If you don’t have a digital marketing plan for your company going into 2021, you are missing out on major conversion opportunities.
Traditional marketing has advantages that digital marketing can only dream of competing with. For example, traditional advertisements tend to be more memorable. However, there are less organic opportunities for interaction with customers.
That’s where digital marketing shines! The best part of digital marketing is the low overhead costs and the initial investment for great returns when it comes to customer engagement.
Don’t know where to start? No worries: here is your complete guide to setting up a digital marketing plan for 2021!
Find the Gaps in your Online Presence
First, what are the gaps in your online presence? This is a great place to start, because you’ll immediately start seeing returns once you fill those gaps.
Setting up a relevant social media profile and just revising an outdated website are just two things that can make a big impact over time. However, you will start seeing the effect of their implementation very quickly. Even if you are not necessarily making conversions from the outset, you will be priming new customers and engaging your target audiences in a cost-effective and efficient way.
A surefire way to discern where the gaps in your online presence are is to audit the competition! Google your top five competitors individually. If all of your competitors have a twitter and you don’t, you should be concerned.
That said, if NONE of your competitors have an Instagram, you can take it as a good sign that your time might not be well spent there. Identifying your top two digital priorities will save you a ton of time and increase the quality of the content you put on them.
A plumber will do well to have a well-crafted Facebook page so that customers in need can easily get in touch with them, just like a real estate agency should definitely have an Instagram to put houses for sale in front of as many potential buyers as possible.
Every company should have one form of social media and a solid website. At best, a website can solidify your brand and maximize your digital conversion opportunities. At worst, you buy a domain, find that it doesn’t work out, and sell that domain on Saw.com. See? Not much to lose.
Enlist the Help of a Digital Marketing Agency
A reputable and experienced digital marketing agency can elevate the digital presence of your business to the next level. While the initial investment in a professional digital marketing agency can be pretty costly—especially for a small business’ marketing budget!—a well structured and professional digital strategy can set your business up for success for YEARS to come.
But remember that this only works with a “reputable and experienced” digital marketing agency, and the “reputable and experienced” part is important. Digital marketing is associated with very low upfront costs. This attracts a ton of opportunistic, inexperienced, and downright scammy entrepreneurs into the space.
Not every nascent digital marketing agency should be disregarded, of course! But there are plenty of unethical scammers on the internet that will use YOUR inexperience to gauge you for non-existent services and returns.
To ensure that you avoid rip-offs and scammers trying to make a quick buck, first turn to the agency’s website. Does it look like a company YOU would trust? Even if you do not know much about the digital world, you can trust your gut check on this one.
Then, look at reviews of the company beyond what they choose to display on their business’ website. If you’re looking at reviews on a company’s site, they are most likely selected to reflect well on the business. This is not an unusual practice, and it is not even that shady! It’s totally normal for a company to put their best foot forward on the internet.
The problem comes if a company doesn’t have reviews anywhere ELSE on the web. This is a major red flag that they are either too inexperienced or have scrubbed negative reviews.
Set Specific Small Goals
Regardless of whether or not you enlist the services of a digital marketing agency outside of your company, you should have some overarching goals in mind for improving your digital presence.
This can be overwhelming if you don’t specialize in the digital space, so you should feel comfortable breaking up these larger tasks into smaller, bite-sized chunks. Your efforts will take time, but they will compound and yield BIG results if you are patient!
You can go as large or small as you are comfortable with when it comes to outlining these goals. They can be reached on a quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis. I’d advise against setting daily goals that are not directly related to actions you take (ie: “reach out to four prospects” or “engage 3 followers”) and stick to measurable goals, because the digital space can fluctuate wildly in the span of just a few hours. It will be hard to see the full effect of a digital strategy for at least a few weeks (outside of social media).
