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Every year, you work on a digital marketing plan hoping that it will positively impact your business. But that’s not always the case. To help combat these yearly frustrations once and for all, we’ve gathered the three pillars to ensure this year’s performance is above any other.

You likely hate this task, but you don’t have to feel that way about your strategy forever. Together, we’ll run through the three pillars that’ll serve as a foundation.

Pillar #1: Define and Align

Let’s take a step back, just for a moment.

A digital marketing strategy is a plan to achieve your marketing goals with the help of digital channels. Essentially, this yearly agenda summarizes which methods your business will leverage and how.

Your digital marketing strategy can include a mix of the following methods:

Most businesses make a similar list to the one above, but they don’t define how each type of marketing can benefit your digital marketing strategy.

In the best business relationships, everyone brings something to the table. The same has to happen with your strategy; everything on your list must offer a means of advancing your goal.

How do you plan to use marketing methods to communicate with your customers?

Without evaluating all the moving pieces, you’ll lose a heap of money and time.

Most businesses have a vague idea of where they want to go, but that’s no good. What you need is a clear next step. Then, you have a clear goal and direction to take.

Ask The Right Questions

Whether the year has been a bust or not, analyzing your performance will provide insights.

In no particular order, we’ve gathered questions that help draw insights to consider when planning your strategy:

• What did you do well?
• What gave you little return on your investment?
• What competitors used channels well?
• Did you have a clear vision of your audience?
• Do you know where they are on the buyer’s funnel?
• How did you measure success?

The worst-case scenario is that you’ve covered a lot of ground on what doesn’t work. So, now you’ll focus on entirely new approaches for your digital marketing strategy.

Build Your Strategy

You know what you want, you’ve ruled out what hasn’t worked for you, now you claim your goals.

Goals are what you want to achieve on a high level. For example, it could grow sales by 5% or generate 200 signups for an event.

After you’ve listed out a set of goals, you can determine what part of the buyer’s funnel they target and the best ways to approach each.

Make sure that you can measure your efforts. Borrowing the example above, what objectives can help you achieve a 5% increase in sales?

You’ll see how one point leads into the next as you do this exercise. Once you have an objective to have X leads to achieve your sales growth, you might consider pushing a new social media platform or creating a landing page to support your plan.

A Strategy to Scale Your Business

What if your goal is to scale your PPC agency? The below walks you through how to detail a media plan to prospective clients is key to guaranteeing success. Our team of PPC experts walks you through the steps.

Pillar #2: Reports Reveal Missed Opportunities

Depending on how long you run campaigns, your reports should reveal a good amount of information.

The example below shows an audit report by AdInsights. You’ll note that the opportunities are endless, from search term exclusions, ad copy improvements, and more to help you gauge a more precise digital marketing strategy.

If you have difficulty reading audit reports, consider reviewing with a digital marketing expert.

Together, you can flag:

• Missed opportunities due to lack of budget
• Inefficient settings
• Overspending with little to no change in performance
• Jumps in performance where you failed to follow up
• Overlooked channels, features, and settings
• Poor performance due to lack of monitoring

Pillar #3: Adopt Best Practices

As PPC experts and a seasoned white label agency, we have a good idea of some of the common pitfalls that agencies and direct businesses face when tackling digital marketing strategies.

Below are some of the most common scenarios and our two cents on what you can try differently.

Setting Unrealistic Goals
Each marketing platform that you choose to invest in will have a realistic turnaround for the investment that you make. Observe past trends, find out what average growth looks like, and track your progress as you go.

Brush Up On Trends
The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing, and falling behind can mean that you aren’t taking advantage of a feature that can help you connect with your audience.

For example, Google’s recent announcement on Expanded Text ads will limit those who rely on them. Unless advertisers begin tackling new ad formats, they might not realize it until they have faded out.

Jump Deeper Into Your Industry

In a recent post, we explain how blogs can help businesses gain the ability to inform potential customers about what they’re researching while also getting them acquainted with your business.

Learn about ways that you can build a rapport with your audience. They’ll thank you for it when they look to invest in your business.

PPC Marketing

If you are handling your PPC marketing and you’re not an expert, it will be a lot easier (and fruitful) to get some help.

If you want to give it a go, below are a handful of tips that we’ve previously shared with readers. Our strategists recommend that you:

• Subscribe to industry blogs for updates on features, tools, and strategies
• Regularly Help Centers on either Google or Microsoft
• Use AdInsights by White Shark Media to monitor performance insights of your PPC accounts and flag errors

That said, unless you are a PPC expert, you most likely need help with your PPC campaigns. Read our post on hiring an agency to get a little bit more comfortable with ways that you will benefit.

Achieve Your Goals Faster This Year

We’re here to help you build a digital marketing strategy for the books. The three pillars above will help you achieve your goals with less struggle. This is your year to figure out the simple tweaks that will completely change how you manage your business goals and digital marketing strategy.

Still curious about reading audit reports? Audit your Google account, uncover insights, and generate recommendations with our PPC services. Click here to learn more!