You’ve gotto feel at least a little bad for business owners going digital.
What should be an exciting, game-changing moment for their venture is often a laborious, confusing march against the tide.
Put yourself in their shoes: you’re up against ‘salesy’ customer reps promising 1,000% ROI and immediate first-page Google rankings. Before knowing the first thing about your business, cold-emailing snake oil salesmen whose IPs are mysteriously located overseas, a sea of agencies with no way of telling who’s reputable and who’s not, and to make matters worse, everyone’s got a
cousin who does “SEO”.
It may actually be even worse if you’re trying to do everything in-house, especially if this is your first foray into the digital realm.
Have a quick Google around, and it won’t take you any time at all to find endless blogs and listicles laying out your digital strategy for you or explaining how to compile a bulletproof digital marketing plan in just five easy steps.
If you’re struggling, there’s plenty of companies out there whose CRM or data analytics software will assuredly be all you need to grow your business online or if you’re looking for something a tad simpler, you can download so-and-so’s free e-book, which includes their killer digital marketing plan template.
Let’s not even get started on the gurus and influencers, who’ll rant endlessly about why content is king or why content is not king, but the kingdom and the king is something else. They may even make some good points, but nothing that equates to an actionable strategy for your SME.
To understate it, somewhat: there’s a lot of noise out there. If you listen to it, it can cost you your money, your reputation, and even more.
It’s truly unfortunate because the truth is that putting together a high-level digital strategy is really quite simple. Like most things in marketing, it requires asking the right questions. In this case, just one, single, deceptively simple question. If you nail the answer, your strategy will pretty much take care of itself.
Just ask yourself: where is my customer?
Consider your answer carefully, it will inform everything you invest in online, from the channels where you advertise to the publications where you guest blog.
In traditional marketing, you may have started by asking, who is my customer? But digital is different, we like to start with the where.
Let’s try a thought experiment: you’re a digital marketing agency who’s recently received interest from a prospective client. They sell industrial-sized O-rings. Their model is thoroughly B2B, supplying wholesale, primarily to the industrial sector, and they’re interested in gaining more leads. They may look into branding down the line, but they’re only interested in enquiries for now, and they’re very conscious of ROI.
Now, would Facebook and Instagram advertising be a good idea for them? If you answered no, well done.
Let’s try another scenario: you’re the same digital marketing agency, but this time you’re meeting with a young couple who’ve had some success with their e-commerce swimsuit business and are looking to take things to the next level. They primarily want to target young women and are interested in driving engagement and e-commerce sales.
Would Facebook and Instagram advertising be a good idea for them? Of course, it would!
In fact, if they weren’t thinking about investing in Instagram ads at the very least, you’d wonder just how seriously they’re taking their business. It obviously wouldn’t work for the first prospect because their customers aren’t on Facebook or Instagram.
Ask yourself: where is my customer? There’s a lot of variables to consider, but they all factor into answering the same simple question, and it works every time.
Say you run a tractor company, chances are I’ll find your customers searching for “tractor hire” on Google before I find them by clicking on a Facebook ad, ready to put down a few grand to hire one of your tractors. We’ve just determined your digital strategy: SEO and Google AdWords, at least for now.
All of the digital channels have their place, but if you’re struggling to figure out where to put your money or which agency to go with, start by discovering where your customers are. It’s a simple question with a vital answer.
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