How do you start with Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is a buzzword now. Everyone wants to do it, but at the same time everyone is concerned about what it could do for them. As a result most companies test a little bit of advertising on Facebook by opening a page and very few actually find tangible business results. But, there is a better way.
You might have a large business, or you might be the brand manager of the biggest brand in the country, or own a food cart, or just a lemonade stand. No matter what size your business is, following are the questions you need answered before you start any form of digital marketing.
What is the ultimate goal from digital advertising?
Your ultimate goal is most likely sales. But before a steady stream of sales can come, what steps are needed to make people purchase from you. For an online shop, the first step might be to build trust on their quality or speed of service. For a fast food shop, the first step might be to create curiosity about their menu. Every business journey towards sale conversion is different. Your first purpose is to identify those steps to conversion which will lead to your ultimate goal.
Who are the customers and what is known about them?
The more people you talk to, the better your chances of success. Should this be axiomatic? Absolutely not. You do not have unlimited budget and thus it is absolutely crucial to talk to only those people who are more likely to convert to your customer. If your product appeals to fashion conscious girls, find out more about them. What sites are they most likely going to? What kind of things do they talk about on Facebook? When do they stay online? And here is the best part of digital marketing. Thanks to Facebook Ad Manager, Google Trends and Adwords Keyword and Display Planner anyone can find out a lot about their target audiences, their interests and their numbers in the online world.
 What  strategy should be followed to achieve the goal with target audience?
This is the most crucial step. Now that you know your audience and your goals, you can create a strategy. The key is to build gradual conversion funnels, because digital marketing lets you create additional consumer moments after the first contact. Let us demonstrate with an example. During the launch of 3G in the country, one telecom decided not to do a heavy traditional media burst and instead just focused on digital advertising. But there was a clear goal in place. They wanted their existing consumers in their 3G coverage areas to get a taste of 3G. So the steps were: let people interested in internet, 3G and smartphones know that this telecom is launching 3G and they can try it. Then let the interested people get a trial. Along the way, get them to spread the word through social media and their friends so that they get a large pool of people. And then utilize the database to find more consumers like them.
What activities will serve this strategy?
Finally, planning activities counts. For the previous telecom example, the activities were as follows. For awareness, search ads, banner ads and Facebook ads were ran on 3G and smartphone, targeting internet enthusiasts. They also received tailored content communicating the upcoming launch and free trials. When they were interested and clicked they went to a website to sign up for free trials. After signing up they were offered 50x more trial data if they shared on Facebook and invited their friends. And the created database was later put into Facebook to create lookalike audiences who were similar to the ones interested. The new audiences were used for future communication targeting efficiency. As you can see, every activity was designed to serve towards the ultimate purpose of trial and conversion. The same needs to happen for your business and campaign.
Measure results, measure more results and then measure a bit more
Every step of the above mentioned process is measurable. You need to measure the efficiency of your campaign by analyzing the efficiency of each conversion step. Are your ads not getting enough clicks? Which are the ads that are running better? Why? Learn from it and implement the same in the others. You can measure everything on digital marketing including which channel or communication is giving you the lowest cost/conversion. Measure everything, learn from it and test your leanings to make your current campaign better. Now you are ready for some good results.
The above is a simplistic look at digital advertising. However, one thing remains clear, if your strategy requires you to have things beyond just one digital channel, you need to set up those elements to get actual results. Otherwise, disappointment will be your most common feeling. And don't worry about budgets, sometimes even Tk 2,000 is good enough.
The writer is a digital marketing expert and heads the award winning digital agency, Cookie Jar, of the Asiatic 360 group. Email:
[email protected]