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The ‘must have’ pieces of research that should lead your digital marketing strategy
You likely already know that digital marketing is integral to the success of your business, especially if you want to win over customers and build a reputation. The key to marketing well is understanding how to position your brand and target leads precisely the right way.
Careful consideration is required. That’s why a thought-out digital marketing strategy should underpin all your efforts.
Your strategy needs to be strong if you want outstanding results. It needs to tick every box, hold your target audience at its core and understand the market. The best way to do this is by conducting critical research that forms the backbone of your strategy and ensures that any activity you do will work.
This guide explores the ‘must have’ pieces of research you should utilise to guide your digital marketing strategy and maximise performance.
Target audience
A crucial part of a high-performing marketing strategy is understanding your customers intrinsically. By learning about the needs, wants and challenges associated with your target audience, you stand a much better chance at plotting activity which appeals to them and draws them towards your brand.
As such, target audience research is essential. Data suggests that successful marketers are 242% more likely to perform audience research at least once per quarter.
The more you know about your audience, the more informed decisions you can make when deciding how to effectively target them and exceed expectations. The research you do in this area should be extensive to gain as much insight as possible.
An excellent place to start is by creating buyer personas. These are a semi-fictional representation of your customers, in which you split them into groups based on their shared characteristics, lifestyles and pain points. They are built on a mixture of data and assumptions.
They’re also proven to be highly effective. 82% of companies using personas improved their value proposition, based on customer needs, and 71% of companies that exceed lead generation and revenue goals have documented buyer personas.
Fortunately, there are many ways to gain customer insight you can utilise in your personas. These include focus groups, surveys and market data. You can also find some of our favourite tools for audience insight here.
Once you know your customers inherently, you’ll be able to plot activity that effectively meets their needs.
Market analysis
A successful business needs a value proposition which serves demand in the market. Market analysis was likely a crucial part of your business plan. It also needs to be part of your marketing strategy.
A viable digital marketing strategy should highlight the gap you are filling and position your brand as a valuable solution. By understanding the niches you want to address, including the specific barriers faced, you can identify ways to market your products and services that eliminate issues for that audience.
Market analysis may also include understanding how similar businesses showcase their products and services. If they’re missing any tricks or not appealing to customers in the right way, it’s your chance to design a marketing strategy that bridges the gap and gets results.
Barriers to market
Every business will face obstacles that could prevent you from being successful unless dealt with appropriately. Examples include competitors, prices, product or service issues – anything that might make a customer decide against purchasing.
An effective marketing strategy must understand these barriers and find ways to overcome them. Once you know the issues, you can deliver messaging on the right platforms that sidesteps the obstacles and convinces people of your value despite the concerns.
One of the most famous examples is Marmite, a notoriously controversial product. Rather than let it sit against them, Unilever (producers of Marmite) uses it across their marketing activity with the slogan ‘Love It or Hate It’. This is also a reoccurring theme across their digital channels.
By contemplating the barriers to market in your research, you can ensure your marketing focuses on your strong points instead – or even makes those negatives strengths!
Competitor research
Another crucial part of your marketing plan is accounting for the competition. To maximise your potential, you need to detract customers away from similar brands and convince them to choose you rather than someone else.
Competitor benchmarking is therefore integral. It allows you to understand what others are doing to attract the same customers. This can inspire your activity, enabling you to build upon tactics that have been proven to work and add value that others can’t.
Start by listing your competitors and taking the time to audit them. This includes considering their value proposition, marketing activity and communications. Make a note of anything that performs well for your competitors or those that miss the mark, as you can incorporate this into your planning.
With competitive insight, you can craft a marketing strategy that outshines the rest and gives you an edge. This should mean you stand a better chance of winning customers away from similar businesses.
Brand position
If you are marketing an established brand, you must understand where you already are before you start any strategy. This means tracking your brand position, where you sit in the market and how customers feel about you.
You likely want your digital marketing strategy to take your business to a specific place. Most prominently, you want people to feel good about you and want to purchase. However, you might also want to represent a set personality or feeling.
Start by tracking sentiment towards your brand. Social listening, monitoring customer feedback on your social media channels and checking review platforms are great ways to pick up the things people say about you (positive and negative!). You can also conduct surveys, focus groups, or other customer research forms to better understand how the public feels about you.
Once you identify your position, consider how it differs from where you want to be. You then need to design a strategy that makes the necessary changes, which could involve changes to tone of voice, branding, tactics and so on, until you reach your vision.
Marketing channels
A significant part of a digital marketing strategy is the channels your activity will sit on. The term ‘digital marketing’ encompasses many channels, including advertising, social media, search, digital PR, emails and content. You need to decide which you will use and how.
Spend time considering the various channels and platforms available to you. Each has unique characteristics that make them suitable or unsuitable for your brand and the audience you are trying to target.
Once you have taken stock of the options, endeavour to focus your efforts on those that will bring you results. It’s also essential to use this time to understand what will perform best on those channels, based on your previous experience and other brands’ success stories.
From here, you can build an effective strategy that places the appropriate activity onto the channels that your target customers are most likely to be present – for optimal results.
Keyword research
One of the most significant pieces of digital marketing is SEO. Search engines are responsible for up to 68% of all website traffic, so it’s crucial that your brand ranks highly on the likes of Google and wins over clicks.
Due to the role of search marketing in driving digital performance, you need to ensure all your web pages and online content is optimised for search. This starts with conducting keyword research that determines the terms people search to find products and services like yours.
By creating a comprehensive list of keywords, you can ensure the correct terminology is incorporated across your website and content plan, which will allow you to rank for the relevant searches and win over traffic that you can convert into customers.
The added benefit of keyword research is it can help you to uncover the language your customers speak which you can reflect across your marketing efforts and tone of voice documentation.
Content audit
Every marketing strategy needs content. Conducting a content audit as part of your strategy is recommended as it allows you to take stock of the available resources.
By understanding the content at your disposal, you can determine where it can be repurposed into other aspects of your digital strategy – such as redesigned for different channels. For example, a blog could be split into numerous social media posts, and an effective social media post could be turned into a digital ad.
By operating in this manner, you can ensure the content you already own and have spent time creating gives you the highest possible mileage. Not only will this minimise the effort required and give your content maximum exposure, but it will also ensure consistency across your digital channels and streamline your strategy.
Conclusion
Every brand wants a high performing digital marketing strategy that drives results and effectively converts leads.
However, it doesn’t happen by chance. The best and most effective strategies are those that have been created with time, thought and – most crucially – careful research.
By ensuring you have included all the essential pieces of research in your strategy, you will ensure it is completely tailored to your target audience, overcomes any barrier and fulfils your goals.
Most importantly, you can ensure the effects generated are long-lasting.
