How to develop a successful digital marketing strategy in Christchurch

Most Christchurch business owners are all too aware of the power of the internet. Digital marketing has the potential to transform your business, putting your name up in lights and attracting more customers than ever before.

But digital marketing success doesn’t just happen. While the internet can get your business in front of more eyes than ever before, you’ll also face more competition than ever before. If you want to grow your business in a meaningful way, you’ll need to invest the time, effort and resources necessary to develop a winning digital marketing strategy.

In this article we’ll guide you through 11 steps that will help you to do just that.

Why are you developing a marketing strategy in the first place? The answer needs to be more specific than ‘to grow my business‘. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Generate more leads? Identify/exploit a new market? Drive more traffic to your website?

Clear and specific marketing goals give you something concrete to aim for. When you lock in specific goals you can often work backwards from this end point, reverse engineering a strategy that will get you where you want to go. The best goals are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.

An example: one of your goals might be to increase website traffic by 25% within the next six months through a combination of search engine optimisation (SEO), social media and content marketing.

This goal specifically focuses on increasing website traffic. The 25% targeted increase is measurable. By outlining the marketing services and strategies you’ll use, you’ve made it attainable. Website traffic is a relevant metric to your business’s success. Finally, the six month deadline ensures the goal is time-bound.

Success in digital marketing is predicated on effective communication. But you can only speak your customer’s language if you know who that customer is.

Work to gain a deeper understanding of the audience you’re tageting. Tools like Google Analytics and Meta Business Suite can break down the demographics of your website visitors and social media followers to give you a picture of your customers. Use this information to create a number of detailed buyer personas: fictional characters that represent an average member of your target audience and who you can keep in mind when doing things like selecting your marketing channels and creating website content.

You also need to know who you’re up against. Depending on your business, your competitors might be limited to Christchurch, or they could span the globe. Work to understand exactly who you’re competing against for the affection of your customers, then analyse their digital presence: website, social media profiles, ad, email and content strategies.

Identify what they’re doing well, and look to replicate (though not copy) their success. Identify what they’re doing not so well, and look to exploit these weaknesses. Understand how you can differentiate your business in meaningful ways.

Your website is the hub of your online presence; the thing that all other online channels – social media profiles, ads, emails – will link back to. It can also be your most effective salesperson, as it’s on the clock 24/7. But this effectiveness is only possible if your website is well built.

Your site should be built from the ground up with a purpose in mind, whether building trust and authority, generating leads or driving sales. It should be easy to navigate for both human users and Google’s web crawlers. It should be search engine optimised, filled with relevant keywords, tags and links.

In digital marketing you propose a trade with your audience: you give them content, they give you their attention. But the audience will only see this trade as worthwhile if they’re getting value from that content: entertainment, education, or a heady mix of both.

Having already worked to understand who your audience is, it’s now time to develop content that speaks to them. The word ‘content’ covers blogs, website copy, emails, videos, infographics, social media posts and other communications that align with your target audience’s interests. Content is rarely salesly – its primary role is to build brand awareness, authority and trust, so that when the customer is ready to buy, they choose you.

Social media offers your business the opportunity to connect more deeply and directly with customers than any other marketing channel. Social media marketing demands quite a bit off effort, but the process can be fun and the payoff is often more than worth it.

Set up profiles on the platforms your target audience uses the most. Social media rewards consistency, so be sure to post at least a few times a week on each platform. Maintain a community by engaging with your followers: start conversations, respond to comments, and interact with your audience outside your own posts and pages.

While email is the oldest of internet technologies, it remains one of the most important. Email marketing continually offers the highest ROI of any marketing channel: on average it generates $36 for every $1 you spend.

You can make the most of email by building a customer database. Whenever a new customer makes contact or completes a purchase, add their details to your CRM. You can then segment this customer database and send out targeted emails to diffferent groups designed to drive more business, such as offering returning customers loyalty discounts.

There are two main forms of search engine marketing: paid and organic.

The most common version of paid SEM takes the form of Google Ads: the text results marked [Ad] or [Sponsored] that sit atop the Google results page. These are pay per click (PPC) ads – you bid to be shown at the top of certain searches, but you’re only charged if someone actually clicks on your ad. Google Ads is a great way to generate brand awareness.

Organic SEM is otherwise known as search engine optimisation (SEO). This is the practice of making your website as Google-friendly as possible, in order to position yourself as high up the Google rankings as possible for relevant search queries. SEO should play a central role in any marketing plan.

Once you have formed and implemented a strategy that ticks all the boxes above, you’ll need to continually check that it’s doing what you want it to do. To ensure you capture and keep your competitive advantage, you need to constantly monitor and improve your performance.

The metrics you track will align with your marketing campaign goals. They might relate to website traffic, social media engagement, conversions or ROI.

Further to the above, your digital marketing strategy is never truly ‘complete’. Markets are always changing. Competitors are always looking to overtake you. Digital marketing itself is always evolving. You need to stay up-to-date with changes in your customers, competitors and the marketing industry. Be open to changes, and look to continuously refine and elevate your approach.

Sure, you can take care of all the above in-house. But in reality most business owners don’t have the time or expertise required to fully capitalise on digital marketing – which is why many local organisations seek the help of a digital marketing agency in Christchurch.

At Traction Marketing we’ve spent years helping Christchurch businesses grow through digital marketing. We bring deep knowledge in all the things digital – web development, social media, advertising and more – and have a deep passion for helping other Christchurch businesses succeed.

No matter your organisation, industry, product or service, if you’re looking to develop a digital marketing strategy that works, our Christchurch team is here to help. Get in touch today.