9 Steps to Maximize Online Marketing ROI
So, you’ve decided to make a real play in digital marketing. A wise decision. Follow the best digital marketing plan for your company, and it has the potential to deliver terrific results and a return on investment you never dreamed possible.
However, it can be difficult to allocate a budget for this marketing strategy. How much should you invest in your marketing plan? In what areas should you invest?
To decide the best way to allocate the budget and make the most of your advertising dollars, you must first identify your company’s goals and objectives. Then what?
Here are the nine steps to take to allocate a digital marketing budget effectively.
Step #1: Set your company’s digital marketing goals
The first step in achieving any goal would be identifying what you are trying to accomplish and setting measurable milestones or goals along the way. Do you want to increase customer retention, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or convert visitors? These are just a few examples of pertinent goals that your company may wish to set.
Step #2: Find out what channel works best for you
Your digital marketing plan should help you decide which online channels work for you and how much time you should put into each one of them. The channels you might use for your digital marketing activities may include your website, blog, social media, YouTube, etc. Where do you start? By understanding your customers and learning where you are most likely to connect with them.
Step #3: Determine your marketing activity costs
Many marketers have a challenging time determining the costs of their marketing activities. The key to accurately cost your marketing effort is to figure out what the return on investment (ROI) will be (and there is plenty of research in this regard).
You should also consider your likely returns per channel, and the costs of employing that channel in your marketing strategy.
Knowing how much you need to spend on various aspects of your marketing plan will help you decide whether this plan is well worth pursuing. This can be done through performing a cost-benefit analysis which can help you break down the costs and benefits of your individual activities and make informed decisions on what’s most effective.
Step #4: Increase your digital presence
Digital presence is a major and crucial step to having a successful digital marketing strategy. It is not just about social media or any other online platform, but your online presence as a whole. It is important to have consistency between your social media profiles and the content you produce on these platforms and to embed this consistency across all digital channels. The key to online presence, of course, is SEO marketing.
Step #5: Promote your products or services
Now we come to content.
Content marketing is a form of marketing that relies on the use of content, in the form of articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other types of content. The idea behind content marketing is to create and distribute valuable information from a business’s perspective that leads to increased customer engagement.
Step #6: Work on lead generation
Lead generation is the process of generating qualified leads for your business. The success of any digital marketing campaign heavily depends on how well the strategy is developed and executed, and how well it can generate leads.
This is an ongoing process ─ it needs to be edited, refined, and updated constantly to maximize its effectiveness. Lead generation doesn’t have a fixed timeline as it differs based on the company’s goals and growth plan.
Lead generation can also be used to increase conversion rates and make sure your target audience is engaged with what you are offering. And the key? We come back to publishing engaging and relevant content.
Step #7: Review your marketing data
Marketers must collect data from their visitors to find out which are the best-performing strategies and tactics. Digital marketing is in a new era where it’s all about collecting data to determine the best strategies and tactics for your business. The data that is generated by digital marketing campaigns must be interpreted and used for various purposes like a better understanding of customer behavior and segmentation.
The key to using data effectively is to identify the right metrics to use. For instance, if you are analyzing website traffic, you might want to track unique visitors vs visits and compare them with your KPIs like time on site or number of pages visited.
It is important not to focus on one metric too much, as this can lead you to wrong conclusions. For example, if you only track clicks, it might seem that a paid promotion campaign has been a success, but ignoring the cost of each click could lead you to false conclusions.
Step #8: Gather customer information
Personalizing user experiences with targeted content will improve the results from your digital marketing campaigns and the return on your internet marketing budget. The type of information you should gather (which can be done throughout each marketing journey) includes:
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Personal data (names, phone numbers, emails, etc.)
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Descriptive data (career details, job, lifestyle, etc.)
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Behavioral data (what websites they visit, how long they spend on-site, etc.)
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Qualitative data (giving you a better picture of customers, and their reasons for taking the actions they do)
Step #9: Allocate a portion of the budget to your existing clients
To optimize your digital marketing strategy, you should allocate a portion of the budget to your existing clients. In fact, your loyal clients are the best marketing tool for you. They will be happy to help generate leads for your business without spending any money.
What budget should you allocate to digital marketing?
With the digital environment constantly evolving, it can be difficult to fix how much you should allocate to your digital marketing strategy. The best way to determine this is by considering the potential size of your target audience's projected sales and expected ROI from the channels you employ.
It is also important for you to continuously assess if your strategies are effective or not; measuring their performance against KPIs and looking for any opportunities where these strategies need adjustment.
We’d be happy to discuss your unique digital marketing needs with you, and help you to design and plan a digital marketing strategy within your budget thresholds.
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