In the last couple of years, the lines between marketing and sales have blurred. Marketers are responsible for generating leads and determining which products and services to promote. They use a variety of tools and channels to connect with customers, including web platforms, social media, and email marketing.
While traditional sales functions focus on converting leads into paying customers, marketers must consider how to drive demand and generate revenue from a variety of sources including;
- Cost-free trials and demos
- Signups for webinar and email lists
- Social media shares
- And the list goes on
What’s more is that the leads and customers that marketers generate are often different from those that salespeople close. For example, when a marketer promotes an email subscription, she is likely to attract and convert an audience that is more engaged and likely to buy the product or service than the average lead.
Getting the two teams working together can lead to more effective marketing. If you’re looking to transform your marketing and sales strategies, consider how to bring your online marketing and social media platforms together.
How to Align Your Online Marketing With Your Business Goals
If you’re looking to drive organic traffic to your website and figure out how to align your online marketing with your business goals, consider these steps.
Step one: Set a benchmark for your digital marketing activities
The first step in putting your digital marketing strategy into practice is to set a benchmark and review why you’re doing what you’re doing. The way you answer the question “How will you know you’ve succeeded?” will form the basis of your entire strategy. For example, you might decide that you’ll know you’ve succeeded when you register 100 new customers per day or when you double your list size in an initial growth phase.
Step two: Measure the results of your digital marketing efforts
Measuring the results of your digital marketing efforts are critical to evaluating your success. Whether you’re measuring the number of web leads, email sign ups, or social media followers, it’s important that you track these metrics so you can determine whether or not your efforts are paying off. Measuring the results of your digital marketing can also help you determine what’s working and what needs to be changed. For example, if you’re not converting more traffic into paying customers, you might decide that your current marketing strategy is ineffective and needs to be revised.
Step three: Identify and analyze the key performance indicators
Once you’ve set a benchmark for your digital marketing efforts, you can start to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you determine your success. These are the figures or metrics that you choose to focus on in order to measure your progress. Different industries might choose to track different KPIs, so consider what’s important to your business.
One of the best things about setting KPIs is that you’re forced to analyze the reasons for your success and failure. If you’re able to isolate certain behaviors that lead to specific results, you can determine how to improve your strategy to provide better service and deliver more desirable results.
Step four: Make constant course corrections
Taking a step back and considering the results of your strategy is a key element of continuous improvement. Once you’ve set up a benchmark for your digital marketing and started to track results, you’ll be able to identify areas for improvement. You can then make constant course corrections to move in the right direction and achieve the best possible results. For example, if you notice that your social media reach is growing but your web traffic isn’t, you might decide that you should revalue your social media strategy and adjust your digital marketing spending to focus more on paid ads and fewer on organic posts. Alternatively, you might decide that your product is highly valued in the marketplace but that your pricing strategy is holding you back from realizing your full potential. In both of these situations, the data will reveal the reason for the disconnect and allow you to make the necessary changes to move towards your desired end results.
A successful digital marketing strategy will become increasingly valuable as time goes by. As your business grows, you’ll find that you need to continuously review your strategy and make necessary adjustments as you go along. Having a robust digital marketing plan that can evolve and be tested over time will lead you to greater success.
Step five: Regularly review and evaluate your strategy
As your business grows, you’ll start receiving more and more data that can help you make informed decisions about your marketing strategy. The more data you have, the better decision you can make and the more effective your strategy will be. The data you get doesn’t have to be restricted to numbers either. Data can be in the form of screenshots from your social media, emails from customers, or search engine results.
The main issue is that all this data can overwhelm you if you don’t have the time to digest it. Regularly reviewing your strategy and evaluating its effectiveness will help you make the right decisions for your business. You can also use this opportunity to experiment with new strategies and determine their effectiveness compared to the ones you’ve already established. This will lead to greater flexibility and growth for your business.
Ensure that you have a plan for how you’ll review and evaluate your digital marketing strategy. This might mean setting aside specific blocks of time in order to regularly analyze the data and make adjustments to your strategy. Alternatively, it could be a matter of jotting down some notes immediately after each marketing activity so that you have something to go back to when you review your progress at a later date. Either way, ensuring that you have a process for reviewing and evaluating your strategy will greatly increase the likelihood of success.
A successful digital marketing strategy doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to establish metrics, determine the key performance indicators, and make constant course corrections. However, with careful planning, strategizing, and measuring the results of your efforts, you’ll be able to achieve great results and make an impact in your industry.