It is important to make a business case to invest more in digital marketing otherwise your business wont’t be able to compete to attract new customers in the future.
In order to tap into the opportunity to reach new customers, it is essential regardless of the type of business, every business should have a strategic digital marketing plan aligned with the business plan.
Here are some good reason why your business needs a digital marketing plan:
1. You are directionless – you don’t have a plan
Without a digital strategy, there is no clear strategic goal for what a business wants to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones.
2. You have poor digital maturity since digital marketing doesn’t have enough people/ budget given its importance
it is often seen that businesses of all sizes have insufficient resources devoted to both planning and executing digital marketing. There is likely to be a lack of specific specialist online marketing skills which will make it difficult to respond to competitive threats effectively. A good starting point to make the case for more investment in digital marketing is to assess your digital maturity.
3. Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share through optimising their always-on marketing
If you are not devoting enough resources to digital, or using an ad-hoc approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will gain a competitive advantage over your business.
4. You won’t know your online audience or market share
Lack of a digital marketing strategy will mean that you won’t have an understanding of your online marketplace.
5. You don’t have a powerful online value proposition
A clearly defined digital value proposition tailored to your different target customer personas will help to differentiate your online service encouraging existing and new customers to engage initially and stay loyal.
6. Your wasting money and time through duplication
It is important to invest in a marketing strategy that works for you and the team to plan, manage and optimise your digital channels and platforms. The risk often seen is that otherwise, you have different parts of the marketing organisation purchasing different tools or using different agencies for performing similar marketing tasks.
7. Your not agile enough to catch up or stay ahead
Businesses should be dynamic – trialing new approaches to gain or keep their online audiences.
8. You are not optimising
Make sure your teams make or have the time to review the analytics and act on them. Once your digital marketing strategy is in place to gain visibility within search engines and social networks, you can track and adapt the journeys which you know deliver the best results, integrated across multiple channels.
The above summaries the importance of a digital marketing strategy which must support your marketing and business goals.
Innovate Digital Solutions 