Digital Marketing Strategy – Why Your Organisation Needs One

Kickstart 2018 with a Digital Marketing Strategy

digital marketing strategy

Digital Marketing Strategy….the term has become so popular and everyone is talking about it and you are possibly wondering what the hype is all about OR you have been thinking seriously about having one but you have no idea on where to start. We will demystify it for you. Simply put, a digital marketing strategy is a plan to guide you in promoting products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media, that is, promoting via the Internet, search engines, social media, emails, mobile phones and any other digital platforms.

Why has Digital Marketing Strategy become so important?

We can’t ignore the fact that Zimbabwe has gone digital. According to Internet World Stats Internet usage in Zimbabwe currently stands at approximately 41% of the population and mobile penetration is at 97% meaning a properly executed digital marketing strategy means better reach for your business. Also, besides the obvious reason that the world has gone digital and that you require one to be competitive, running your business without any proper planning can seriously hurt your business not only in terms of continuity but also financial viability. Having a proper plan for your digital plan helps you prevent going down on expensive roads that lead to nowhere. In fact, companies with a clear digital marketing strategy see 60% faster growth than those who don’t.

So here are some of the reasons why having a digital marketing strategy has become increasingly important:

A digital marketing strategy allows you to have a clearly documented direction and strategic goals. Having clear goals allows you to track them effectively.
It helps you have a clear persona of your target market and how best to reach them, as in which technologies to adopt. Remember, not all digital platforms are relevant for your target market. You therefore need to know which platforms your target market use.
A digital calendar which is usually included in your digital strategy helps put everything into perspective. You know what happens when.

Is it really worth your while?

Yes it is worth your while. Compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing has made marketing efforts more affordable to organisations of all sizes, even for those with small budgets. There is no excuse on why you can’t put your business on the world stage now. As a result, even small to medium businesses can easily compete with bigger businesses as digital platforms offer a fair playing field. In addition below are some major pros for going digital:

You can do target marketing – Instead of wasting your budget by doing mass marketing, digital marketing allows you to segment and target your market according to demographics,interests, buying power etc. This makes it more targeted.
Because it’s more targeted, the conversions are higher
You can also easily track conversions. This helps reassign budgets to what is working for you the most. You can easily see ROI on campaigns so no more wasted funds.
You can also personalise your campaigns which helps to effectively market to your customers

We want to go Digital, where do we even start?

Your starting point is to do a digital marketing audit for your business. It’s a given that your business likely has a website. If not, please contact us, you urgently need a website in this modern era. However, a lot of businesses confuse having a website as already being digitized. Your website is a great starting point as it’s the hub of information for your business. It’s also the place where your customers are likely to convert or become a lead. However, you need to consider your website as a newly built house. You still need to tell people about your new location for them to find you isn’t it, otherwise no one will ever know that you have this modern, trendy new home. So when we talk about doing a digital audit for your business, we literally mean, which efforts have you put in place to ensure your website is being found by customers and are you available on any digital platforms to help with your reach.

So the starting point is to do an audit of your digital presence and document your findings. This is important because it will work as your benchmark. In short, it helps you define where you are and where you want to go. Make a list of what you have whether its a website, social media pages and if yes, how many followers you have, are you coming up on search engines, do you send out newsletters to customers and if yes how often and how big is your email database. Ensure you document as much information as possible. This will give you a guide of where you are and will make it easy to map where you want to go and will help guide your digital marketing strategy.

The audit will guide your next step. If you find yourself with only your website, which is not ranking well on search engines, with no social media presence or a page which is inactive and no other meaningful digital presence to your name, it’s time to put a digital marketing strategy into place. For a lot of businesses, digital marketing is still relatively an unfamiliar territory and the thought of it makes your brain crank. More so, you would rather have an expert to put a digital marketing strategy in place for you. Don’t despair, this is where Cyberplex comes in. We offer digital solutions and take the hassle away from you!

How Cyberplex can help you with your Digital Marketing Strategy

Cyberplex offers Digital services and has been for a while. We have a great Digital team that can turn your strategy into reality. Cyberplex currently offers the following services:

Digital Strategy Formulation – We will look at where you are currently and will formulate a winning strategy for you which suits your budget.
Digital Strategy Implementation – We are not only talkers, we also bring your digital strategy into life. Below are some of the services we currently offer:

- Paid Search Advertising – including both Google Adwords and remarketing campaigns. Google adwords campaigns ensure that your business ranks top on google search engine results. We have a certified search specialist in the house so be guaranteed of excellent results.

- Email Marketing – Newsletters remain the number one marketing tool to keep in touch with your existing customers as well as promote your products to new leads. Whether you have a database of 10 or 1000+ customers, our powerful newsletter system is geared to create and send out your newsletters for you as well as manage your mailing lists.

- Social Media Marketing – With an estimate of 850,000 Zimbabweans using Facebook, 337 000 using LinkedIn and 90,000 using Twitter, the impact of social media can’t be ignored. At Cyberplex, we don’t believe in just accumulating followers. We believe in engagement with customers through social media platforms and creating leads. So whether your customers are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus, Cyberplex will help you reach out by creating a social media page for your business, managing your pages and creating targeted campaigns. We even take away the hussle of coming up with the content, we do it for you!

- Search Engine Optimisation – It’s one thing to have a website and it’s another to have a website that works for you. 86% of consumers are using the internet to find local businesses and to find information about businesses, making positioning on search engines very crucial for businesses. There is a saying that goes ‘if you want to hide a dead body, hide it on the second page of google’. Searchers don’t usually go as far as the 2nd page of Google. Search engine optimisation therefore helps your website rank on the 1st page of Google. We will do all your onsite and offsite SEO. If your website is not ranking well, feel free to contact us for a FREE website audit.

- Detailed Reporting – that’s not all, we will also provide you with reporting on all of your digital efforts.

If you require digital marketing services or a FREE Digital audit, please feel free to send an email to sales@cyberplexafrica.com and we will contact you to discuss further.