ideally, an editorial calendar should be used to place pins on important dates or events that are going to generate buzz for your brand.
Besides associating content with dates, a functional calendar should map content production to your audiences, the engagement cycle, and the channels you operate.
5. Create Content
Once the above steps have been completed, it is now time to start thinking about the content to create for your brand to drive favourable coverage and link building.
Basically, digital marketing campaigns have three types of content offerings: thought leadership – special reports and interviews; data visualisation – infographics, GIFs, video, etc.; and tactical content – offered in exchange for a visitor’s email address.
6. Distribute Your Content
With your content now ready, you need to create a list of media contacts that will potentially distribute your content. Ideally, you should do some research to find out the outlets that publish content similar to what you have written about.
Read online publications and look for journalists who cover similar topics. Take a look at social media to see what bloggers are talking about.
Write a powerful pitch email with an enticing subject to draw the attention of website operators. While there is no guarantee of positive response, these emails can secure you coverage in some great websites.
7. Reporting & Assessment
This is the last step of a digital marketing campaign. Reporting helps to evaluate whether you are getting a good return on investment on your campaign.
Use analytics tools to gather insights and feedback from your audience to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign. It is important to refine your strategy as new details of customer interactions emerge.
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by Janet Mutegi
source: constructionkenya