We’ve all been in the position where we’ve been a part of a company or worked with a client that has a bunch of Digital Marketing efforts but nothing is really on the same page – it’s totally run on a “set it up and let’s see where it goes” mentality. Companies come to us with awesome services or products but their marketing doesn’t align with their goals or even target the right audience. So, to help you out, we compiled a simple 5-step run-through on how to improve your Digital Marketing so your business saves time, effort and money.

Step 1: Analyze your current situation

Before you jump into launching a bunch of different Affiliate Marketing initiatives, look at your current situation first. What am I doing right now? Am I targeting the right audience? How well is it working? How much am I spending (time & money)? What are my competitors doing? And, how are my competitors doing? Basically, audit yourself. This will give you a sense of where you are as a business up to this point in time. If you don’t analyze your current situation, how can you determine what to do in the future? Once you analyze – and be honest with yourself when you answer these questions – then you can aim in the right direction.

Step 2: Set specific goals

Part 1: Determine your goals

Once you’ve analyzed your situation (and you’ve been brutally honest with yourself) then you can begin to decide what you want to achieve. Hold on a second though, don’t just make these goals “I want to make more money” or “I want to sign more clients”; that’s too simple. You want to determine the issue or what you want to get better at and then pick a goal or a series of goals that you want to achieve that will ultimately lead to your main business objectives. You want to include measurable outcomes related to improving your services that will then lead to making more money or signing more clients. Here’s an example of what that means:

Since we’re talking about Social Media Marketing Services, you might notice when you analyze your current situation that an issue is your website is ranking poorly in search engines. You ran a test on SEM Rush and you’re only ranking for 7 keywords, have no backlinks, and you’re getting little or no traffic to your website each month. The problem is your website could be part of your sales funnel, or maybe you have a great online booking system that no one is using. So you somehow need to generate more website traffic, and SEO, based on the results of your test, is a big issue.

Now that you’ve determined the issue, it’s time to set a target. In this case, you want to generate more website traffic. From there you should ask yourself a few questions and then set your goals.

how am I going to do this? This should be an actionable tactic, “What am I going to do in order to generate more website traffic?”

what’s my intended target and when do I want to get there? This question needs to include a specific target that is quantifiable and is in a reasonable timeframe.

How am I going to measure this? You want to determine some KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) – essentially, how you are going to gauge your success and then create some measurable outcomes. Maybe you want to improve to 30 keywords and build 10 backlinks over 6 months. Or maybe you want to do that plus increase online sales by 20% or get 10 more online bookings each month.

Part 2: Make your goals SMART

Once you’ve answered those three questions, write your goal.

Specific? Yes. You want to make SEO Services adjustments to help boost your traffic by 50%, get 10 more online bookings per month (or 20 more leads if you’d prefer the sales example) and you want to do it over 6 months.

Measurable? Yes. You have a couple of KPIs (key performance indicators) that you can measure to see if you’re on track. In this example, you’re going to have to determine what percentage increase in web traffic is going to help you reach your monthly sales or bookings goals.

Attainable? Yes. Your goal isn’t outrageous; it’s not aimed too high in too short a timeframe. You also have tools at your disposal to determine your KPIs.

Relevant? Yes, it’s hugely relevant. SEO is a big part of Digital Marketing and if you’re not getting seen on search engines or showing up on the fifth page, then that’s an immediate red flag and a big reason why you’re not generating more leads or getting more online bookings.

Time-based? Yes. 6 months is a realistic time frame, but note that if you’re setting a more ambitious goal to make sure to adjust accordingly especially if it’s to do with SEO because improvements don’t happen overnight.

Step 3: Manage, track, evaluate, repeat.

You want to use adequate tools to manage and track your Digital Marketing campaigns closely because in Digital Marketing Services you have the ability to edit-at-will, but it can also get away from you quickly. Now that doesn’t mean be lazy. Instead, use accessibility to constantly improve. And that’s where evaluation comes in. At IdeaZone, we like to segment our Digital Marketing efforts into months, track our work, and do evaluations on the 1st of every month. That way we can look back at the previous month and see where we can improve areas like our AdWords campaigns, Social Media Management, and Social Media advertising (Platforms like Google AdWords have a built-in organization system for tracking progress, and for Social Media Management we recommend using Hootsuite). Finally, the accessibility of Digital Marketing allows you to stay on top of all your campaigns so if Patches O’Houlihan throws a wrench at you, you can quickly fix the problem.

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If you have any questions on want more information about Digital Marketing or our services, contact us at DigitalGYB. We provide a wide variety of Digital Marketing Services, Website Development, and Advertising & Design services.