Checklist for Your Content – Reflect, Record and RISE

Offering the best product isn’t enough in an increasingly competitive marketplace. People need to know that you have the best solution to their problems. Hence, creating an effective digital marketing strategy is crucial to establishing your brand as a consumer staple.

With over 7.5 million blog posts and approximately 720,000 hours of YouTube videos uploaded every day, your brand needs to cut through the clutter to announce its presence meaningfully.

We understand that it might be overwhelming, at first, to apply these digital marketing strategies to your business. So we’ve created a checklist that you can use to ensure that your content checks all the boxes for an effective digital marketing strategy.

What is a digital marketing strategy?

A digital marketing strategy is a step-by-step manual that will help your company achieve the goals you have set for it. For this, you need to make sure of three things: 

• You have to solve your customer’s problems
• You need to direct your marketing to your target audience
• You have to be unique in your marketing approach

To fulfill these three criteria, you have to identify what issues your target customer base is currently facing and connect with them at an emotional level. To find the appropriate content for your strategy, you can use various online free tools. Insightful data and analytics are the best tools for expanding your brand presence.

This article will cover six main points you should consider before building your digital marketing strategy.

The essential digital marketing checklist

Creating the right content 

Getting the content right for your marketing strategy boils down to two questions: 

1. What makes your company better than your competitors? You can call this your brand’s unique selling point (USP), your point of differentiation, or your competitive advantage. Customers will only come to you if they can get tangible benefits, so that’s what you need to market. 
2. How does your product or service solve your customers’ problems? If your content answers your customers’ pain points, you have discovered the perfect solution to your marketing problem. 

Choosing the right audience

Your brand may be more relevant to some customer bases than others, so choosing the right target audience is crucial. If you want people to connect with your content, you must learn about their needs, pain points, personalities, and values. 

An emotional connection with a company’s marketing message is the key to building long-lasting brand loyalty. It is not sufficient for you to just communicate what you are good at and how you can solve your customers’ problems better than anyone else. 

You also need to create your buyer persona carefully. A buyer persona refers to a research-based profile of your target customer. A good buyer persona covers the points mentioned above, along with how their average days pan out, the challenges they face, and their decision-making process. 

Cut through the clutter.

It is easy for a consumer to scroll past a barrage of similar content. To truly make your content stand out, your content has to satisfy a demand that no other company is meeting.

You have to either identify a niche that no one else occupies or create a unique solution to an existing problem. 

Moreover, your content should be easy to understand, direct, accurate, and on topics that make sense for your brand. Ensuring that your content entertains, informs, or engages the reader instead of sounding like an overly persistent sales pitch, is a great way to stand out.

Defining the type of content you create

Each content format serves a purpose. You need to identify the type of content that engages your customer base. For example, lead generation requires consumers to submit their personal information. Email newsletters or webinar registrations may be well suited for this. Similarly, if you want to establish your brand as an expert in the field, e-books or infographics are suitable options.

Most brands use the following media: 

• Social Media
• Videos
• Blogs
• Articles
• Email Newsletters
• Webinars
• Infographics
• In-person events
• Podcasts
• SMS
• Print Magazines
• E-books

You can use these options in combination, and based on the response, hone in on which ones are the most suitable for your audience. 

Efficient Distribution of content

The three main content categories are written, audio, and video. To choose between these, you need to decide which medium best represents your company values and in which format your marketing strategy excels.

Don’t be afraid to experiment, though! It can help you figure out which format works best for you. Ultimately, your strategy’s goal should be to redirect people from your content to your website or newsletter. You can only perfect this skill through trial and error. 

Use data to adapt your strategies

The final step is to improvise and adapt according to the data analytics from your marketing platforms. To do so, follow the Lean Startup Methodology as follows:

1. Create data-driven buyer personas
   1. Analyze how your buyers consume information
   2. Use web forms to collect data
   3. Collect feedback from your sales and services teams
   4. Interact with your present and potential customers to understand their needs

1. Study your sector

You need to understand the sector in which you operate. Analyze your competitors’ marketing channels, social networks, and strategies and compare them with your tactics. 

1. Create story-driven social media campaigns

Tailor your social media campaigns to suit the targeted demographic. Adapt your strategy to reflect their choices, humor, interests, etc., so your users can see themselves in your brand.

1. Content marketing

Create an online newsletter or blog to experiment with various types of content. Your content should reflect your company’s expertise, and you can tweak it based on user responses.

1. Email marketing

Email marketing campaigns are a great way to market yourself to potential and existing customers. Use strategies such as offering a free downloadable sent to their inbox to make your users drop their email IDs on your website and use these to create targeted email campaigns and newsletters. 

1. Keep tracking metrics

Data is key. Using online tools like Google Analytics and HubSpot, determine visitor traffic, conversion rates, etc. Keep evaluating your campaign’s metrics to ensure they align with your goals. 

Keep this guide handy when planning your content strategy, and you’ll be on your way in no time or simply contact us, and we will help you get through!