My approach to digital marketing has always been to look at the bigger picture. I believe in a holistic view of digital marketing where all channels need to and should be considered to form your digital marketing strategy.
Often, I get a lot of people who ask me how to attract new customers through social media or how to get more sales through social media. Yes, while social media does lend itself to attracting new customers and allowing people to purchase through the platforms, it may not be the right approach or the only approach that one can look into.
One of my first IGTV videos is about exactly this. The growth and popularity of social media has meant that some other channels have been overlooked despite the benefits they provide throughout a customer’s journey with your brand.
When I first founded my company, I started doing a lot of research into various frameworks that one can use to understand how they plan out their digital marketing efforts. One framework that really stuck with me was the RACE Planning System by Smart Insights.
This frame work is now what I use when I think about a client’s digital marketing plan.
The four branches of the framework are Reach, Act, Convert, & Engage. Within these different stages that a customer goes through, there are different channels that can be used and different indicators to measure performance.
In the reach stage, the goal is to increase brand awareness so that when a prospect is exploring different solutions, they come across your company. So here you could use social media but you could also look at running display ads, or improving the SEO on your website.
The next stage is the act stage where you want the prospect to engage with your content. So now it’s not only about being present but it’s about giving them information that adds value. Giving them content that they want to look at. Again, this would cover social media but also email marketing and growing content on your website.
The third phase is converting. Here, you want your prospect to become a customer and buy from you. You’re looking at making a sale. Here you can have consumers make a sale on your website or through your social media shop, but don’t forget about those transaction emails.
And the last stage, which I believe is one of the most important, is the engage stage. Here you want your existing customers to constantly re-engage with the brand and in some ways become brand advocates. They should be buying from you all the time and getting their friends and family to buy from you too. Here is where I believe email plays an important role as it’s quite effective for retaining existing customers.
So, with each stage that a customer goes through, the goals are different, and the performance measure are different. This therefore means that the digital marketing channel you use should be a mix of different ones too!
Why am I sharing all of this with you? Because again, I think it’s important to look at how all channels can benefit your business and how to best use them for your company. The other thing to remember is that your customers might be looking for you on Google but not on social media so if you don’t have a website then how will they find you?
So next time you sit down with your team to think about your digital marketing plan, really think about the customer journey and how best to use the various tools available for your benefit.
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