Are you at Stage 1 in your Digital Marketing efforts?

You see where you need to go, but just need to dive in and get started? Your organization has a solid mission and vision and you are ready to spring forward to capture more marketplace attention and traction.

Or, perhaps you are at Stage 2 and have been seeing success with digital marketing, but are ready to go to take your team to the next level.

Maybe, instead, you are at Stage 3, where you are motoring strong across the digital landscape, but ready to fine-tune and optimize key levers for even bigger results.

If you are at Stage 1 this listing may be for you.

So…are the best products and services guaranteed the dominant market position? Not always. Competing products and services that have the best marketing machine often rise to the top. And, more and more marketing time, energy and investment continue to shift away from traditional to digital advertising. Why is that? Because digital is where the action is. Consider Facebook’s half a trillion dollar market cap.

Sitting on the sidelines, as the competition continues to advance digitally, can be a really stressful place to be. Maybe your organization is missing the digital marketing boat? Is it time for your organization to instead make those crucial first steps to start making your mark with digital marketing? The good news is momentum can start building fast if you have the right foundation and the right roadmap.

We recommend you explore this top 10 ‘Stage 1’ list to help jumpstart your digital marketing efforts.

1. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

An important and clear competitive differentiating factor making the organization stand out from the rest. A USP states what the organization has or offers that the competition does not. Learn more: wlion.com/usp

2. Organizational Goals

Using the SMART goal setting framework; a handful of long-term goals ranging from 3-5 years and short-term goals encompassing a 1-year timeframe. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Learn more: wlion.com/smart and wlion.com/goals

3. Market Assessment

Identifying and analyzing new and existing market opportunities. Learn more: wlion.com/market-assessment

4. Buyer Personas

A semi-fictional definition of ideal customers including key demographic and psychographic attributes all to help guide marketing efforts and product or service development. Learn more: wlion.com/persona

5. Buyer Journey Mapping

A process to outline the steps a typical prospect will take in their journey to become an actual customer. Buyer journeys are rarely linear and should include loyalty loop planning to earn and build the long term value (LTV) of customer relationships. Learn more: wlion.com/journey-map, wlion.com/journey-example and wlion.com/loyalty-loop

6. Digital Marketing Strategy

A succinct, overarching goal, driving all digital marketing planning activities. The strategy will outline how the organization will focus its efforts in achieving the stated goal. Learn more: wlion.com/dmstrategy

7. Sales Funnels

Using the illustration of an actual funnel, a sales funnel is the buying process organizations lead prospects through following the ‘Awareness-Evaluation-Conversion’ framework. Starting with introducing a prospective customer with high-value content, to engage the prospect so they grow to know, like and trust the brand. By offering value in a sequenced step from lower to higher commitments, the sales funnel is a tool to plan and optimize how many go through the top of the funnel (TOFU) in the attention phase, how many are in the middle of the funnel (MOFU) as there is an evaluation including comparing the organization’s offering to the competition, and the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) where prospects have now made smaller purchase commitments and are moving towards larger commitments. The idea is to inventory, identify and plan a number of sales funnels to maximize growth opportunities. For example, survey funnels are helpful in removing guesswork in marketing decisions. Learn more: wlion.com/sales-funnels and wlion.com/survey-funnels

8. Campaign Launches

When all the planning is complete including determining success measurements and KPIs, it is time to launch the first campaign. We refer to the first launch as ‘Campaign 0’ signifying we are about to parachute into a wide open learning phase. As ad buying and media purchases take place and the creative is now in place, we are ready to launch and measure. Learn more: wlion.com/launch

9. Marketing Automation

Supplanting many aspects of traditional email marketing, marketing automation refers to the software platforms and supporting tools allowing the execution of a marketing campaign along with repetitive tasks, all to be automated. As a significant amount of the delivery of an automated campaign is done through email, it is critically important to optimize all outbound emails to maximize delivery while avoiding becoming ensnared in spam filters. Tools like Litmus.com help to optimize email templates. Learn more: wlion.com/automation

10. Landing Page Optimization

Most campaigns drive traffic ultimately to either an optimized landing page or a series of landing pages, all designed to convert web traffic. Using split testing and frameworks like the ‘5-second rule,’ organizations will iterate and continually adjust landing page content to maximize effectiveness. Learn more: wlion.com/landing-page

The Digital Planning Guide has 56 additional digital marketing checklist items and 33 website resources designed to help ensure your website outperforms your competition. If you haven’t already, consider downloading the full guide and be the hero and share it with your friends, too! And, let us know how we can help support you and your team in your digital journey.

Are you ready to take your team to the next level in digital marketing?