My grandfather was a coffin salesman covering the Cork and Kerry region. While he used to get on his bike and visit customers to take orders, cycling door-to-door in the Kingdom because petrol was rationed, today we have it easy!  All we have to do is to attract customers to buy our products from the comfort of their home or office. We have access to a global market, the likes of which would have made my Grandpa starry eyed.

In the 16 years that Brightspark has been in business, digital strategy has changed – and our approach is constantly changing to keep ahead of the curve on digital marketing trends.

We’ve developed a proven and effective method for developing tailor-made digital strategies that are mindful of the individual company’s ambitions and constraints.

Our three-phase approach includes a competitive analysis to ensure your company stands out in your particular market, targeting buyer personas that respond to your unique selling points, and a plan. A clear plan of action that is matched to your business needs and strengths, that your team will find it easy to implement.

Setting Measurable Goals for Digital Marketing

A good digital marketing strategy includes a blend of search and social; a mix of shareable social media on multiple channels to attract our audience, mixed with deeper long form content placed on the website to demonstrate value, expertise and to facilitate ranking on Google.

Landing pages are a shorter art form as they need to convey a message very succinctly.

This can all sound overwhelming, but the beauty of it is that we can trace most of the paths people take to reach their purchasing decision. For us digital marketers, the fun comes with tweaking the paths to maximise conversions.

Like any other type of marketing, the only way to know how well you are doing is to set clear, measurable, realistic goals, with a schedule for delivery. If we don’t measure our progress toward our goals, we have no objective way to assess how we’re doing. To do that, we need to quantify our goals and set a time-frame to achieve them. We might not always make our targets, but at least we’ll know how close we got.

When you are setting goals for digital marketing, it is helpful to break the process down into individual steps and schedule them. Being specific is critical.

“Tweet regularly” is not a good goal. “Tweet original content three times a week, and retweet curated content from your lists twice a week” is clear, specific and measurable.

The specific social media platforms your digital marketing consultant uses will depend on your audience and where they hang out. The start of our strategic process here at Brightspark is to focus on the persona (the who). We’ve got a very popular post on how to create personas for B2C and B2B marketing.

Once we know the details around who is being targeted, we can recommend the where based on our understanding of the entire digital network.

It’s important here to work with an agency whose advice is up to the minute and rooted in a deep understanding of the different facets of each social media and digital platform.

This kind of thing doesn’t come easily. It is not learned from surfing YouTube how-to videos; it comes with experience and growing with the networks as they have emerged and evolved.

Developing Your Social Media Strategy

Some might say that Facebook, for example, is good for most brands. LinkedIn is important for business-to-business and professionals. Instagram is an obvious choice for any brand with visually appealing products and services – clothing, jewellery, beauty, housewares, landscaping, etc. Twitter has a very specific vibe – politics, media, economics, sport. And what about the newer ones like TikTok or Snapchat.

The reason you’re on social and engaging your audience more broadly on digital answers the question of why.

First, you want to capture and keep your audience’s attention. Second, you can use your social media to attract people to your web content. When you share blog posts or special offers, the purpose is to encourage people to click through to your website. Your digital marketing strategy is to build a solid base of followers on social media, much like a bricks and mortar retailer wants to draw foot traffic into their premises to show them what they’ve got to offer.

Your goals for social media should focus on posting in the right places at the right times. What you post also matters, and this too should be framed into measurable goals.

Aim for a mix of original and shared content, images and video. It’s good to reveal a small amount of humanity in your posts – even in B2B. And remember – always always aim to be consistent!

How Brightspark Develops Your Digital Media Strategy

We start by taking a step back from sales and focusing on crafting strong content and posting it consistently. We help you fine tune your core message for the social platforms where your audience is so your impact is coordinated and consistent, but not repetitive. Sharing the same exact content on every platform is a boring and lazy approach – really a turn-off for your audience.

If you get that part right, the next phase is a natural consequence. People engage. They like and share your content, check out your profiles and visit your webpage.

For B2B brands, that can mean an increase in direct messages on LinkedIn, while retail brands will enjoy a higher profile on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The true measurement of this is not always obvious because so many people share via dark social. (That’s not ominous! Learn more about it here.)

It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, it’s the quality of the audience, their relationship with the content that you produce that will ultimately bring the prize home.

In the third phase, we target a very clearly defined audience with offers they can’t refuse. We tend to use paid social, and it is all about the cost per acquisition. That cost is more than just the cost of the ad – it includes content creation and in-house expenses too. We’ll help you find the level of paid social media advertising that gives you the best cost per acquisition.

We’ve evolved from the early days of search and social of tracking everything to going after a few key metrics that encapsulate everything. If driving leads is your ultimate business goal, then leads and cost per acquisition are relevant goals.

How To Make It Happen

Developing and implementing an effective digital marketing strategy can be daunting, but resources are at hand that can help you get it right.  Given the time, energy and resources your team will spend implementing your strategy, isn’t it smart to get it right?

My grandfather went through his whole career relying on the same sales tactics. And they worked for all those decades! But that is not true today with digital marketing. It evolves constantly, and if you are not evolving with it you lose out. Some sectors have been quick to adapt. It’s the norm now to book flights online or search for and view houses for sale online. Other industries, particularly B2B sectors, have been slower to change.

Want to talk strategy?