I'm pleased to present the definitive guide to a digital marketing strategy you can implement in your business in 2023 and onwards.

Digital Marketing Strategy identifies, articulates, and implements digital opportunities to give your organization a competitive advantage.

When you run or bring a business online, you need to be clear about what you want and how to achieve it, as well as when to wait for the first results to adjust the initial plans.

In my experience, without a well-developed digital strategy, you can lose time and money.

In this guide, I will try to make it easy for you to understand all the aspects of digital marketing strategy, whether you are a professional or do not have any prior knowledge.

Let's get started:


Table Of Contents

Traditional Marketing Versus Digital Marketing

Starting a business is excellent, but your marketing plan determines its success. People confuse these two marketing methods.

It is always challenging to choose between traditional and digital marketing, especially for small businesses. However, knowing these methods' differences will allow you to make an easy choice.

Traditional marketing refers to tactics that do not require Internet use. These approaches have been around for decades but are less frequent. They do, however, have certain advantages.

Typical traditional marketing tactics include postcards, coupons and information brochures, TV or radio advertisements, newspaper or magazine ads, posters and flyers, phone calls, and SMS.

Whereas, digital marketing is the use of online platforms for marketing communication, like websites and social media. If you're using social media, you'll be well versed in the ads that appear in your feed - that's digital marketing.

The audience's experience with the marketing message is the primary distinction between digital and traditional marketing. Digital marketing employs digital media, such as social media or websites, while traditional marketing uses conventional media, such as magazines and newspapers.

Why You Need A Digital Marketing Strategy?

Today, almost all companies, regardless of their size, are aware of the importance of digital marketing. The problem is that many still do not know why and how to build the most effective strategy and correctly fit it into the overall brand development plan.

Well, the digital strategy is the roadmap of your project, and to be honest, it must be sacred. Skipping it means putting everything at risk.

Without further delay, we will explain why any digital business must have a well-defined marketing strategy.

Any business needs flexibility and strategy to stay relevant to the audience.

Fortunately, marketing strategy takes your business to the next level and meets the expectations of your audience. 

Here are the reasons why you need to implement a digital marketing strategy.

Tracking

If your business doesn't currently have a digital marketing strategy, it gives all of your competitors an edge over you. They can affect your customer base better than ever.

With the right tools at their disposal, they can attract new customers and appeal to your current customers who are interested in a digital-ready solution in the future.

Efficiency

Maintaining a constant level of efficiency is a must for your marketing team. Your team needs to be able to deploy campaigns quickly across all your channels to create better customer experiences.

Marketing effectiveness means they have already done the next two while implementing one campaign.

Memorable Acquisition

Your marketing teams need the tools, authority, and freedom to take charge of their campaigns and exercise their creative freedom.

The worst thing someone can say about a campaign is that they don't remember it. If your customers don't remember your efforts, how can you expect to keep them or get new ones? 

Better Experience

Customers with a sense of digital understanding have many options available to them. They'll find someone who does if you don't follow current market trends.
Most of them are looking for quick and easy experiences, and any outdated technology your business uses will be a significant obstacle for them.

Advantages of Having a Digital Marketing Strategy

Speaking about the advantages of digital marketing compared to traditional methods of promotion, let's name the following:

  • Global coverage: Website promotion will allow you to find new markets and trade around the world without making significant investments;
  • Low cost: A well-planned, targeted campaign can reach the right customers at a much lower price than traditional marketing methods;
  • Trackable and measurable results: Monitoring the implementation of your online marketing strategy using web analytics and other tools makes it easy to determine the effectiveness of a campaign. An entrepreneur can quickly get detailed information about how customers use the site or react to advertising;
  • Personalization: Suppose the customer database is available in web resources whenever you set up contextual advertising. In that case, you can use the available information and make your appeal to the user more individualized.;
  • Openness: By communicating with potential customers on social networks and carefully managing other channels, you will increase user loyalty, improve the reputation of your company;
  • Long-term impact: Digital marketing allows you to create compelling campaigns using content marketing tactics. Content (images, videos, articles) can acquire social value - be transmitted from user to user, become viral;
  • Improved conversion rates: When a visitor is on the site, they are just one click away from making a purchase. Unlike other channels, digital marketing can be as effective as possible.

Together, all these features of digital marketing help increase sales.

Digital Marketing strategy: Goals, Objectives

A marketing strategy is a plan of measures to ensure the company's competitive advantages in the market.

The main goal of a marketing strategy is to ensure the influx of customers, their retention, and the return of lost ones.

There are two approaches to implementing long-term strategic planning depending on the marketing philosophy. 

  • The first is focusing on profit maximization; all intermediate goals and objectives serve it.
  • The second is to preserve and retain market share in the long term.

Regardless of the approach selection and initial goal, it is necessary to control both the level of profit and market share. Digital marketing includes activities implemented in the online space.

Its primary tool is content distributed through various channels, including: Internet platforms, search engines, email newsletters, and social networks.

Stages of Developing a Digital Marketing Strategy

The main goal of developing a digital strategy is to get a coherent, understandable, and reasonable plan for achieving your business goals.

Integrity and validity also imply a high probability (reliability) of achieving your goals (as opposed to "patchwork" actions to promote a business in a digital environment).

If you want to reliably and predictably increase sales and profits, increase market share, and win the competition, you must formulate a company's digital strategy.

The process of developing a marketing strategy consists of three key stages:

  • Analytical;
  • Practical;
  • Control (monitoring the plan's implementation, evaluation, and adjustment if necessary).

To plan the development of a company well, you need to understand where it starts.
Therefore, when developing a marketing strategy, it is vital to devote time to research and analytics.

As if that's not enough,

It is essential to understand what the company is already doing, what results it is achieving, and due to what.

Additionally, you need to assess the market's state: its potential, what trends prevail in it, and how it develops.

Like any strategy, an Internet marketing strategy has General Scheme:

  • Based on "What?": what we have at the moment, what is the disposition, and what we want to achieve (what are the goals),
  • and answers the question "How? »: how we want to achieve the goals due to critical actions and changes.

The implementation of a marketing strategy involves several different tasks, as follows:

Digital Marketing Planning

A marketing plan describes the activities and communications required to achieve the company's goals.

Systematization and structuring of all activities are not a waste of time. Planning is necessary, and it is an integral part of practical work.

The plan is developed for one year and has specific deadlines for implementing its stages.
In the course of implementation, there are two necessary steps;

  1. 1
    Evaluations of the results,
  2. 2
    Changes based on evaluation,

These steps provide comprehensive control over the development of the enterprise.
Many managers feel that writing plans based on forecasts are useless and not worth the time. With this approach, campaigns start spontaneously.

However, as the campaign progress, many questions arise:

"Are we spending too much on advertising?" or
"Why are we financing a loss-making product?".

Planning allows you to identify weaknesses in time and eliminate them, which leads to budget savings, increased efficiency, and increased competitive advantages for the company.

It would be best if you had numbers and facts. Gather all the data related to the company's overall development strategy. If you have done a SWOT analysis, this experience will fit perfectly. 

SWOT analysis is a framework used to assess a company's competitive position and to create strategic planning. It stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The SWOT analysis evaluates internal and external variables and present and anticipated future situations.

You must patiently and thoughtfully answer dozens of questions about your business, product, market, customers, competitors, pricing, deal cycle, sales funnel, and more.
Some of the most relevant questions are;

  • What do you sell, and what products are the most profitable?
  • How do you position yourself?
  • What are advertising campaigns running?
  • What is the state of the site?
  • What is the current reputation of your company?
  • What is the USP of the products?
  • Why is it profitable to buy from you?
  • What do competitors offer?
  • What are the benefits of their product?
  • How many sales volumes were achieved?
  • How much demand is there in the market?
  • If objectively, how interesting are your proposals and many other questions?
  • Why so detailed? Because at the initial stage, it is crucial to lay a solid foundation for your future digital marketing strategy.
  • Furthermore, at this stage, you need to analyze your target audience.
  • Who buys from you, and what target audience groups can you identify?
  • Which of them is buying the most active and most of all?

Goal Setting

For a strategy, you must define objectives. Depending on your tasks (brand promotion, performance marketing, or all together), they may be different, but it is essential to describe them correctly.

Goals of the branding strategy:

  1. 1
    Increasing brand awareness;
  2. 2
    attracting a new audience (maximum coverage of target segments).

Goals of the performance strategy:

  1. 1
    increase traffic, leads, and sales;
  2. 2
    lead cost optimization,

As a rule, the ultimate goal is still the same in both cases - sales. But your primary goals may be completely different.

For example, launching a new brand or product on the market, positioning change (transition to another price segment), increase in the average check, reduction in the cost of contact/sale, etc.

Based on your company's overall goals, you need to determine what marketing and sales indicators you are striving for in the long run. They must have specific numbers. It can be:

  1. 1
    Quantity (applications, sales, active customers, etc.)
  2. 2
    Volumes (sales, less often market shares)
  3. 3
    Percentages (site conversions into applications, applications into sales, etc.)

Goals must be defined (decomposed) for your essential products and customer groups. You can decompose up to the number of targeted transitions to the site for each of the products.

How do you plan to achieve specific overall figures, for example, in terms of revenue, considering market opportunities?

Nevertheless, it will be just a hypothesis: it is clear that later you will be able to make adjustments in the process, and flexibility and adaptability are normal.

Follow the SMART goals principle when setting goals.

SMART goals are meant to, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

You must be sure that you can accomplish your goals within a given timeframe by specifying these factors in your objective.

Digitization itself already implies concreteness and measurability, and we also need deadlines.

Competitors Analysis

Let's start with the basics: defining competitor analysis.

It is the process of researching and analyzing the marketing strategies and business characteristics of companies operating in a given market.

Competitor analysis implies determining the strengths and weaknesses of other market players, determining your company's position, identifying gaps, and assessing your potential to fill them.

Competitor analysis is a critical stage before the definition of advertising channels. Any business is in a competitive environment and occupies a particular position relative to competitors. Its proper identification is necessary.

Let me explain why.

Competitive analysis usually includes direct and indirect competitors who provide the same (or similar) solutions for the same (or equivalent) audience.

To do this, you need to select 2-3 major players in your segment (similar field of activity and price positioning) and compare yourself with them according to the following parameters:

  • Market share (in monetary and quantitative terms);
  • Industry growth/decline;
  • Strengths/weaknesses (yours and competitors);
  • Digital Marketing activities.

Such an analysis will allow you to more accurately and correctly formulate the goals and objectives of the strategy.

Defining Target Audience (TA)

The Target Audience (TA) in marketing and advertising is a group of people united by some standard features or united to achieve some common goal.
Allocation of people to target groups allows you to achieve marketing and advertising goals more accurately and at a lower cost.

The target audience consists of various segments (groups), grouped according to similar parameters, for which marketers can develop suitable creative concepts and accurately convey information to influence the audience effectively.

Here's the truth,

Knowledge about the target audience is critical at all stages of business development. It is crucial for any initiatives and not only for commercial ones: marketing and sales.
With knowledge of the target audience, it is easier to make decisions related to other business functions, for example, production issues: optimization, modernization, expansion and reduction.

There are two main ways to create a target audience:

  • Based on the product you are selling;
  • Based on the size of the market you want to explore.

You already know a lot about your target audience (TA). However, this knowledge will need to be as detailed as possible to implement a Digital strategy.

Digital communication gives us a unique opportunity - it allows us to interact with the consumer at every stage of his decision to purchase.

Therefore, it is essential not only to indicate the socio-demographic characteristics and geography of your target audience (to set up targeting for advertising) but also to determine its interest groups.

It is also necessary to analyze the behavior when choosing a product online (direct search for goods/services, reading reviews, watching videos about a product, visiting a manufacturer/supplier website, websites of retailers or price aggregators, etc.).

These are your contact points with the target audience, in each of which you can influence the purchase decision through the relevant channel.

Selection of Media Channels

After we have identified the target audience and points of contact, we can compile a mix of advertising channels. In the process of analytics and consideration of the target audience, advertising sources are determined. Ideally, with the right plan and proper communication, the action of one channel should reinforce the others.

However, in digital marketing, there are many examples of "when something went wrong"...

For example, contextual advertising may work fine for you. Still, due to problems with the site (long page loading, transition from an ad to an irrelevant landing page, difficult navigation, etc.), the bounce rate may be high, and paid traffic will not be converted into sales.

Or you can have an excellent site where a potential buyer will find all the necessary information about a product/service and be "motivated" to buy to confirm his choice by reading reviews from real users.

On the other hand, there can be complaints about the quality of the goods or service, which will cause delay or cancellation of the purchase.

Such situations usually arise when companies try to work in different advertising channels separately, without linking their existence to each other.

Additionally, the Digital strategy aims to identify and prevent such "inconsistencies" at the planning stage and make the whole complex of Internet tools work as a single mechanism.

After you select all communication channels, you will need to prioritize them (from most important to least important) and prepare a media plan.

Selection of Tactics and Tools

It is where the specific skeleton of your digital strategy comes into play. You once again comprehend the data obtained in the previous stages:

  • What products are you planning to increase sales with the help of the strategy?
  • What are the advantages of these products?
  • Where can you find each of these target audiences? What are their issues and intents for buying?
  • How do they decide what touches they need to buy? What is the process of buying?
  • Do the current promotional tools and contact points correspond to how your target audience buys?

Furthermore, as a result, you formulate the essential tools and tactics of the digital strategy. Important: such sketches are thought out for each priority combination, "Product + Target Audience," no matter how wide such varieties you have.

Resource Planning

Once you have set your goals, outlined the action plans for implementing your digital strategy, and have a set of tactics and tools, you need to plan your resources.

  • What resources will you need?
  • Team (who will directly develop plans for specific actions and implement them). It can be several people, one, and it can be a project manager from your company plus an external team - there are many options.
  • Budget for work (including amounts for developing new or reworking existing points of contact, budgets for paid traffic, SEO, copywriters, etc.).
  • Evaluate the timeline soberly, do not try to solve all problems in a couple of months.

It is essential to understand that timelines and budgets at this stage will only be indicative because there are no specific work plans that could be estimated.
Furthermore, guidelines are necessary to correctly detail the plans (which will no longer be part of the strategy but of implementation tactics).

Setting KPI

When preparing a strategy, KPI is essential for the entire strategy. Depending on specific KPIs and analytics, tools are necessary that will allow you to achieve the desired indicators.

Each advertising channel has its own KPIs (since they are different for each tool).

The fulfillment of KPIs at all sites in the aggregate should lead to achieving the campaign's primary goal. This outcome will prove that your digital strategy was well thought out and executed.

Forecasting

The achievement of planned values in each channel should lead us to realize a common goal. So, at the "forecasting results" stage, the central average figures and indicators of the entire campaign are "displayed".

For example,

  1. 1
    The total volume of traffic from all sites.
  2. 2
    Percentage of conversion.
  3. 3
    The planned cost of contact and sale, etc.

Implementation of Digital Marketing Strategy

Next comes the implementation of the strategy, that is, tactical actions. It would be best if you prescribed a plan of work and costs for at least 3-6 months (the further - the more enlarged).

It is where you add all the promotional tactics and tools you thought up earlier into specific combinations of getting your target audience to sell to achieve your goals.

Refinement (or even re-creation) of the site, landing pages, traffic tools, SMM, conversion increase, audience warm-up mechanics - all this needs to be planned here.

  • Clarify the timing and budget (this does not mean that the budget should change - but it, like other resources, can be distributed unevenly).
  • Allocate the first pool of tasks to performers, define specific vital indicators for tracking (KPI), and plan milestones.
  • Team to begin the first tasks.

When drawing up a specific plan for implementing an Internet marketing strategy, there are several essential principles and rules:

  • All specific action plans would comprise detailed descriptions of Customer Personas and an understanding of their Customer Journey Map (the path of these users to purchase).
  • A significant result contains a set of tiny effects. Consider specific conversion paths, attract the necessary traffic, and create landing pages and other points of contact. Still, the results (in target numbers) for such chains will not always be tremendous, especially if you have a large matrix of products and target audiences. Just run more of these "chains", and their cumulative results will lead you to achieve strategic goals.
  • When planning promotional activities, start by processing existing hot demand, only after that move to a colder market (hot demand will have shorter and cheaper conversion chains).

Acting according to this plan, you will form an effective digital strategy for your company.

Fundamental Pillars of Digital Marketing Strategy

We live in an era where Digital Marketing experiences continuous and innovative changes.

Year after year, Marketing evolves and changes faster and faster, destroying, on some occasions, its principles and, on others, creating new bases and forms of action.

Digital marketing tactics have evolved from a fad to a need for all enterprises, startups, and corporations.

It is no longer simply about having a website or presence on social networks. Instead, it is essential to apply a well-defined plan that allows you to stand out among the infinite options found today on the Internet and attract the right audience.

Below, I have discussed the four fundamental pillars of the whole digital marketing strategy.

Customer Journey in Digital Marketing

"Customer journey" is an expression you have probably heard, but, without a doubt, regardless of whether you know it or not, it is part of your day-to-day life.

For example, buying one brand of water in the supermarket or buying a car, we follow a process known as the customer journey.

Definition of Customer Journey

We can define the customer journey as the process that a person goes through from when they detect a need until they find the product or service that can satisfy it.

The duration of this journey is variable since it depends mainly on the magnitude of the need that the consumer seeks to satisfy. In this process, several steps related to investigating and evaluating different alternatives occur—or sometimes simultaneously.

The customer journey has both physical experiences and mental and emotional processes.

On the other hand, it is not usually linear, especially when it significantly impacts the life of the person responsible for making the purchase decision.

In other words, the customer journey comprises a consumer's interactions with a business.

These interactions are also known as contact points or touchpoints.

Today, with a consumer increasingly accustomed to omnichannel, these touchpoints - as a whole - are usually a combination of actions carried out through both face-to-face and digital channels.

The contact points can be numerous and usually include, among other possibilities.

  1. 1
    Visits to a physical store or a website or e-commerce store
  2. 2
    Newsletters 
  3. 3
    Advertisements 
  4. 4
    Direct communications through social networks
  5. 5
    Messaging services such as WhatsApp
  6. 6
    Word of mouth recommendations
  7. 7
    Reviews on sites where there are opinions about the business

Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map is a graphical representation of the customer journey.
Some maps include the metrics that measure the effectiveness of the actions executed in each step.

You can draw Customer Journey Maps in different formats, such as Excel spreadsheets, Infographic, table, or paper. For it to be close to reality, it is vital to put yourself in the potential client's mind.

In this way, the map will allow us to understand what aspects are taken into account to decide to move forward with one or another provider at each stage of the process.

The Customer Journey (or consumer journey) map is significant because it is the path a customer travels.

It happens throughout the different points of contact and interrelation with the organizations. Furthermore, it becomes even more important since the customer is the focus of attention.

Stages of the Customer Journey Map

It is necessary to clarify that the number of steps that make up the buyer's journey depends on several factors; therefore, there is no universal model of phases of the consumer journey.

However, in most cases, this process goes through the stages that we present below.

Consciousness or Awareness

In general, this is when the potential client becomes aware of an unmet need, even if he cannot define it precisely.

In traditional models, the journey begins when the buyer persona detects a pain point: a requirement that generates discomfort and requires a resolution.

However, it can also happen that, at this stage, the prospect is unaware of having a problem. However, due to an awareness campaign, the prospect discovers the issue or need that the brand can solve.

Consideration

At this stage, the consumer is already fully aware that they have a need and begins to investigate what alternatives exist to give him an answer.

In this instance, an excellent inbound marketing strategy can make them aware of the importance of solving the problem that ails them and how your product or service can be the solution he is looking for.

Choice or Decision

It is a step closely associated with the previous one, and, in fact, in classic models, it is usually considered the final moment of the consideration instance.

It is a stage where the potential client has already discarded some of the original alternatives and reduces the options to a series of suppliers they understand can meet their expectations.

It is time to "put all the meat on the grill" and make a proposal that is as personalized as possible.

Action

It is the purchase phase where, ideally, the potential customer becomes an actual customer and decides to choose you over other alternatives.

Loyalty

In this step, the great responsibility falls on the brand in which the client placed his trust. The goal is to understand what you expect to receive after your purchase and be prepared to give it to them.

It includes an adequate after-sales service and the generation of actions aimed at making them a recurring customer and, in addition, recommend us.

Data Analysis in Digital Marketing

Data analysis in digital marketing involves various research activities that reveal vital information about what is most important to the audience you are trying to reach in the same way that Google does.

Today, we can go beyond primary demographic data and augment that characterization with additional sources, such as psychographic, behavioral, and user interaction data based on social media activities.

Data analytics in digital marketing combines several different digital marketing tools and combines their results to formulate a comprehensive view of a given user group.

In other words, you can use the techniques applied to data gleaned from existing tools and combined with supplemental metadata to improve audience insight and understanding.

The approach to data analytics in digital marketing is broad, and if followed in its entirety, it can require a significant amount of effort.

Fortunately, this does not mean that everything should go simultaneously.

Like most marketing actions, it all starts with goals and objectives, and data analysis can be quick and fuzzy or more rigorous and formal, depending on its expectations.

Benefits of Data Analysis

Below, I have summarized some of the advantages of Data Analysis in Digital Marketing.

Study of Customer Opinion

The preferred instrument in this type of data analysis is the survey.

Through it, you can find the primary demographic data of the people who consume or buy your products or services, the frequency and their intention to recommend the product to family or friends.

Customer Segmentation

Segmenting customers by demographics, behaviors, and profitability will give you better insights into how to serve current customer demographics best.

Through this type of data analysis, you will be able to discover unmet needs and offer better products and services in the future.

Buyer Persona Development 

The Buyer Persona embodies the critical characteristics of a customer segment, highlighting salient demographics, goals, and the main tasks they perform.

Buyer personas represent fictitious customers, but their creation relies on actual data obtained from data analysis through customer segmentation, ethnographic research, surveys and interviews.

Analysis of Critical Tasks

An analysis of tasks by importance helps to separate the few critical functions from the many trivial ones, letting customers or users choose the tasks that are critical to them.

By analyzing data from tracking tasks or features, you can focus your efforts on the essential elements of your product or service.

It enables you to deliver a solid experience to those that have the most significant impact on customers, resulting in, in turn, more satisfied customers and more willingness to repeat purchases and recommend them to friends.

Usability Study

Data analysis finds what customers find complicated about your product or website in this case.

Observing how a few customers use your product can uncover most of the common problems with an interface.

Study of the Ease of Search and Location

In customer data analysis, a findability study is a specialized usability study focusing on taxonomy (tags and hierarchy) and ignoring distractions such as design, layout, and search capabilities.

Conjoint Analysis

A conjoint analysis produces an accurate view of customer ratings by isolating the features that significantly impact their preference.

This data analysis is typically used in product development stages to understand what features to include or how changing prices or options affect future customer or user behavior.

Key Factor Analysis

In customer data analysis, fundamental driver analysis helps identify which features or characteristics contribute to customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, or any other key variable of interest.

You're interested in getting customers to rate their satisfaction on the most important features or functional areas of an experience.

Gap Analysis

In analyzing data regarding deficiencies, customers value and classify the most important characteristics and aspects of a product or service.

Subsequently, customers value the degree of satisfaction concerning each of these characteristics.

You can find the gap for each feature, aspect, or functionality by subtracting the mean satisfaction score from the mean importance rating.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) in Digital Marketing

Conversion Rate is the percentage of site visitors who complete the target action: fill out a form, register in the service, buy a product.

A high conversion rate means the site is well designed, efficiently formatted, and attractive to the target audience.

Possible reasons for a low Conversion Rate are site performance or design: slow loading, non-working form, or text that does not convey the offer's value.

What is a Good Conversion Rate?

A reasonable conversion rate depends on the industry, niche, business goals, channels to drive traffic, audience demographics, and other factors.

For example,

The average conversion rate of e-commerce sites worldwide in 2022 is 2.25%. But the US e-commerce conversion rate is higher at 2.57%.

Averages differ not only by year and country but also by niche. For example, the conversion rate of e-commerce sites in the food and beverage sector is from 1.58% to 1.28% in July 2022 compared to July 2021, while the global eCommerce skin care sector will achieve around 3% by the end of 2022.

For your convenience, I have compiled data regarding global average eCommerce conversion rates in the tables below.

Worldwide Average Ecommerce Conversion Rate 2022-2023

Month

CR %

May 2022

1.77

June 2022

1.75

July 2022

1.92

August 2022

1.62

September 2022

1.72

October 2022

1.30

November 2022

2.10

December 2022

2.13

January 2023

1.74

February 2023

1.64

March 2023

1.75

April 2023

1.82

May 2023

2.02


Global Ecommerce Niche/Vertical Based Conversion Rate Q1 2023

Niche/Vertical

CR %

Home Furniture

0.6

Luxury Handbags

0.8

General Handbags and Luggage

1.0

Home Appliances

1.4

Luxury Apparel

1.0

Electronics & Accessories

1.7

Active Footwear

1.8

Sporting Goods

1.7

Toys and Learning

1.6

Active Apparel

2.3

Beauty and Makeup

1.9

General Apparel

2.1

General Footwear

2.2

Home Dining Art and Décor

1.5

Hair Care

3.2

Beauty and Skin Care

2.4

Health and Beauty

2.9

Food and Beverage

3.1

If the Conversion Rate is lower than you'd like, such as below average for your entire industry, more pessimistic than top competitors, or just not meeting your own goals, it's time to start optimizing.

Conversions happen throughout the site: on the home page, in the pricing section, on the blog, on landing pages, etc. To maximize the chance of converting visitors into buyers, you need to optimize every part of the site.

Let's first learn how to calculate a site's conversion rate to understand better how much time and resources to invest in a CRO strategy.

How to Calculate the Conversion Rate

You can calculate the conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors; then, this number is multiplied by 100. The result you get as a percentage.

If you know this formula, calculating the conversion rate is easy.

Let's say you consider a newsletter subscription conversion and have a subscription form on every page of your site.

Divide the number of email forms sent by the total number of site visitors and multiply by 100. If you had 500 submissions and 20,000 visitors last quarter, the conversion rate is 2.5%.

This calculation is suitable for every possible conversion on the site: all pages with an offer.

For example,

if you want to calculate the conversion rate of an e-book ( lead magnet ), divide the total number of downloads by the number of people who visited web pages with a book offer.

An alternative method for calculating a site's overall conversion rate is to divide the total number of conversions for each conversion opportunity on your site by the number of all visitors.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Process

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of optimizing a website or landing page based on website visitors' behavior to increase the likelihood that the visitor will take the desired actions (conversions) on said page.

In today's world, online traffic is very inconsistent. If you can't get visitors to enter your conversion funnel the first time, the likelihood that they will return and take the desired action is pretty low. It is nothing but a missed opportunity for your business.

Implementing effective campaigns to optimize the conversion rate is the best way to improve your chances and get more conversions.

A good conversion rate optimization campaign means high savings in time, money and effort and finding new growth strategies that were previously unknown.

In other words, conversion rate optimization helps you better understand your site's usability, insights into customer behavior and tips on how to make the UX better to meet your goals.

At a strategic level, conversion rate optimization or CRO, is a continuous learning and optimization process. Unfortunately, we often overlook the "permanent" aspect when discussing conversion rate optimization and its elements.

CRO is a complex process that spans many steps. A successful CRO campaign is a campaign that uses deep data to analyze the results, runs numerous tests, adjusts content to make it more relevant to visitors, and draws the necessary conclusions.

Return on Investment (ROI) in Digital Marketing

The ROI is the return on investment; it is a metric used to know if the actions or investments generated profits or losses.

To be more specific in the area, ROI refers to the generated through any marketing activity you carry out, from a Facebook Ads campaign to publishing blog posts.

This data allows the economic performance of an investment to be measured. Even if you have only spent time on that investment, such as updating social networks or writing posts for a blog, you should know how much your hour is worth and measure the ROI from it.

In other words, statistical data tells us if we spent time and money or got the desired result.

The Importance of ROI

The ROI lets us know if the investments and actions have been worth it and if we lost or gained money.

Imagine that you start with your own company and decide to start trying the following marketing actions:

  1. 1
    Adwords campaign.
  2. 2
    Facebook Ads campaign.
  3. 3
    Twitter Ads campaign.
  4. 4
    Hiring an editor to write four monthly blog posts.
  5. 5
    Recruitment of community manager for social media management.

How can you know which of these five actions brings you more benefits? How will you decide whether to abandon any of them and focus on others? With the ROI.

Although there are more benefits apart from the economic one, such as brand awareness, ROI is the main workhorse determining whether an action is worthwhile.

You'll be wasting your money and time if you don't know if a stock is profitable. That is why it is so important to see the ROI of each one of them.

How to calculate ROI

The formula to determine ROI:

ROI = [(Profit - Total Investment) / Total Investment] X 100

ROI Example

Let's use an example of ROI on Facebook for better understanding. Imagine that in the Facebook Ads campaign, you invest $250 and that the result of that campaign generates a profit of $500. Now let's implement the formula:

ROI = [($500 - $250) / $250] X 100 = 100%

100% indicates that you have achieved a 100% return on investment and generate $2 for each euro invested. Therefore, this action would have a positive ROI, and it would be interesting to invest even more since an ROI of 100% is relatively high.

By calculating the ROI of each of your actions, you will be able to see which of them is more worthwhile and which is less. If any have a negative ROI, unless there is a compelling reason to keep it beyond economic benefit, it is best to discard it directly.

The ROI in marketing is a fundamental metric to measure the benefits of the actions we are carrying out.

The results of the ROI calculations (positive or negative) will tell us:

  • If a marketing activity carried out is profitable.
  • If there are profits with the campaigns.
  • If we have obtained returns in a specific business area, etc.

Digital Marketing FAQs

Who is the father of digital marketing?

It's common to refer to Philip Kotler as the "father of digital marketing." He is an American professor credited with creating marketing as a field of study and writer of more than 60 books on digital marketing.

What are the 7 P's of digital marketing?

  1. Product
  2. Price
  3. Place
  4. Promotion
  5. People
  6. Process
  7. Physical evidence

What are the 5 D's in digital marketing?

  1. Devices 
  2. Design
  3. Dialogues
  4. Data
  5. Do it Yourself

What are the 4 C's of marketing?

  1. Consumer 
  2. Communication
  3. Cost
  4. Convenience

What are the three ingredients of digital marketing?

  1. Lead Generation 
  2. Lead Capturing
  3. Lead Nurturing

What is ATL and BTL strategy?

The acronyms or abbreviations of "ATL" and "BTL" stand for "above the line" and "below the line," which means marketing "above the line" or "below the line." This categorization has raised the differentiation of the different channels to reach each audience.

What is TTL promotion?

Through the Line, Marketing is referred to as "TTL Marketing." a business would employ BTL and ATL marketing techniques to reach the client base and increase conversions.

What are some examples of digital marketing?

  • Paid search advertising
  • Blog
  • Email Marketing
  • Sponsored Links
  • Mobile advertising
  • Banners
  • Social networks

What are the types of digital marketing?

  • Content marketing
  • Inbound Marketing
  • Outbound Marketing
  • Relationship Marketing
  • Conversational marketing
  • Permission marketing

What skills do you need for digital marketing?

  • Information analysis and trend detection
  • Initiative and ability to adapt to the digital environment
  • Web traffic management
  • Knowledge of the funnel or business conversion funnel
  • Communication Skills
  • Social Media
  • Basic Design Skills

What is the core of digital marketing?

Strategy is the core of digital marketing.

What is the heart of digital marketing?

The heart of the majority of effective digital marketing strategies is content marketing.

Conclusion

Technology has been integrated into our lives, changing our daily lives, thinking, and attitude as consumers. The evolution of consumption habits and the expansion of electronic commerce make it necessary for organizations to have a presence on the Internet to ensure continuity.

Digital Marketing arises in response to this need, combining traditional marketing principles with the opportunities offered by the Internet as a medium. The possibilities of segmentation, flexibility and measurement capacity are what characterize it and, at the same time, differentiate it.

The fundamental difference with traditional marketing is the evolution from push strategies, where the consumer is merely a receiver, to pull systems, aimed at attracting the consumer to the brand.

Making yourself known and selling your services and products through the Internet seems essential amid the digital revolution. 

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