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When we speak about brand goals and digital marketing strategies, we are talking about two extreme ends. To align them, you should examine your brand through several steps to determine the best digital marketing strategies to maximize your desired results. To begin, we will assume that you have a brand identity. If not, we believe you should start by reading our article on Branding.
Now let’s talk about Brand Goals. What is it that you aim to achieve through your branding? Is it to build awareness, create an emotional connection with your target audience, differentiate yourself by conveying what makes you unique, gain credibility and trust among the consumers in the market or become memorable?
In order to create these goals, it’s important that you review your brand by researching where it stands currently, the market, industry, and your target audience and consumer trends. This is where we do a little Marketing 101 refresher. When it comes to research, do a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis or a PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) Analysis. These can help you determine which areas of your business would benefit from an updated digital marketing strategy.
Next, let’s talk about Objectives. Quite often, in the marketing world, we tend to interchange goals with objectives. There’s a difference - and that is specificity. Goals are general aims you plan to achieve that are broad and long term, but objectives are specific - they define the actions to achieve the goal. And the best objectives are SMART - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound.
For example, let’s say as a dental practice, your goal is ‘to become memorable for Invisalign Treatment’. An objective would be to ‘Rank #1 on Google when people search for the term “Invisalign dentist” in the next 6 months. Here, we are specific with what we want - to rank #1 on Google for ‘Invisalign dentist’ organically, in our local area. The objective is measurable because you can see the rankings on Google. It is attainable and time-bound, given that we have left ourselves a good time frame to achieve as organic SEO can be a slow process.
Now, once your goals and objectives are aligned, let’s create digital marketing strategies.
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Digital Marketing is a broad term and can be divided into many sub-categories. Each category has a different impact, which helps you create your strategies based on your goals and objectives. These categories include:
- Content Marketing Strategy - Content marketing involves creating valuable and relevant material that can be shared online, such as blogs, videos, how-to guides etc.
- Social Media Marketing - Utilizing various social media platforms and their specific features to help find and connect with your customers, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more.
- SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - Optimize your website to improve visibility on search engines such as Google, and look into options to enhance your digital presence, such as paid online ads.
- Email Marketing - Keep your customers engaged with regular updates and content via periodic newsletters or e-blasts.
- Paid Ads - As budget allows, place strategic paid ads for relevant search phrases to compliment your organic efforts and appear in more competitive searches.
Some or all of these digital marketing strategies can help you achieve your goals, but they easily overwhelm you if you don’t have a clear objective. To determine which strategy you should prioritize, you should set SMART objectives and establish a timeline according to the stages of growth of your brand.
Ready to take your brand to the next level? Chat with one of our UpOnline representatives today to learn more!