Digital Action Field 7: Digital Marketing
The digital marketing strategy and the toolkit provide organizations with an overview of the most important aspects, platforms, channels and technology infrastructures within digital marketing. Based on the customer orientation and the customer journey, platforms and channels where good content marketing can be placed are identified. For organizations, it is worth defining these in advance so that limited resources and budgets are used in a targeted and efficient manner.
The organization’s own website, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media are front and center and should first be professionally developed and regularly updated, before other channels are used. Technology infrastructure such as marketing automation, which automates recurring tasks in marketing, helps to increase efficiency. With regular performance reviews, marketing activities are continuously optimized. With this digital marketing mix, target customer groups are reached and, ideally, an online community built to bind the customers to the organization.
Content Marketing
A central underlying success factor of digital marketing is content marketing: it aims to reach and entertain selected target customer groups with relevant content. The content marketer informs the customer and forms the core of all digital marketing activities. Instead of focusing on the organization, content marketing focuses on the customers and their questions and concerns. Rather than attracting customers with low prices or promotional offers, information and stories are used to convey knowledge or trigger emotions. Good content marketing takes a great deal of effort: not only must the relevant topics for each target customer group be identified, but content must be planned and created in different formats (e.g. text, illustrations and video). Once this content has been created, it can be used over and over in marketing communication via different channels.
Online Communities
Online communities can be found, for example, in a members area of the organization’s website that customers access when they need something. In contrast to open, anonymous social networking sites, an online community is characterized by stable relationships between members who are engaged in a topic-specific and company / market-related discussion. It is often about making a name for yourself and getting involved. But an online community can also develop on social media if it is maintained and moderated. If an online community is consistently cultivated and it offers transparency and added value, a trusting relationship will develop between the organization / brand and the target customer group, which can be continued in a targeted manner. This creates the basis for a stable and loyal customer base and drives customer engagement.
Marketing Automation
Repetitive tasks, such as sending emails or posting on social media, can be automated using software. Marketing automation can also be used to manage entire workflows, such as several emails that build on each other and are triggered by certain actions (e.g. visiting the website, downloading certain content, clicking on a certain image). Landing pages (websites for campaigns) can also be created automatically. Special tools help to control the entire marketing process and to automatically execute an action at a certain point in time. If customer data is managed via a CRM system, automation makes it possible, for example, to send the right information to the right contacts via the right channel at the right time – and thus to reach the goal, for example a purchase or a business deal, quickly and with very little effort. However, marketing automation should be a carefully considered choice. Once the automation has been set up, switching to another software solution usually involves a great deal of effort.
In the next blog post, we will introduce the five steps in order to plan and implement a digital transformation strategy.
Strategy questions for the digital age:
- Do you have a digital marketing as well as content marketing strategy which align with your business goals?
- Do you utilize marketing automation to drive process efficiencies in your marketing and sales organization?
- Does your organization benefit from building and nurturing online communities?