Identifying the Right Digital Marketing Channels for Your Business

Identifying the right digital marketing channel(s) for your business can feel like an overwhelming process. With a plethora of options ranging from search engine optimisation (SEO) and content marketing to pay-per-click (PPC) and digital PR (DPR), you may be unsure which channels offer the most potential.

In today’s highly competitive market, it can be tempting to jump straight in and try them all or stick to a single approach that you’ve used before. However, both of these approaches can result in squandered resources, time and budget. Fortunately, there is another way.

To get the most out of your digital marketing efforts, it’s important to pause, step back and reflect. We recommend employing a strategic approach, one that focuses on the core component of your business: your customers. This involves taking a deep dive into your target audience to uncover their preferences and behaviours.

In this guide, we’ll outline the key areas to consider when identifying and selecting the right digital marketing channels. This eight-step process will enable you to create effective, targeted marketing strategies that reach your audience, yield results and meet your business goals.

Here’s what you need to know.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Dive Into Customer Personas
• 2. Conduct a Brand Review
• 3. Carry Out a Competitor Analysis
• 4. Assess Your Budget
• 5. Select Your Marketing Channels
• 6. Forecasting & Goal Setting
• 7. Complete Pre-Campaign Prep
• 8. Analyse Your Results

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1. Dive Into Customer Personas

The best place to start when identifying potential digital marketing channels is your customers. After all, an effective digital marketing strategy is one that reaches your audience, resonates with their needs and influences their behaviour.

Creating customer personas is the ideal way to understand your target audience and get to know them on a deeper level. These personas can reveal the best ways to engage with your customers while helping you understand who they are, what they care about and where they spend their time online.

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What Are Customer Personas?

Customer personas – also known as marketing, audience and buyer personas – are a snapshot of your customer base. They are research-informed profiles that provide a visual representation of your audience, unlock details about their background and highlight insights about their motivations.

The most effective personas are built using data on the real people who engage with your business. They encompass a wide range of demographic information such as age, gender and location as well as psychographic details like interests, values and pain points.

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Why Are Customer Personas Important?

Customer personas are important because they enable you to devise strategies that appeal to your audience. They provide the information you need to select the right marketing channels, helping to maximise your budget, effort and resources.

Segmenting your audience into distinctive profiles allows you to outline the wants, concerns, unique characteristics and behaviours of each customer type. These insights are essential for creating a tailored approach that targets your customers at each stage of the buyer’s journey (i.e., the marketing funnel).

The result? A strong digital presence that has the power to create real connection and build brand loyalty.

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How to Create Customer Personas

1. Gather customer data: Start by collecting information about your existing customers via your website analytics, social media and surveys.
2. Identify patterns: Look for commonalities among your customers such as age, gender, interests, preferences and preferred communication channels.
3. Segment your audience: Use shared characteristics and behaviours to segment similar customers into distinct groups – these will form the basis of your personas.
4. Find their pain points: Identify the needs and pain points of your customers. You can do this by reading online comments, going through reviews or asking for feedback.
5. Incorporate stats and visuals: Make your personas feel realistic and engaging by adding stats and visuals. This could include their name, age and a photograph.
6. Tell their story: Compile your research into a bio that outlines their back story, who they are, where they are from and what they are looking for.

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Useful Questions for Persona Work

Struggling to compile your personas? Here are some questions that can assist when carrying out persona work:

• Demographic data:
  • What is their age range?
  • What is their gender?
  • Where do they live?
  • What is their marital status?
  • What is their level of education?
  • How much do they earn?

• Behavioural data:
  • What are their interests, hobbies and leisure activities?
  • What are their goals and aspirations?
  • What are their values and beliefs?
  • What challenges do they face?
  • What motivates them to make purchasing decisions?
  • What are their purchasing habits and patterns?
  • How do they typically research products or services?
  • Where do they go to find information? E.g., search engines, social media, forums, etc.
  • How do they prefer to communicate? E.g., phone, email, social media, etc.
  • Which are their favourite social media platforms?
  • What devices do they use? E.g., mobile, desktop, tablet etc.
  • How do they consume online content? I.e., do they prefer reading blogs or watching videos?

• Customer journey:
  • What are their key touchpoints from the awareness stage to the buying stage?
  • What barriers or objections could they encounter?
  • What does their ideal buying journey look like?
  • How can your business address their needs and pain points at each stage of the funnel?

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2. Conduct a Brand Review

Now that you know more about your customers, it’s time to take a closer look at your brand. One of the best ways to do this is by conducting a brand review.

Also known as a brand audit, a brand review is a methodical process that reveals the health of your business. It dives into every aspect of your brand, highlighting what you’re doing right, where you can improve and any additional opportunities.

Think of your brand review as a science experiment. It tests your hypothesis – your current brand concept – and unveils how your customer base perceives and experiences your business.

In other words, a brand review places your business under the microscope. It enables you to view your brand through an impartial lens so that you can better understand your messaging and positioning.

These insights allow you to make data-driven improvements that set your business up for success. This could include strengthening your brand identity with clear and cohesive messaging, writing content that resonates with your audience, or identifying the marketing channels that could help you reach and engage with your customers.

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How to Conduct a Brand Audit

1. Set goals and define objectives: Outline the objectives of your review and identify which aspects of your brand you want to improve. This will help you to enact real change and track your progress.
2. Find your data: Collect relevant information and data about your brand via your website analytics, content engagement metrics, sales data, social media presence and customer feedback.
3. Assess your branding: Evaluate your brand’s visual identity, including its logo, colour palette, typography and imagery. Assess how well each of these elements align with your brand values, target audience and overall positioning.
4. Evaluate your messaging: Review your brand’s messaging across various channels and touchpoints. This includes website copy, social media posts and customer communications. Focus on clarity, consistency and relevancy.
5. Analyse your positioning: Consider how your brand compares to your competitors. Analyse your unique selling proposition to strengthen your position and discover competitive advantages.
6. Review customer perception: Gather feedback from customers via reviews, social media interactions and surveys. This allows you to understand how your customers perceive your brand.
7. Identify gaps and opportunities: Compare your brand’s current image to your desired image. What do you need to refine, enhance or add? Assess gaps and prioritise opportunities based on budget, potential impact and objectives.
8. Develop a list of actionable recommendations: Use your findings to develop an action plan. Depending on your objectives, your actions may include updating your visual assets, refining your messaging or adjusting your marketing strategies.
9. Implement changes: Implement your recommendations, making sure that changes are consistent across all channels and touchpoints. This will reinforce your brand identity and help you get the most out of your audit.
10. Monitor and review: Track changes and measure progress against your objectives. It’s important to regularly revisit and review your audit to ensure your branding remains relevant, competitive and aligned with your business goals.

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3. Carry Out a Competitor Analysis

With your brand audit complete, the next phase involves conducting a competitor analysis. Competitor or competitive analysis is the process of evaluating your competition in order to gain a competitive edge. This is done by analysing the products, services, sales, positioning and marketing strategies of your competitors.

A competitor analysis is an effective way to benchmark your brand’s performance; it allows you to assess your competitors’ metrics and market share relative to your own. It’s also an opportunity to dig into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, avoid similar pitfalls and identify gaps in your strategy.

By the end of your analysis, you will have a better understanding of your competitors’ positioning, offerings and performance. You can then leverage this information to differentiate your brand, elevate your messaging and inform marketing channel selection.

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How to Do Competitive Analysis

1. Identify your competitors: Compile a list of direct and indirect competitors. Include a comprehensive range of established companies, market leaders and emerging companies – add local competitors if you run a local business. Tip: tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can help with competitor discovery.
2. Compile competitor profiles: Compile data about each competitor into a spreadsheet. Include columns such as target audience, market share, estimated revenue, pricing and marketing channels. Add further columns for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – you will fill these in during stage five.
3. Analyse products, services and pricing: Evaluate the features, quality and unique selling points of your competitors’ products or services. How do they differ from your own? What problems are they solving? How does their pricing compare? Take note of how often they offer discounts or sales.
4. Review promotion, marketing and distribution: Assess your competitors’ marketing tactics, advertising campaigns and branding. How are they promoting and talking about their products or services? Which channels are they utilising and how effective are they? What types of content are gaining traction?
5. Complete your SWOT analysis: Identify your competitors’ key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). An effective SWOT analysis assesses your brand and your competitors. Ask yourself questions like: where are we outperforming our competitors? Where are we falling behind? What gaps can we fill? What are we unprepared for?
6. Develop and implement your plan: After benchmarking your performance against your competitors, turn these findings into an action plan. Implement your actions based on budget, impact and opportunity.
7. Track your results: With your changes in place, track your results by measuring them against your goals and metrics.
8. Monitor and adapt: Continuously monitor your competitors’ activities, market trends and industry developments. Your competitors never stand still. Understanding their position and marketing strategies can help you stay ahead.

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4. Assess Your Budget

The next step of this process involves assessing your budget. Knowing how much you can afford to spend – and where you would like to spend it – is essential. Without setting your figures, you risk aimlessly funnelling your finances or spreading your budget too thin.

Assessing your budget is vital for strategic and effective resource allocation. It enables you to prioritise your marketing channels based on audience reach as well as the potential return on investment (ROI).

When analysing and setting your budget, remember that spending the same amount as your competitors is not always feasible, advisable or necessary. Your budget should align with your business goals, growth objectives and market position – the key is to focus on maximising your resources.

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Tips for Setting Your Budget

Here are some tips and things to consider when setting your budget:

• • Consider past successes: What channels have you already used and how have your campaigns/strategies performed? Where are you getting the most leads and the highest levels of engagement?
  • Calculate your cost per lead (CPL): Do you know how much you currently spend per lead? Whether you have been focusing on SEO and email marketing or expanding into social media and PPC, CPL is an important metric for determining the efficiency and cost of your marketing.

• Determine your conversion rate: How much does it cost you to turn a lead into a sale? Determine your conversion rate by dividing your number of sales by the number of leads. You can find conversion rate figures in Google Analytics under Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

• Factor in seasonality: Your budget may vary across the year. For example, you may increase your spend in the run up to Black Friday or Christmas. Factor in seasonality and adjust your budget to account for fluctuations in demand.
• Remember to stay flexible: Maintaining flexibility is essential to ensure your business can adapt to changes in the market or consumer behaviour. Remember to plan for the unexpected and leave some wiggle room in your budget.
• Be prepared to test and learn: Whether you want to branch out into a new marketing channel or expand your current content strategy, be prepared to test and learn. You may need to experiment with different budget allocations and channels to identify what works best for your business.

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5. Select Your Marketing Channels

With your personas, brand audit, competitor analysis and budget in place, it’s finally time to select your marketing channels.

Your marketing channels are the touchstones for your customer interactions. Get it right and they have the power to generate new leads, boost brand recognition and grow your market share.

You’ve probably heard plenty of sayings about first impressions and when it comes to your marketing channels, it seems these adages are true. According to research conducted by Zoom, 72% of customers will tell at least six people about a good first interaction with a business.

But to make a good first impression, you need to reach your audience in the right way.

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Types of Digital Marketing Channels

Here are six of the most popular digital marketing channels:

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of optimising your website and its content with the goal of improving its ranking and visibility within organic (non-paid) search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s considered a free or low-cost marketing channel because it does not include or require advertising.

An effective SEO strategy can offer long-term benefits for your business. This includes increased website traffic, improved user experience and higher conversion rates. It can also build brand awareness and help you outrank your competitors – both of which could capture a larger share of the market and attract more potential customers.

Here are the key elements of any SEO strategy:

• Keyword research: Speak the same language as your audience by identifying relevant keywords and phrases. These are the terms your audience uses when searching for products or services.
• On-page optimisation: Use your keywords to optimise your on-page elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, headings and content. This helps to improve your visibility within the SERPs and drive traffic.
• Content creation: Develop high-quality, relevant and engaging content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience.
• Technical SEO: Boost your website’s crawlability and indexability. This includes optimising page speed, mobile-friendliness, indexing, page redirects and fixing technical errors.
• Link building: Secure high-quality backlinks from reputable and relevant websites. This can improve your website’s authority, credibility and trust in the eyes of search engines.
• User experience (UX): Create a user-friendly experience by improving website navigation, structure and usability. This includes optimising for mobile devices.

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Content Marketing

Content marketing goes hand-in-hand with SEO. It’s a form of online marketing that focuses on the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and engaging content that’s designed to attract, retain and convert your audience. This includes written, visual and audio content such as landing pages, videos and podcasts.

Good content marketing is about more than churning out blog posts. It’s about producing content that addresses customer needs, interests and pain points at every step of their buying journey. Strong content has the ability to resonate, make a customer feel understood and turn a browser into a buyer.

Here are the basics of content marketing:

• Know your audience: Understanding your audience’s demographics, interests, preferences, concerns and pain points is key to creating content that resonates.
• Develop your content strategy: Create a content strategy that aligns with your target audience, business goals and brand identity. Leverage your keyword research and develop a scheduled content plan.
• Create your content: Produce high-quality, relevant and engaging content that educates, entertains or inspires. Focus on providing value, solving problems and helping them progress to the next stage of the funnel.
• Optimise for search: Optimise your content for search engines to improve its visibility within the SERPs and drive organic traffic to your website. Remember search intent and avoid keyword stuffing.
• Distribute and promote: Publish your content and share via different channels such as social media, email and ads. Add visuals to enhance shareability and encourage engagement.
• Monitor and audit: Track your content using analytics tools and measure against your goals. Regularly audit and update your content to ensure it remains relevant and effective.

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Digital PR (DPR)

Digital PR (DPR) is a form of marketing that aims to manage, enhance and build a brand’s reputation, credibility and visibility. It involves a multi-channel approach encompassing digital media outlets, social media and content marketing in order to generate publicity and engagement.

Ideation is the cornerstone of digital PR: your idea can be the difference between success and failure. This idea is then transformed into compelling content, stories and messaging that attract media attention, social shares and backlinks.

A successful PR campaign can help brands reach a broader audience, amplify their message and establish trust.

Here are the basics of digital PR:

• Audience research: Understanding your target audience’s demographics, interests, preferences and behaviours is key. This information allows you to tailor your ideation and campaign to ensure maximum resonance.
• PR ideation: A good idea is essential for generating clicks, securing headlines and sparking a viral sensation. Consider current trends, use tools to collect data and arrange brainstorming sessions to generate your winning ideas.
• Content creation: Write engaging, shareable content such as press releases, articles, blog posts, infographics and interactive media.
• Media outreach: Reach out to journalists, bloggers, influencers and online media outlets. Creating a compelling pitch can help you secure coverage and backlinks.
• Social media engagement: Engage with your audience on social media platforms by sharing content, participating in conversations and responding to comments. Fostering a sense of community can drive your campaign.
• Measurement and analysis: Track the impact of your digital PR efforts using metrics such as media mentions, social shares, website traffic, backlinks and brand sentiment.

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Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a form of paid digital marketing. It’s a model that charges advertisers a fee each time their ad is clicked – hence the term ‘pay-per-click.’

PPC advertising allows you to target specific demographics based on search queries, interests and behaviours. This is done by creating ad campaigns that are tailored to your audience, with ads displayed to users who are actively searching for products or services that are related to yours.

Because of this, PPC can be an effective means of reaching your target audience. It also offers instant visibility as well as the ability to control budgets and optimise campaigns in real time.

Here’s how PPC advertising works:

• Pick your platform: Choose to place ads on search engines like Google or opt for social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
• Set your budget: Depending on the length of your campaign, you can set a daily or monthly budget. You can adjust your bids over time to optimise for ad position, click-through rates and cost-per-acquisition.
• Select your keywords: Find out what your audience is searching for and select which keywords you want to target.
• Set up your campaign: Set up your PPC campaign, including objectives, targeting parameters and ad formats.
• Create your ad: Develop compelling ad copy and include visuals that grab attention. Make sure you include unique value propositions and selling points that entice users to click.
• Analyse and adjust: Monitor your campaign performance and optimise by adjusting your targeting, ad copy, bids and budget.

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Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing (SMM) utilises social media platforms to improve brand awareness, reach a wider audience and connect with your followers. Some of the most popular platforms include Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Social media marketing works by creating and sharing content such as posts, images, videos, stories, live streams and reels. It’s a great way to encourage interactions by getting involved with current trends – especially because the average social media user spends 143 minutes per day on their favourite apps.

Here’s what you need to know about social media marketing:

• Identify your audience: Dig into your audience’s demographics to identify their preferences, pain points and values. This includes their chosen social media platforms and their favourite content formats.
• Define your goals: Set clear goals and objectives such as increasing brand awareness, driving traffic or generating leads.
• Assess your competitors: Analyse your competitors’ social media presence. Which platforms are they using? How are they engaging with their followers? Which are their most popular posts?
• Select your social media platforms: Choose the most relevant social media platforms based on your target audience, industry and marketing objectives.
• Create your content: Produce your shareable content such as posts, images, videos, reels and stories. Ensure each piece of content is engaging, relevant and aligns with your brand identity.
• Engage and interact: Actively engage with your audience by responding to comments, messages and mentions. Make sure responses are authentic, consistent and reflect your brand identity across all channels.

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Email Marketing

Email marketing is as simple as it sounds. It works by collecting email addresses from website visitors, customers and leads, and using them to build an email list. With your email list in place, you can then send targeted messages and campaigns to your subscribers.

Want to share a new blog post? Promote a new product line? Or turn your one-time purchasers into loyal customers? Email marketing is a low-cost, convenient and accessible means of reaching your existing customer base.

Here’s how to start email marketing:

• Build your email list: Create a database of email addresses from website visitors, customers and leads. Methods could include opt-in forms, pop-ups or lead-generation activities such as guides, ebooks and discount codes.
• Choose your email marketing platform: Select an email marketing platform that offers features like list management, email templates, automation and analytics.
• Segment your audience: Divide your email list into segments based on demographics, behaviour, interests or purchase history. This will allow you to send targeted, personalised messages to specific groups.
• Design tailored emails: Use eye-catching visuals, clear and concise copy, and compelling calls-to-action. Make sure your emails are mobile-responsive and feature intriguing subject lines.
• Create memorable content: Develop memorable, valuable and helpful content for your email campaigns. This includes newsletters, promotions, announcements, educational content and interactive elements.
• Automate email sequences: Set up automated email sequences to deliver timely and relevant messages based on subscriber actions. This includes welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders or follow-up emails.

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6. Forecasting and Goal Setting

Regardless of which marketing channel(s) you choose, the best results require meticulous forecasting and goal setting. Having a set of objectives will guide your strategies and provide a way to measure the success of your marketing efforts.

Every goal you create provides direction. Whether you’re focusing on SEO, social media or email marketing, having clearly defined objectives is essential for guiding your campaigns and evaluating their effectiveness.

Forecasting helps you plan for the future, ensuring that your marketing channel strategies are aligned with your overarching business goals. This is vital for resource allocation, maximising your marketing budget and delivering sustainable growth.

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SMART Goals for Digital Marketing

One of the simplest ways to set measurable objectives is by using the SMART goal method. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. These five qualities can assist in creating a roadmap that gets from point A to point B.

Here are some examples of SMART goals for your digital marketing channels.

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Example 1: Increase Website Traffic

• Specific: Increase organic website traffic by 25%.
• Measurable: Track website traffic using analytics such as organic traffic, unique visitors, page views, bounce rate and keyword ranking.
• Achievable: Implement best SEO practices, create high-quality content that meets user needs at each stage of the funnel and implement tech SEO recommendations to boost website performance.
• Relevant: Increasing website traffic aligns with an overarching goal of improving online visibility and attracting potential customers.
• Time-bound: Achieve the specified increase within a timeframe of six months.

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Example 2: Grow Social Media Engagement

• Specific: Increase social media engagement by 30%.
• Measurable: Monitor social media metrics such as likes, comments, shares and impressions to measure the percentage increase.
• Achievable: Post engaging content regularly, interact with followers, run contests or polls, get involved with trends and collaborate with influencers.
• Relevant: Growing social media engagement helps to build brand awareness, foster relationships with followers, drive website traffic and conversions.
• Time-bound: Achieve the specified increase within the next quarter.

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Example 3: Improve Email Marketing Conversion Rates

• Specific: Increase email marketing conversion rates by 20%
• Measurable: Track conversion rates from email campaigns using email marketing software.
• Achievable: Create compelling subject lines, design engaging email content, segment your email lists, encourage email sign up with a discount and use automation.
• Relevant: Improving email marketing conversion rates boosts lead generation, increases conversion rates and grows brand loyalty.
• Time-bound: Achieve the specified increase within three months.

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7. Complete Pre-Campaign Prep

With your channel(s) selected and your goals set, you’re almost ready to get started. But before you can launch your campaign, you need to complete your pre-campaign prep. This includes conducting research, creating your strategy and preparing your assets.

Think of planning your marketing campaigns in the same way you would approach buying a property. You have to know what you can afford, find out what you can buy with your budget, sort your survey and go through a lot of paperwork. It’s arduous and intensive but it’s also a necessity to negate risk and find the right property.

Your pre-campaign prep works in the same way. While it can be elaborate and time consuming, this stage ensures your campaigns are researched, data-driven and relevant. It’s this informed decision making that helps you create campaigns that are well-executed, targeted and meet your goals.

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Key Steps for Pre-Campaign Prep

Each of your digital marketing channels requires meticulous research, planning and strategising. Here are some of the key steps involved in preparing your SEO, content, PR, PPC, social media and email marketing campaigns.

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SEO Campaign Prep

• Run a technical SEO audit to ensure website functionality and performance.
• Create a list of recommendations and set objectives.
• Keyword research to identify relevant search terms.
• Backlink analysis and outreach planning.
• Competitor analysis to identify opportunities and gaps.
• Plan on-page optimisation including metadata and website content.
• Plan off-page optimisation to increase backlinks.
• Content creation and optimisation strategy.

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Content Campaign Prep

1. Conduct a content audit to assess existing content assets, identify gaps and areas for improvement.
2. Dig into customer data to understand their preferences, behaviours and pain points.
3. Develop a content strategy that aligns with business goals and target audience needs.
4. Analyse keyword research with a focus on search intent.
5. Collaborate with other teams, including SEO and PR, to ensure content is crawlable, indexable and aligns with PR activity.
6. Plan a content calendar to target your audience throughout their buyer journey.
7. Produce a content promotion strategy for distribution and amplification.
8. Optimise/create high-quality, engaging and relevant content such as landing pages, guides, blog posts, infographics, videos, etc.

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PR Campaign Prep

1. Define your objectives and analyse your target audience’s needs, pain points and preferences.
2. Assess brand values, stories and products/services.
3. Find interesting research or gather data via surveys.
4. Track industry news and trends for timely stories and pitching opportunities.
5. Ideation and brainstorming for campaign concepts, angles and hooks.
6. Finalise your idea and create your plan.
7. Select your channels and develop an outreach strategy.
8. Identify and establish relationships with target media outlets, journalists and influencers.

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PPC Campaign Prep

1. Define your PPC goals and target audience.
2. Keyword research to identify target keywords for your ad campaigns.
3. Competitor analysis to understand market trends and benchmarks.
4. Budget allocation and bidding strategy planning.
5. Select your channels – e.g., Google Ads and Meta Ads.
6. Ad copywriting and creative design including landing page creation.
7. Create your bidding strategy.
8. Set up your audience targeting.

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Social Media Campaign Prep

1. Audience research to understand demographics, interests and behaviours.
2. Social media listening and monitoring to understand trends and conversations.
3. Social media audit and competitor analysis.
4. Set up social media accounts or optimise existing profiles.
5. Content calendar development to ensure consistent posting.
6. Engagement strategy to foster community and relationships.
7. Creation of engaging visual and written content.
8. Plan and schedule posts using social media management tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite and Sprout Social.

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Email Marketing Campaign Prep

• Capture email and segment based on demographics, behaviour or preferences.
• Determine your goals and objectives.
• Choose your email marketing platform – popular options include Mailchimp, MailerLite and Brevo.
• Design email templates and create compelling content including text, images and CTAs.
• Set up marketing automation workflows for triggered emails.
• Test email deliverability and rendering across different devices.
• A/B test subject lines, content and send times.
• Ensure compliance with GDPR and email regulations by obtaining consent and providing opt-out mechanisms.

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8. Analyse Your Results

The final stage of any digital marketing campaign involves measuring and analysing your results. This is done by tracking your selected metrics in order to assess the performance of your channels, gain actionable insights and drive continuous improvement.

First, we recommend monitoring performance during your campaigns. Whether you’re optimising content, launching a PR campaign or an ad campaign, real-time tracking provides the data required to stay agile, identify issues and tweak your approach. This could include refining your messaging, adjusting your hooks or fine tuning your targeting parameters.

Second, schedule time to analyse results at the end of your campaign. Compare actual outcomes with your predefined SMART goals and determine if your channels are meeting expectations, exceeding targets or falling short. You can also calculate your return on investment (ROI) by comparing the overall cost against the amount of generated leads, revenue and conversions.

Ongoing monitoring is key to ensuring your channels deliver; it can be the difference between a channel that soars and one that fails to maintain momentum. Post-campaign analysis is vital for elevating your future strategies; it can offer further insights about your audience, highlight additional opportunities and inform budget allocation.

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Set Up Key Events in Google Analytics

There are a variety of tools and metrics you can use to assess the performance of your digital marketing channels. Many of these – such as Semrush, Sprout Social and MailChimp – have been mentioned in the sections above. However, there is one tool that we always use and recommend: Google Analytics.

Google Analytics (GA) is widely considered to be one of the best tools for analysing results across different marketing channels. With its robust reporting capabilities and customisable dashboards, you can find comprehensive insights covering website traffic, user behaviour and conversion metrics.

One of the simplest ways to track your marketing efforts is by utilising GA’s Key Events. Previously known as conversions, a ‘Key Event’ is any action that you determine to be a measure of success for your marketing channels and business. This could include sign ups, submitting forms or generating leads.

You can configure your Key Events to track your most important actions. When a ‘Key Event’ is completed, this is recorded in Google Analytics. You can view these completions within your GA reports and use this information to determine the effectiveness of your channels.

Click here for the latest guidance on how to set up your Key Events.

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Capture Your Customers with Multichannel Marketing at Another Concept

From customer personas and competitor analysis to budget considerations and pre-campaign prep, there are a variety of factors to consider when selecting your marketing channels. The exciting news? There’s no need to restrict your business to just one.

Here at Another Concept, we always recommend using a multichannel approach. Why? Because multichannel marketing offers greater flexibility, increased reach and more opportunities to enhance the customer experience.

When done right, multichannel marketing is the perfect symphony. It offers a cohesive approach that complements different stages of the sales funnel, ensuring you hit the right note at every step of the buying process. For example, you could use SEO, PPC or social media to encourage email sign ups, then follow up with automated email campaigns that are designed to turn leads into loyal customers.

Interested in orchestrating your own multichannel masterpiece? Then get in touch with our team today. Speak directly with our experts and start designing a multichannel approach that maximises your business’s budget and potential.

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