No matter what industry you’re in, a strategic digital inbound marketing plan should be one of your top marketing priorities. Unfortunately, a healthy digital marketing plan is not a set-it and forget-it situation. Just like your company’s business plan, you need to get a pulse on the health of your digital marketing initiative by revisiting your strategy and re-defining your goals. Learning how to use digital marketing strategies and goals wisely will help you become more visible online while increasing your sales year-over-year.
How healthy is your current marketing strategy and what are your goals?
There is a big difference between goals and strategies. Let's start with goals. Goals are the measurable sales numbers you set out to achieve based on the execution of a successful inbound sales strategy. Understanding what your short-term and long-term goals are will help you create a new digital sales strategy either from scratch, or improving on existing campaigns. Begin by asking a few questions:
- What are your goals?
- What sales numbers do you need to hit?
- What was revenue last year and what do you want it to be this year?
- What new market opportunities do you see for your business?
Your goals need to be specific. When we work with clients, we come up with concrete numbers to shoot for. This way everyone involved can accurately gauge what percentage of that goal we under or overshot, hopefully, the latter. The specificity of the goals will help us better set the strategy. For example, let’s say that last year your gross revenue for pneumatic pumps was $820,000. You would like to use digital inbound marketing to get that number up to $1.2 million annually. The specific goals will help us know how deep we need to get, what resources to utilize, and how much we need to dedicate to the strategies.
By creating a strategy, we can work to achieve this. Maybe the pumps section of the website needs more content density and a relevant target keyword. From writing new, unique content bi-weekly about your pneumatic pump line, the manufacturers you carry, the regions that you serve to a paid search campaign around these specific pumps, there are many opportunities to reach your goals. Bring your salespeople in on the strategy conversations as well. Salespeople are on ground day in and out and will have plenty of ideas and insight to share. If they are the front-line to your leads, then they definitely need to be brought in to understand this process.
Once your goals are identified and a strategy is in place, then the next step is to work with your digital marketing team. As a team, your company’s staff brings industry expertise to the table, while your digital marketing team understands the ebbs-and-flows, trends, and best practices of organic and paid search. A digital marketing campaign needs a strong foundation that takes time to build but that being said, your team can recreate and redefine your strategy multiple times a year in order to meet your goals. Over time, you will see your online presence growing and your sales numbers reaching your set goals.
