In this epic digital marketing checklist, we’re going to provide you with [just about] everything you could ever need when it comes to digital marketing and how to achieve your business goals.
Generally speaking, all digital marketing efforts are a means to an end, and typically the end is “sell more things.” In order to do this, you have to…
- Make sure your audience knows who you are (Brand Awareness)
- Get them to like and trust you (Brand Sentiment & Leads)
- Convince them to buy something from you (Conversions)
- Bonus: Get them to love you so you can keep selling to them (Loyalty)
Ultimately, your digital marketing tasks should support your custom-built digital strategy which will differ from business to business. But if you’re curious about the basics and how they play with each other, here’s our checklist which covers the full customer journey.
Digital Foundation Checklist
Before we dive into digital marketing, it’s important for you to have a digital foundation (which you will build your marketing efforts upon). This includes your brand, website, and Google My Business.
Branding
If you want to increase exposure, start off with a strong brand. Beyond logo design, branding includes online reputation, design, user experience, and messaging. It also includes the internet-wide standardization of all your brand assets.
Web Design
Your website is a digital marketing, sales, customer service, and internal engagement tool. On the digital side of things, it affects every stage of the marketing funnel. In short, if you want to elevate your digital efforts, make sure your web design is modern, responsive, and delightful.
Google My Business
One of the easiest ways to set up your brand for digital success (especially for local businesses) is through Google My Business. This set up legitimizes your brand and provides all your essential information in one place. It’s also the source of reviews and testimonials.
Only once you have a defined brand and sleek website can you really go for this digital marketing checklist. Now let’s dive into digital.
Digital Marketing Goal: Brand Awareness
What is it: Let’s start simple–does your audience know you exist? If they don’t, they can’t possibly buy from you. The second question– do they like you? If they don’t, you need to improve your brand’s sentiment.
You need this when: You always need this, but especially if you’re a startup, have a new product line/service offering, or have suffered damage to your brand, e.g., you’re B.P. Oil in 2010.
The Digital Marketing Checklist for Brand Awareness
You might not need all of these strategies and tactics to improve brand awareness. However, you should always be doing 2-3 of the initiatives below.
Public Relations
Some traditional public relations can introduce a brand or new product to your audience via print news, video, or television. You typically need to work with a PR agency because they have relationships with journalists and influencers.
Social Media
Find out where your audience is on social media and join them. Typically, every business needs a Facebook presence plus at least one other social media account. To find out specifics (what platforms, when to post, and how often) you should conduct research and create a social media strategy. However, generally speaking–
If you’re a B2B company, you should join LinkedIn and possibly YouTube or Reddit.
If you’re a B2C company, you should join the Instagram and Pinterest community.
Content Creation
Creative content works wonders for brand awareness and truly spans all mediums (social platforms, search engines) and forms (video, photography, written word).
In your content, provide your audience with fun or useful information that aligns and complements your brand. For example,
- Tutorials (written & video)
- Guides & checklists
- How to articles
- Human interest stories
- Recipes (printed, video, and photography)
- Entertainment (stories, videos, memes, gifs)
- Interviews (written & video)
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is the convergence of the three digital marketing tactics above: PR, social media, and content creation. To do it successfully, you need to identify which influencer has your audience’s attention, what social media platform will it live on, and what kind of content will be created.
SEO – Long Tail Keywords
SEO can absolutely introduce new users to your brand via long tail search queries. What SEO can’t do singlehandedly is increase your conversions. For conversion optimization, keep scrolling.
Digital Marketing Goal: Increase Leads
What is it: Your audience has heard of you, but they haven’t made a purchase yet. Maybe they’re comparing you to your competitors, maybe they don’t yet see the value in your service. There are many reasons why people aren’t buying, and quite a few of these reasons can be addressed with digital marketing.
You need this when: Every business needs this, always.
The Digital Marketing Checklist for Increasing Leads
Middle of funnel digital marketing will very much depend on your branding efforts and your conversion efforts. Nothing below exists in a vacuum.
More Social Media
Social media spans the entire funnel and can contribute to every digital goal. For this stage of your strategy, social media can be used to increase brand recognition and sentiment. Retarget website visitors and new followers with engaging content that is a mix of entertaining and offer-driven.
Email Marketing
Email is undoubtedly a fantastic way to speak to a user and bring them back to your website. It’s also one of those digital strategies that spans across the bottom of your funnel.
Emails in this category should be content heavy with a focus on fun or education. New blog content, news, online contests, new product/service announcements are great things to include in these types of emails.
Strong, Strategic Copywriting
Make sure your service and product descriptions are thrilling. Tell stories when possible. And demonstrate the value of your item by starting with your “why.” Include information on benefits, usage, warranties, etc.
*Strong copy ties closely with SEO so make sure to optimize your copy so your simultaneously growing brand awareness and increasing middle of funnel leads.
SEO – Short Tail Keywords
SEO can also assist with mid-funnel growth; users who know what they want and are willing to consider a purchase. Once these users are on the page, you will need to implement conversion optimization and bottom of funnel tactics.
Reviews / Testimonials
Provide some social proof and trust by displaying reviews or testimonials. Responding to negative reviews crosses the lines between customer service and digital marketing, but should be done if you want to increase conversions.
Digital Marketing Goal: Increase Conversions
What is this: Getting a user to contact you or give you money is a big ask, much bigger than following, browsing, or liking your content. That’s why it takes additional tactics (built with the support of the previous two) to see the outcomes you desire.
You need this when: You’re getting a lot of site traffic and interest, but no one is crossing the finish line.
The Digital Marketing Checklist for Increasing Conversions
Email Marketing
Your email marketing strategy should also include some offers, deals, and follow-ups. Just some instances of conversion-focused email campaigns are:
- Annual sales
- New member offer
- Cart abandonment emails
Paid Campaigns & Offers
There are a ton of paid marketing products out there. Here’s an overview of just some of the most popular paid platforms.
Social Media: Facebook Ads is the big player here because they also own Instagram. On Facebook, you can target your past website visitors and custom built audiences that match your demographic. Other include LinkedIn Ads, Twitter Sponsored Tweets, Sponsored Pins, and SnapChat Stories.
Adwords: Google Adwords is great for bidding on bottom of funnel keywords like “oil change Denver,” “funny groomsman gifts,” and “eCommerce platforms for small businesses.”
Retargeting: Retargeting ads “follow” your website visitors around the web, encouraging them to go back and learn more, make a purchase, or fill in a contact form.
Video Ads: YouTube and publisher platforms like SpotX can show your video to segmented audiences based on their user and demographic data.
Cart/Checkout Optimization
There are also a number of tactics you can utilize to create a better shopping cart experience like guest checkouts, free shipping, PayPal integrations, and more. Since the average eCommerce cart abandonment rate is well over 50%, improving this even a little bit can be monumental.
Analytics / Reporting
Analytics and reporting will likely be an integral part of any digital marketing goal–whether it’s brand impressions, click-through-rate, cost per MQL, follow count, time on site, page depth–the list goes on.
Learning how to use analytics and reporting for digital marketing is a job on its own. Tools and reporting dashboards can help, but dedicated deciphering of the data will lead to refinement of your digital efforts.
Final Note
There are a lot of digital things you can do on this checklist. However, we always recommend starting with your type of business, your goals, and your audience to get a comprehensive, full funnel digital strategy. After all, the above digital initiatives are just tactics you can use to achieve those goals.
For help with branding, content creation, web design, and more, contact Zenman.
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