There are eight step process of crafting your digital marketing strategy:
Step 1: Awareness
Before someone can buy from you, they have to realize you exist—right?
Well, that’s Step 1 in the Customer Value Journey
This step is pretty self-explanatory: It’s where the person becomes aware of you. After all, nobody is born knowing who Apple or Amazon are. At some point they have to become aware of these companies if they are to become a customer
The same thing is true of your company
Examples of Marketing that Generates Awareness
There are any number of ways a prospect could become aware of your company, products, and services. Here are three possible scenarios:
- A father of two sees an advertisement for a new children’s summer camp on Facebook
- An office manager searches Google to find a new coffee supplier
- A college student watches an Instagram video of her friend raving about a new brand of noise canceling headphones
Digital Marketing Disciplines That Create Awareness
To improve awareness of your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include:
- Digital Advertising
- Search Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Community Management
- Copywriting
Step 2: Engagement
Your prospect is now aware of you—they know who you are—but you’re still in
the early stages of a relationship with them. They don’t yet know you, like you,
or trust you
So the next step is to start developing relationship with your prospect.
Step 2, Engagement, is where you start conversing with your prospects. You
engage them through some form of content that provides entertainment,
information, or both
Engagement is something that must continue throughout the Customer
Journey. It’s not something you do once and move on
Examples of Marketing That Generates Engagement
Engagement typically comes in the form of content or community. Here are a
few examples to get the ideas flowing for your company:
- A grandfather of five receives an email newsletter from his financial advisor detailing several ways to save for a child’s college tuition while reducing taxes
- The owner of a boutique wine store becomes active in a Facebook community for wineries and other wine retailers
- A new mother watches a YouTube video from Johnson & Johnson showing her how to give her baby a bath.
Let’s look at another example of engagement from Modcloth, an etailer selling women’s clothing. This is an entertaining and educational piece of content for one of Modcloth’s most lucrative customer segments—people attending weddings:
Digital Marketing Disciplines That Create Engagement
To improve engagement in your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include:
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Community Management
Step 3: Subscribe
At this point, your prospect knows who you are and has engaged with you in some way or another.
However, if you failed to get that person’s contact information, odds are high you’ll never hear from them again.
Why?
Because people today are inundated with marketing and content, creating a scarcity of attention. Just because someone reads one of your blog posts today does NOT mean they’ll remember to revisit your site in the future.
Instead, you need to get that person to progress to Step 3 in the Value Journey, which is to subscribe.
Here, the person gives you their contact information and, in doing so, grants you permission to contact them again in the future.
Most often, this transaction is an exchange, sometimes referred to as an “ethical bribe.” You promote a valuable offer, but instead of asking for money, you ask for the prospect’s contact information. And when they give it to you, not only do you give them access to the content, product, or service you promised, you also add them to your subscriber list
Examples of Marketing That Generates Subscribers
The biggest criteria for your free offer is that your target audience finds it valuable. Here are some examples from a variety of industries:
- A young professional signs up for a webinar presented by a local realtor about the best practices of purchasing a first home
- A college girl fills out a form on a blog to receive a free sample of a new face cream
- The Human Resources manager at a mid-sized accounting firm signs up for a demo of a new application he can use to manage the hiring of new employees
In each case, the prospect fills out a form, provides their contact information, and is sent information about how to access the offer
- The young professional is sent the time and URL of the webinar
- The college girl is sent a thank-you email telling her the face cream is in the mail
- The manager is contacted to schedule his demo
Digital Marketing Disciplines That Generate Subscribers
To get more subscriptions for your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include:
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Digital Advertising
- Community Management
- Conversion Rate Optimization
- Copywriting
Digital Marketing Disciplines That Generate Conversions
To improve conversions in your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include:
- Digital Advertising
- Content Marketing
- Copywriting
- Email Marketing
- Search Marketing
Step 4: Excite
Digital Marketing Disciplines That Create Excitement
To improve consumption in your company, the digital marketing tactics you need to master or hire include:
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Copywriting
Step 5: Promote
Promoters differ from advocates in that they are actively seeking to spread the word about your brands, products, and services.
In some cases, the promoter simply had a great experience with your company and wants to share their story with friends and family. In other cases, they promote because you’ve created an incentive for them to do so. This puts your message in front of a new audience, the fans, followers, and friends of the promoter. And because this new audience is hearing about you from a trusted source who they already know, they’re much more likely to become customers themselves
Digital Marketing Disciplines That Generate Promoters
To get more promoters in your company, the marketing efforts you need to work on include:
- Email Marketing
- Copywriting