When today’s tech-savvy consumers want a product or service, they often look online. Companies that aren’t there to meet them are ignoring a valuable source of new business.

Launching a digital marketing campaign can turn your company from an Internet also-ran into a vibrant destination for potential customers. Here are five steps to make that happen.

1. Define your goals

The goals that you set for your digital marketing campaign will depend on your company’s profile. Startups in product development mode might want to raise awareness of an emerging product category or invite beta users. Those with a 1.0 release will be in customer acquisition, while a larger more established business may be focused on customer retention. Grooming your company for acquisition or IPO? Then maybe brand-building and thought leadership are key.

Whatever your goals are, document them, as they will inform the rest of your journey. Understand what key performance indicators (KPIs) you must measure to judge your performance against those goals.

2. Connect with internal stakeholders

This is the stage in a digital marketing strategy that businesses often forget, yet it’s the part that makes it most effective. You can identify the internal team that your digital marketing campaign will serve. That will usually be sales but could be product development or support, depending on your goals.

Ensure that your digital marketing team understands the kinds of qualified leads that this department needs and you can configure your digital marketing system to deliver those directly. After all, if the campaign doesn’t serve the right part of the business with actionable results, why do it at all?

3. Know your audience

These goals can drive the next phase in your digital marketing strategy: understanding your target market. Your audience will have a demographic covering not only gender, age, and income, but also what kind of digital content they consume, and on which channels and devices. Research and create a customer persona describing these characteristics. Which social networks do they hang out on? How can you reach them? 

Here is the point where you define your customers’ purchasing journey, mapping out the key problems they are trying to solve when considering a product or service in your category, along with any questions or objections that they may have along the way. 

One thing to consider when identifying your audience is to consider who influences and inspires them. Consider building a list of the leading voices for that demographic — the YouTubers, the bloggers, and the key influencers — and consider building traction with them to reach your target.

4. Choose your channels and content

Consider different channels to support your digital marketing campaign, based on what your audience research has told you. Many businesses will focus purely on social media, but you may use this just to draw people into your own website. From there, you may offer a blogging series, an email marketing campaign, and even videos and podcasts.

This content should support different stages in your sales funnel. Consider including a call to action (CTA) that encourages the visitor to deepen their relationship with you. One technique is to give something of value such as an eBook in exchange for permission to email them in the future.

5. Measure results

It is said that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Expertise in analytics is important here. You can use analytics software that can monitor your chosen channels to create a joined-up view of who consumes your content, how they find it, and what they do afterward. You can use the KPIs defined in your goal-setting stage to answer questions such as which campaigns lead to more sales, how lead conversions are increasing, and whether your search engine advertising is working.

Finally, remember that this five-step strategy is not linear; it’s cyclical. Measurements from each new campaign may teach you something new for the next one. By constantly learning from your digital marketing results, you can create a cycle of continuous improvement that can help you to reach your long-term business objectives.

About the Author 

Danny Bradbury has been writing about technology and business since 1989. His clients have included the Financial Times, the Guardian, and Canada's National Post.

All content provided herein is for educational purposes only. It is provided “as is,” and neither the author nor Office Depot warrants the accuracy of the information provided, nor do they assume any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein.