4 Critical Steps to Build a Digital Marketing Strategy

• Marketing doesn’t work for me.

• Social media is not our thing.

• My team does everything, social, newsletters, SEO but we don’t see any results…

These are all comments that I have heard many times from companies in all sizes. When it comes to marketing, many of them tend to jump straight on planning their social media calendar, designing new web pages, creating newsletters, producing new content, etc. Trying everything all at once and not seeing the desired results, they got demotivated and thought digital marketing did not work and it was such a waste of time and resource. But when asked why they did what they did, a lot of them couldn’t tell me. The common mistake these companies made was that they did not to have a thorough strategy in the first place.

The key of digital marketing is being strategic, consistent, and adaptive. Therefore, it is very important to slow down and build a thorough marketing strategy before you dive into implementation.

In my 10 year in the game, helping start ups, small medium enterprises, big corporates, and non-profit organizations, I have compiled the core step process that all digital marketing strategies should follow. I will list out additional items for advanced strategies so please keep reading if you are looking for a guide.

1. CLARITY

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The first step of a digital marketing strategy or any business strategy is to make sure you understand your business and its current internal and external state. This will set the direction of your whole plan. In this step, you will need to review your business in a higher level and see where it fits in a bigger picture of the industry landscape and other competitors. Then zoom in your internal factors, your strengths, your weaknesses, the resources you have that help distinguish your offerings with others. A common framework in this step is the SWOT Analysis. (Check out how to do a SWOT analysis here.)

By having an overall business health check, you will have a clear vision on where you want to drive your business towards. This will set a strong foundation for your digital marketing strategy or any other sub strategies within it.

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2. AUDIENCE

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Now that you see your business in a big picture and define your business goals and roadmap, it is now time to understand your ideal customers. Do you have a clear image of who they are, what they do, their interest, shopping behaviors, or the problems they have in life? This step is very important because without understanding who you are going to communicate, all of your marketing effort could be wasted. Imagine you have a sustainable fashion brand for young professionals but people who clicked on your ads are teenagers who are interested in fast fabs, and the worst part, you are paying their clicks on your ads. You get my point here right?

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3. STRATEGY

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You now know where you want to go, resources you have and your targeted customers, you are ready for the strategy part of the process. Depends on what you need, you can create an overall digital strategy or any specific strategy that focuses on certain channels. In this step, keep in mind each channel serves different types of people they go to different platforms for different purposes. For example, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Tiktok are all social media but people tend to go to LinkedIn for educational content vs Instagram or tiktok for entertainment. Make sure you assign your chosen channels to suitable purposes.
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4. CREATIVITY AND GROWTH

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The exciting part of digital marketing is that it is not a set it and forget it type of game. Digital era, social media, people’s expectations are changing rapidly. The key sauce to success is to watch your campaigns closely, use the right metrics to measure your success, look out for new trends, and don’t be afraid to try new things and revise your strategy accordingly.

Here are some of the resources I usually check for digital marketing news and trends:

• The Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2021 (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
• Marketing Trends to Watch in 2021, According to 21 Experts (Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-predictions-experts )
• 9 Social Media Trends Marketers Should Watch in 2021 [Data + Expert Tips] (Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-predictions-2017 )
• Marketing Brew Newsletter: https://www.morningbrew.com/marketing/r?kid=353663e1
• Adweek: https://www.adweek.com
• AspenCore Newsletter for B2B in the electronics industry: https://bitly.com/AspenCoreInsider

The most important thing is to have fun and enjoy the process. You will learn something new along the way.


Developing a digital marketing can take a lot of time and effort but it is a very crucial step before you dive into execution. A. can help you and your team develop an comprehensive and actionable digital marketing strategy to help achieve your desired business goals.



Contact me to book a time and let’s build something great together.

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