Your company has enjoyed a strong demand for its products or services, expanded into a new location and raised its revenue to an all-time high. Congratulations, your business has marked a growth milestone!
But now, you may also be focused on making this upward trajectory last. And that cannot happen without consistently attracting and gaining new customers. As your business increases its profits and profit margins, you should also be scaling your digital marketing strategy.
What Is a Digital Marketing Strategy and What Does It Mean To Scale It?
Digital marketing for business to business (B2B) and business to consumers (B2C) lets you deal with several requirements, such as online channels, automation tools and budget allocation. A digital marketing strategy, then, organizes all of these requirements to help you reach your ultimate goal: more revenue. Think of it as a game plan that directs your focus to certain targets and priorities, resources and actions, usually over the long haul.
Once you’ve achieved prior objectives, it’s logical to aim for next-level growth. This is where scaling your strategy comes in. It is to ensure you can handle and leverage the requirements as you work toward larger outcomes.
Thrive’s Director of Operations, Jimi Gibson, says,
Success in previous digital marketing approaches can be used to approach the expansion in a way that takes advantage of appropriate metrics and targeting to help jumpstart the new approach.”
Unfortunately, recent reports show nearly 50 percent of companies have no clear online marketing strategy. Some are hyper-focused on what has worked for them, such as sticking solely to Facebook advertising. Others aren’t sure which channels to prioritize next. But most – at least those who come to us, according to Josiah Wiles, Thrive’s sales team director – have grown unexpectedly or by accident and are unclear on the direction they should be taking.
How many startups and small businesses have grown with digital marketing but failed to sustain it because they don’t have a strategy?
If your situation is similar to any of the examples above, you’ve come to the right place. This blog teaches you how to create a digital marketing strategy that scales in congruence with your business growth.
The Fundamentals of Scaling a Business Through Digital Marketing
In asking what is digital marketing strategy? earlier, we assumed you had used one or more online marketing channels to grow your business. However, you probably haven’t employed a strategy at this point.
We understand why digital marketing for small business to medium enterprise owners is about trying the most accessible or popular channels and seeing what works. “Fail early, learn fast” is most startups’ battle cry, right? But as the best digital marketing companies would advise, scalability is about failing smart. It’s about increasing your odds of success using strategic planning and critical thinking.
Thus, wherever you are in your growth journey, you should define your marketing strategy well. Wiles recommended the agile investment approach or the ability to adjust as data comes in, which successful digital marketing agencies also swear by. Assuming you’re ready to create a roadmap, here are the core concepts of how to scale your business digital marketing efforts effectively:
Reallocate
Our full service digital marketing agency looks at the “different marketing channels that are giving us a return” and how they interact with each other, according to Wiles. Then, we maximize and reallocate the budget to top-performing channels. What you’d want here is to reinvest some of your revenue in what’s working well. It could be social media marketing (SMM) or search engine optimization (SEO) for a small business.
Expand
Building on the digital marketing for small business example, let’s take your top performers and integrate other channels to generate more growth. For instance, let’s say you’re getting a lot of value from email marketing. You can build and drive people to your email subscriber list, said Wiles, by tapping into other channels like social media or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Diversify
Have you ever wondered why the best digital marketing companies combine the capabilities of an SEO digital marketing agency, social media agency and the like? That’s the experts leveraging multiple channels as they prioritize how to grow your business sustainably.
Some businesses may be dependent on one or two marketing channels, especially in their early days of small business marketing. But this is where Wiles cautioned companies about the major risks of such an option.
Let’s say your lead generation efforts are fully reliant on Facebook ads or Google ads, both of which fall into search engine marketing (SEM). If your account gets deactivated or banned, you lose your source of leads in one go.
In scaling a business and digital marketing strategy alike, you must diversify your revenue streams and channels. Those leaning on one main channel can start by taking some of the profits from your top performers and pouring money into test channels. This requires you to look at the data and check if you’re getting value from a new channel. If you aren’t, move on to the next.
A digital marketing strategy agency using an agile methodology is particularly equipped to assist you in this initiative.
Digital Marketing for Small Business: How To Create a Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing can be adapted to the growth of companies of any size. But if you’re here to learn how to grow your small business and take it further with an agile approach, consider the following steps:
1. Set Your Growth Goals
Goals show you, your marketing team or your full service digital marketing agency where to steer your business.
Gibson said,
“One channel may produce a higher volume of leads but convert at a lower rate. Is this good? It depends. Is the average order value higher on those leads compared to other higher converting channels? All of this analysis requires a clear understanding of the business goals.”
So, where does your goal-setting begin? According to Wiles, identifying your what-ifs is the key step on how to grow your small business. In this context, the what-ifs refer to your business purpose. What could you be doing if money and resources weren’t a problem? It could be helping first-time homeowners in your city find their dream homes or supporting your employees in improving their quality of life. Whatever it is, use your what-ifs to inform your goal-setting. He also said to think long-term when you’re planning how to grow your business.
In your context, your next-level growth goal could be earning $xxx in revenue by 2025. You can validate each goal by asking if it will provide you with the means to fulfill your what-ifs.
Once you have a list of goals, you can establish corresponding small business marketing goals. Remember that these goals should be aligned with your business growth goals. It could be raising brand awareness in your new location. Put on your thinking cap and ask yourself, “What is marketing in business location #2 going to look like?”
2. Target a New Audience
The number of people you can target in a city, county or state is finite. So finding a new audience is an inevitable part of how to scale your business. If you’re expanding geographically, you can set up a digital marketing for business strategy that caters to the same demographics across key American cities.
Alternatively, you can look out for an opportunity to serve a different group of people in your area. This may require you to tweak your product or service. Consider how Uber extended its ride-sharing services to the food delivery industry. Or think about features and functionality on your site that can be used for a different purpose.
In the case of the latter, you may streamline both web development and digital marketing work by tapping a small business marketing firm with a website design agency skill set.
3. Invest in the Right Digital Marketing for Business Channels and Technology
As we mentioned earlier, reinvesting your marketing budget is a crucial component of learning how to grow your small business. Diversifying your marketing mix opens you up to various ways of reaching out to your new and even existing audience.
For example, digital marketing agencies approve of complementing your SEO efforts with SEM/PPC methods to expose you to high-intent leads. The process is hinged wholly on your business goals. Thrive’s Gibson said “providing more information on their social media, additional content on their website and promotions through email communication” can get the word out about a new product or service quickly.
Gibson added that those opening in a new location can rely on location-specific pages to enhance their site performance in organic searches, backlinks and relationships with existing businesses for referral traffic and paid channels to bolster geographic targeting.
Moreover, what is digital marketing strategy creation for scaling a business without updating or upgrading your arsenal of tools? Say, you’re strengthening your local SEO campaigns by optimizing your online directory profiles. A reliable SEO digital marketing agency will also look into your ratings and reviews. This entails the integration of an automation tool such as online reputation management software.
Again, you’ll benefit from choosing among the best digital marketing companies since they’re likely offering the services of an SEO company and an online reputation management agency.
4. Adopt a Holistic Approach
In the section above, we talked about the agile methodology used by our digital marketing strategy agency. Because of this flexibility, we are able to weave channels, tactics and solutions seamlessly. This integrated, omnichannel approach should also be accessible to anyone searching for the secret behind how to scale your business.
Put simply, this means you aren’t stuck with one channel or way of promotion. Instead, you can vary the answer to What is marketing in business context #1? Or context #2? and so on. For instance, you or your digital marketing strategy agency activates local SEO for your franchise location. At the same time, you trigger an outreach campaign for brand awareness to maximize results.
5. Scale Your Content Marketing Strategy
Content development covers virtually all aspects of the digital marketing process. It is integral to an SEO agency, website design agency, social media agency and even an online reputation management agency. Each site, social media profile or local listing needs content.
While this step requires an entire section or article, it’s important to know for now that you have to create content for your audience throughout the buying journey. Also, you have to align formats (e.g., text, photos and video reviews) with the right channels (e.g., social media and paid ads).
6. Turn to Experts
There is no better way to approach a digital marketing strategy plan than turning to trusted experts. What is marketing in the business expansion phase going to look like? You don’t have to figure it out alone. Digital marketing agencies have the proficiency and bandwidth to plan everything out for and with you.
Sometimes, the scaling of your online marketing strategy amid growth needs to be outsourced. That’s a wiser use of your additional marketing budget.
Scale Your Strategy; Grow Exponentially
This blog has been dedicated to expounding on what a digital marketing strategy is and why you should scale it as your business grows. We hope you’ve gained insight into the reality of marketing when you’re aiming for greater growth. In this light, we also anticipate your next steps toward success.
If that includes enlisting a full service digital marketing agency, then make Thrive Internet Marketing Agency your choice. Our agile firm has provided thousands of B2B and B2C clients with our channel expertise, technological know-how and data-driven guidance to aid their expansion. We are an SEO digital marketing agency, social media agency, online reputation management agency and website design agency in one.
The best thing of all? We approach strategy development on a case-by-case basis. Gibson, who heads strategy development, said, “We enjoy the partnership with each business and are motivated to advise each company on how digital marketing must respond during growth.”
Amplify your online marketing efforts using Thrive’s end-to-end solutions. To find out how, connect with one of our consultants by calling 866-908-4748 or shooting us a message here.
