How Good is Your Digital Marketing Strategy – Part One?

Last week I led a session for the Arizona Association for Economic Development’s Marketing Symposium on digital marketing best practices.  While putting together the presentation, it became clear that like all communications efforts, the best practices for digital marketing rely on three things – determine your target audience, set your goals and create a measurement strategy.

So, let’s talk first about determining your target audience.

Identifying a target market helps your organization develop effective marketing communication strategies. And although it may be time-consuming up front, determining a target market allows you to focus your digital marketing efforts in the most cost-effective way possible.

The best way to start defining your audience is to clearly define what you’re offering. Understanding the needs of your potential target audience is essential. You can often discover exactly how you can meet consumer needs by doing some market research. Consider hosting focus groups, scanning industry reviews or doing a market survey.

Once you have identified a target market you can then start thinking about what you want to tell them about your offer. Organizations don’t have the time or resources to be able to reach everyone with a product message, so identifying a target market allows you to focus on those most likely to purchase the product.

Once you know who you are targeting, it is much easier to make decisions on which digital strategy to use.

In the coming weeks we will address goal setting and measurement as part of digital marketing best practices.