Digital marketing allows you to reach potential customers through the Internet or other digital channels. Online advertising, social media, email, text messaging, SEO… it is all adding up! As a result, it’s easy to get lost when establishing a digital marketing strategy. There are many elements to consider and an abundance of concepts to master. Fortunately, our experts have put together several resources to help you. With our digital strategy guide, all the information is at your fingertips! Browse through it and discover our 6 essential tips for planning your digital strategy.

A common mistake when starting to think about your digital strategy is to cut it off from the rest of your marketing initiatives. It’s much better to think of them together as an omnichannel strategy. When your digital strategy perfectly complements the actions taken in traditional and physical media, you increase your contact points with your target customers and achieve more impact.
So, as soon as you start thinking about your campaigns, you need to make sure that you maintain a cohesive brand image across all your digital and physical channels. Also, ensure that your business already has an appropriate digital presence: an optimized website with Google Analytics installed, a Google profile to appear on Maps and updated social media profiles are essential.
Then choose the media (physical and digital) you want to use, considering the consumer’s buying journey and your goals.

One of the key advantages of digital marketing is that it allows you to collect and analyze data, letting you track the progress of your campaigns. Choose a platform (CRM, DMP or CDP) that allows you to accumulate data and facilitate analysis. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of each type of platform to make an informed choice.

In 2020, Google announced the end of third-party cookies on its Chrome browser, notably because of ethical user privacy issues. This significant change will take place at the end of 2023. Therefore, you must consider the disappearance of third-party cookies when planning your digital strategy.

Cookies are data exchanged between a user (client) and a website (server) when they visit the website. They allow sites to remember you and your preferences (login, language, shopping cart, etc.) and to facilitate the browsing experience. While first-party cookies are set directly by the domain of the site you are visiting, third-party cookies are implemented by page objects originating from another domain (e.g. the Facebook plugin added to a website allows Facebook to set cookies). Third-party cookies track users from page to page and from site to site. They are used to understand user behaviour for advertising purposes.

Unlike first-party cookies, which are still possible – but require permission from each user – third-party cookies will disappear from Google Chrome. In addition, data obtained through third-party cookies will no longer be sellable, which impacts the DMPs (Data Management Platforms) used in programmatic advertising.

It may mean that you’ll have to adjust your digital strategy. You should not be too worried: you’ll still be able to target potential customers while respecting their privacy. Advertisers can adjust their targeting strategy and reach valuable audiences with first-party data, contextual targeting, universal identifiers and walled gardens.

A digital marketing strategy cannot be complete without an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plan. SEO, in short, consists of different techniques that allow you to improve your visibility and positioning on search engine result pages. Let’s face it: there are countless websites online, and if your potential customers can’t find you easily, they will probably opt for the services of another company. That’s why you must carefully prepare your digital content’s organic (i.e. non-paid) referencing.

Start a research phase by having an audit: analyze trends and consider your keyword’s usage volume on search engines. Then move on to the execution phase by writing content for your site around specific keywords. Finally, launch and optimize!

Once you have established your SEO strategy and keywords, complete your organic search strategy by ensuring your metadata is perfect. You can then think about your inbound marketing, which is your strategy for creating content that interests and attracts your target audiences and converts them into leads and customers. Contents shared on your social networks, new web pages, blog posts, newsletters, white papers, and much more are part of your inbound marketing. That’s a lot of potential content to produce! Confirm that all the actions you want to take (every publication, every newsletter, etc.) are well-planned and in line with the image you want to put forward before launching your campaign. Once all your non-paid content is well organized, you can supplement your SEO with paid content, such as sponsored ads on search engines and social media.

A strategy without an objective is meaningless! Do you want your campaign/initiatives to increase your visibility, sales, website traffic, leads, Facebook page followers, or search engine rankings? It is necessary to give yourself precise, realistic and measurable objectives (e.g. increase my website traffic by 10% before the end of the campaign). Once you have determined your goals, select the performance indicators (KPI or Key Performance Indicators) that will allow you to measure the results throughout your campaign. Of course, you can measure other elements unrelated to your objectives to gain more data about your campaign or business impact. In fact, you should always measure your company’s performance indicators to stay informed about the health of your business. However, these performance indicators should not be taken into account when determining whether your campaign has achieved its goals.

Optimize your time by preparing a marketing dashboard in which the performance indicators you have chosen are easily accessible. The data will be presented and visualized in graphs or tables to facilitate its interpretation. We recommend a summary page featuring general data followed by pages with more detailed data.
In order to create your dashboard, you do not need to enter all the data yourself. Instead, use software or platforms that will make your life easier.

At Braque, we often use Google’s Data Studio tool to create reports. We place and prepare the resulting data to make it visually interesting. To facilitate understanding, we opt for question-based chart titles, which allow you to identify what the data refers to (e.g. at what time of day is our site most visited?). Feel free to include data from a previous period alongside your new data to make it easier to compare.

Would you like more information or someone’s help to guide you through one or more of the steps presented? Do not hesitate to contact our team of digital marketing experts. We will be happy to assist you and help you achieve your goals!