Digital marketing systems may seem like a complex subject that can leave the non-tech savvy business owners head spinning.

What on earth should you be focusing on to attempt to keep up in this fast paced digital economy?

The information age is well and truly upon us, the competition is fierce, and unfortunately without a solid digital strategy in place, you will be left behind.

These steps are written for coaches, consultant, small business owners and independent professionals that are new to digital marketing, or are looking to systemise, scale up or start up a business.

They are what I believe to be the cornerstone to creating a digital marketing strategy.

I hope these 7 steps help you adapt your business to achieve digital marketing success.

1. Get clear on your brand and target market

Creating a brand is not just about designing a logo.

Your brand is what will create a emotional connection with your clients and keep them loyal (and paying) for your services. When we become connected to brands it is due to our perception that their values somehow align with ours.

Branding is the process of building a brand and managing the perception of the brand to your audience.

There two main categories that go into branding.

Brand Strategy – The intangible features e.g. vision, purpose, values, mission, personality, positioning and promises.

Branding Identity – The tangible expressions e,g, colours, name, shapes, typography, tagline and logo

The more distinct, specific and cohesive these elements are. the stronger brand you can create.

Before developing any of these however, take the time to get to know your target market. Specifically their pain points, challenges, goals and desires, so that you can build a brand that really speaks to the problems that you are seeking to solve for your audience.

2. Build a professional, goal orientated website

When it comes to your online identity, your website is the most important aspect of building trust in your audience. This could be the first impression you make on a potential client, their ability understand what you are about and if they think you could be a good fit for them.

Hands down, the best website platform is WordPress. I wouldn’t build a site anywhere else.

Why? Because it is super customisable and scaleable, so no matter what direction your business takes, you can be sure your site can adapt to its needs. So whether you want to add a membership platform, course or e-commerce store it is totally possible.

Plus, compared to other website building platforms it is much easier to optimise for search. I did a video all about why WordPress is the no brainer website management system on my Instagram story here.

When it comes to the design of your website, user experience is EVERYTHING. More often than not, a user will leave your site if it’s unappealing, hard to navigate, to not to the point or hard to read.

3. Provide consistent free content to your audience

Content creation online can come in various shapes and sizes but can generally be placed in one of these categories:

– Videos: vlogs, educational videos, Interviews

– Images: photos, infographics

– Text: blogs, reports, ebooks

– Audio: podcasts, voice notes

The key is to great content is to have the right message, to the right people, on the right platform, to always aim for quality over quantity, know your audience and give them purposeful information that will ultimately position your business as an expert in your industry, so the decision to work with you s a no-brainer.

In this video I address what Content Marketing is, it’s purpose and the benefits of including content marketing in your business strategy plan.

TIP: Save time and plan ahead, download my FREE 12 Week Content Planner here so you can start planning and scheduling right away. Personally I use later.com to schedule all of my social media content.

4. Generate qualified leads by creating an irresistible high value opt in offer

Now that you have an awesome website, and are producing consistent content to your audience, it is time to create an irresistible & relevant offer that asks for nothing more than your prospects contact details.

This strategy is built on the premise ‘give value first, ask for sale after’.

This could be something such as a free report, tool, resource or eBook, webinar, quiz etc etc. It is anything that the customer will perceive as solving a problem and valuable enough to part with their personal details for.

My approach is to WOW them with something amazing. Make them think ‘if they are giving this away for free, what is their PAID stuff like!’.

Having this mindset of delivering massive value to your audience will: 

– Create a huge amount of goodwill between you and your potential customer

– Position yourself as the expert in your industry

So while everyone is trying to sell, sell, sell and on average only 3% of people will be in ‘buy mode’ at any one time, you’re just over here giving away awesome content to the other 97% of people and guess what, when they move into ‘buy mode’ you’ve already built a rapport and be on their radar.

Plus, by getting these micro-commitments, it allows you to build one of the most valuable assets you will ever have in your online business – an email list.

5. Use email marketing to stay connected to your prospects

Your email list is the only data on the internet that you actually own. Forget about how many followers you have on social media or traffic you can generate to your website. 

Email outperforms every other marketing channel, every time, and one of the biggest mistakes you can make when you start a business is not building an email list from day one!⁠

It allows you to:

– communicate with your community ⁠

– launch new services to hot leads

– reach your customers with ease ⁠

 Once you have them in your list, keep feeding them content that aims to educate, inspire and add value, with mentions of your services when it is relevant and only after providing a handful of actionable information to them first.

6. Leverage rinse and repeat, high converting marketing funnel

A marketing funnel guides your customer’s journey within your business… all the way from the initial stages when someone learns about your services, to their first engagement or enquiry, all the way to the conversion stage where they become a paying client.⁠

If you do this right, you can automate your sales with minimal hands on work, streamline your customer experience and blow your conversion rates through the roof while compounding your brand awareness and authority online.

While the funnel touch points and methods will look a little different for each business, they don’t need to be over complicated.

Take the time to map out the journey your customer takes within your business, find areas of opportunity or weakness to strategically optimise and streamline your processes.

Then, when it is starts to get the results you want…

7. Scale up with income stacking and PPC advertising

 So many people brush paid advertising off as they are worried about losing money, but the beauty with paid ads is that it allows you to get in front of people who are looking for a solution to the problem that your business could solve.

If done correctly, paid ads can be an incredibly effective way to generate more leads into your funnel which should by now, be converting at rates that make paid ads viable AND predictable.

In terms of income stacking, I have written a whole book on this which is called ‘The Simple Guide To Scaling Up’, you can download it for free here.

While this strategy focusses on restructuring your services based on different price points to diversify your income, it uses simple upsell and downsell principles to optimise your ability to reach new markets, retain clients and scale up to multiple 5 figure months.

I hope this helps you know more about the steps you need to take to adapt to the digital age. If you have any questions about creating a personalised marketing strategy for your business, send me a message below to apply for a free consultation.