Most businesses are now realizing the importance of an online marketing team, led by a digital marketer. Having a dedicated in-house team allows you to grow your business organically, gaining valuable insight into what’s working and what needs to be changed

If you’re interested in joining an online marketing team, or already have one and need some inspiration on how to become more effective, read on!

Understand The Goals

An essential part of any business’s job is to understand their goals and how to achieve them. Having clear communication about what you’re trying to achieve as a business and how you intend to go about it is incredibly valuable and helps you form a better understanding of the situation you’re in. Online marketing is no different and it’s important to define clear goals for each area of the channel.

This will help you tailor your approach to each platform, gain a better understanding of the decisions made by the audience and assess the effectiveness of your efforts. For example, if you want to increase web page views, you might look to increase the number of times people visit that page. If you’re using Google AdWords, you can track how many people are clicking on your ads to see what’s working and what needs to be changed. You can use similar tactics to track the success of your campaigns on social media.

The better you understand your goals, the easier it will be to achieve them. Additionally, your marketing team will be able to provide you with valuable insight into how you’re doing, where you’re doing well and where you need to improve.

Set A Budget

Just like any other part of your business, your marketing budget is going to change over time as your team evolves and gains experience. Just remember to set a budget and stick to it, even if it’s not completely clear yet what that budget should be. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll be able to fully grasp the exact value of your digital marketing efforts until at least a year or two after you start implementing them. Budgeting prevents you from wasting money on unsuccessful or lackluster efforts.

If you have a clear understanding of how much you’re willing to spend, it will be much easier to narrow down the type of marketing activity you want to pursue. Additionally, you can use this information to set benchmarks for yourself and your team.

Hire The Right People

The team you pick for your marketing department is going to make a massive difference in how successful your campaigns are going to be. A poor choice in management can make even the most effective campaign go in the wrong direction. Just like any other part of your business, the ability to find the right people is going to be essential to the success of your online marketing team.

Once you’ve chosen your management team, it’s time to start thinking about the rest of your team. Just like with any other department in your business, you’re going to need a digital marketer, a social media strategist, a content strategist and a web developer to effectively market your business on the internet.

Be Creative

If you’re already using other parts of your business to its fullest potential, there’s no reason not to use your online marketing team to do the same. Utilize all the tools at your disposal, whether it’s a blog, a website, social media or other digital marketing activities to come up with fresh ideas and concepts. Sometimes the best way to make a big impact is by being creative.

If you’re stuck for ideas on what to do next, think about what other businesses are doing and use that as inspiration for your own marketing efforts. The better you understand the choices made by your target audience, the easier it will be to tailor your approach to gain the best results.

Measure, Review And Learn

To really understand the impact of your online marketing efforts, you’re going to need to measure it. Just like with any other part of your business, your marketing team will help you set up suitable metrics and assess the results of your efforts. Learning from those results is essential and will help you make the right decisions for your business going forward. For example, if you notice your web pages aren’t getting many views, but your ads on Google are, you might decide to shift your focus to AdWords.

As you measure the results of your efforts, be sure to look at each area of the channel individually. Learning about the performance of different platforms, such as social media and web pages, is important so you can assess where your efforts are working and where you need to focus your attention.

To create a successful marketing team, first you need to decide what you want to measure. Just like with any other part of your business, the ability to measure and review your results is the key to making improvements and evolving as a marketer.