How to create a digital marketing strategy for small and start up business?

STEP 1 – Define your business goals What is your goal? Brand awareness, conversion, followers on social media, or responses to emails? There are multiple things you can achieve with the help of a digital marketing plan. However, it is essential to define that one goal that is the most important to you. For a small-scale business, the primary goal initially must be to create brand awareness. Remember, the more thepeople know about your business, the more sale you can expect to make. STEP 2 – Target Audience Your target audience are the people you are willing to sell your business to. These people will be considered to be the most interested in buying your product or service. When designing a digital marketing plan, you need to define your target audience. This would be easy for businesses already having a website as they can simply pull out reports to find out what type of people are visiting their site and shopping with them. For businesses who are starting afresh, it is essential to do some research on their target audience. STEP 3 – Create Buyers Persona Buyers persona is like a fictional character that represents the type of people who will be interested in your business. You need to describe this character in detail including their age, profession, income, family, etc. Apart from considering the demographics of your buyers persona, you can consider their psychographics as well. Highlight their attitude, aspirations and other similar criteria to design a character of your ideal prospect. Once you have the complete details of your buyers persona, you can customise your digital marketing plan to serve their needs. STEP 4 –Select Your Digital Marketing Channels It is obvious that as abusiness, you would want to make use of as many as digital marketing channels possible to promote yourself.From social media sites to Google Ads to email marketing, the options are aplenty. It is wise to prepare a plan that includes the right amount of everything, so your business can gain maximum awareness with minimum efforts. Of course, the designing of an effective marketing campaign requires plenty of knowledge and expertise, and since not all small businesses have the experience, they can approach a digital marketing agency. STEP 5 –Make A Plan Remember, no plan is perfect, there is always scope of improvement. No matter how much effort you put in the designing of your digital marketing strategy, there will be flaws in it. Don’t panic. This is normal as you are an expert in the field you run a business in and not in digital marketing. You must begin to implement the various strategies you thought of depending on your objectives. Since there may be more than 1 channel you may opt for to promote your business, it is wise to make use of Marketing Automation tools to automate your campaign. Designing a digital marketing strategy is important, but something that is even more important is reviewing the strategy from time to time. You have put in a lot of effort to design and implement a plan, but your work does not end here. You are then required to analyse the results you are achieving. Make use of the Key Performance Indicators or KPIs to find out if you are getting the ROI as expected. Measuring the effectiveness of the implemented strategies will allow you to make changes or rectify things that aren’t working in your favour. Small businesses can approach online marketing in multiple ways. No matter how tempting it may seem to make use of all of these approaches, it is best to streamline your marketing goal and take appropriate steps.Remember, choosing what not to do is as important as what you do for promoting your business online. Identifying multiple goals is a great idea. But, it is advisable to save this for later, once your business has accomplished its one foremost important goal.