Why you need a digital marketing strategy

Why you need a digital marketing strategy

It is really important to have a digital marketing strategy and at Red Knight Solutions we have developed a 6 step process for developing a successful digital marketing strategy. We will work with you to help you develop and implement yours.

The 6 steps are:

  1. Know WHAT you are promoting;
  2. Know WHO your target audience is;
  3. Know HOW to engage with them digitally;
  4. Develop a detailed plan showing WHEN you will be doing things;
  5. Take regular Action, following your plan;
  6. Measure the outcomes

The most common mistake companies make is to start doing digital marketing, often just trying to copy the latest trend, without developing a detailed picture of what they are promoting and who they are promoting it to. The outcome is normally an expensive disappointment.

Know what you are promoting

Build up a detailed picture of the product or service you are looking to promote digitally. This should include a detailed description of what the product or service is, what problems it solves, the benefits gained from the people using it, how much it costs to produce, how much you can afford to spend on marketing it, profit margins that you are generating, whether there are any associated products you can upsell, whether these are likely to be one-off or repeat purchases.

 Who you are marketing to

The detailed picture should include age, gender, existing or new customers, location, what their needs, wants and fears are, how they are likely to want to be approached, what their likely budgets are going to be and whether they are business customers or consumers.

Know how to engage with them digitally

Now you have your detailed pictures of your product and customers you can consider all the options available to you for digital marketing. You need to consider which are the best social media options to reach your target market and how best to use more traditional web tools.

Develop a detailed plan

Your plan should detail how you are going to use each of the digital marketing options, when you are going to use them, how you are going to use them and who is going to be doing these for you. You should also include details of budgets available, as although some digital marketing options are free, others will need to be paid for.

Take Action

This may appear to go against the advice this article is laying out, but it is important to take action, quickly once you have your plan laid out.  One of the slogans that Facebook use in their offices is “Break things – Fast”, which is good … provided you fix them fast too.

Measure your success

Make use of all the available digital marketing tools to keep an eye on your digital marketing campaign. Use Google Analytics to see how visitors to your website are increasing and what they are doing, use the analytical tools available on social media platforms to measure the effects of your social media activities and other tools to track your progress up the Search Engine rankings.

Do more of what is working well, do less or even stop doing things that aren’t working and don’t be afraid of trying new things either, as digital marketing is evolving all the time.


Help with your strategy

Although it sounds simple to develop and implement a digital marketing strategy, there is a lot of expert knowledge required to do it right. If you would like to know more about the services we offer to help you develop and implement a strategy, call us on 02392 265725, e-mail us at enquries@redknightsolutions.co.uk or fill in the form below:

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Expressing your business – Digital marketing on the radio

Expressing your business – Digital marketing on the radio

Express FM LogoThis week I appeared as a guest on the Business Express show on Express FM. I initially accepted the invitation out of curiosity, taking the opportunity to see behind the scenes of a radio station and getting experience of being in a radio studio. I have got so many benefits out of participating that I thought they would make a good blog post.

Rob Osborne of Red Knight Solutions at the Express FM studioThe first benefit has obviously been to satisfy my curiosity about how a radio show works and is produced. It was really interesting to see how it all works and as a bit of a techie geek at heart I was fascinated by all the equipment and how it’s all managed digitally.

The second and probably biggest benefit has been using the preparation for the show as an opportunity to really think about what I am doing and how I wanted to present this to listeners. It is very easy to lose sight of what you want to achieve in your business, but as part of the preparation was to provide some questions to help guide the show I was able to spend some time contemplating what I wanted to say and more importantly how and why. The only downside to this was that I forgot to get off the train at the station where I had left my car!!

Miles Henson presenter of Business Express on Express FMThe third benefit was that it took me outside of my comfort zone, as I wasn’t sure I would be able to speak for an hour about digital marketing or if there was a danger that I would waffle incoherently. I’m pleased to say that I have had some very good feedback from people who have listened to the show, so I want to say thank you to the Miles Henson who hosts the show as his very informative briefing before the show and off-air comments during the show were very helpful. This has helped me to stop procrastinating about an on-line mentoring service I have been planning to launch for a while, so keep watching this website or sign up to our newsletter for more information.

The fourth benefit has been that it has driven me to take some action on updating Red Knight Solutions website and it’s content, as I have sadly neglected it over the last few months and fallen into the trap of do as I say and not as I do. I have spent time updating content, adding new pages and planning my future blog posts, starting with this one. Although it’s not crammed with information about digital marketing it is a good place to start and I am now going to write a blog at least every two weeks. I will be monitoring how this helps with search engine optimisation and I am looking forward seeing an improvement in my search engine rankings.

Additional benefits are that participating in the show has boosted my confidence, raised Red Knight Solution’s profile on social media through posting about the show on Facebook and Twitter both before and after the show. The number of likes of the Red Knight Solutions Facebook page and the number of Twitter followers of Red Knight Solutions has increased and Google analytics shows that listeners were visiting our website after the show too.

Finally, I have been toying with the idea of writing a book about digital marketing for a while. I have signed up to Karen Williams 10,000 word challenge during August but haven’t got as far as I wanted, but as I announced on the show that I was writing a book and have now written it on this blog post I am now referring to myself as an author and will write my book.