Everyone tells you that you should do Digital marketing for your business.
Or, You may have already explored Digital Marketing for your business.
You know your audience is online and want to capitalize on it.
But, you may be struggling to navigate this vast ocean.
We are here to help you through this.
In this quick guide, we explore step-by-step how you can start your digital marketing journey today and take your business online.
Step 1: Identify goals and objectives :
As with anything, you must identify and document the goals and objectives of your brand.
Start with the questions and their sub-questions:
- What do you want to achieve through digital marketing?
- Do you want more sales?
- Do you want to build a sturdy brand presence?
- Do you want your customers to visit your website or your physical store?
- Do you want to collect information about your customers?
What are the metrics you will use to measure its success of it?
- X number of sales?
- Y number of reach and engagement?
- Z number of website visits?
- N number of leads?
- ABC% increase in actual figures?
What is your audience doing online?
- Which platform are they consuming content on?
- What kind of content do they like?
- What are they searching for on the Internet?
- What are they chatting about?
How do you see it evolve, and how do you want digital marketing to help achieve the vision?
- What is a realistic timeline for execution?
- What resources do you need?
- How does it complement what you are already doing?
Once you answer these questions, you can define measurable and trackable goals and objectives for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and 5 years.
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Step 2: Test the feasibility study of DM for your business
Before you start digital marketing for your business, knowing whether it’s best for you is wise.
Find answers to questions like:
- Is digital marketing best for your business?
- Is your audience online?
- What sort of activities is your audience involved in?
- Which platform is best for you?
- How much are you willing to invest? Time? Money? ManPower?
- And finally, find if its ROI is effective for you. We bet it is***
This phase is also coupled with a competitor’s analysis.
Competitor analysis is an overview of what your competitors are doing.
- Which channels are they using to market?
- What do the numbers say about them?
- What content are they pushing out?
- How much engagement do their posts get?
- How often are they posting?
- Which channel is proving most effective for them?
- What are they doing differently?
- What can you do differently than them?
Once you answer these questions and leverage metrics, you will have a good idea of what is going on around the market, what you will have to do, and what you can do through digital marketing in Nepal.
Step 3: Identify whether you need an agency or not
Once you have identified what you want to do in digital marketing, you will have to decide whether to do it yourself, with a dedicated professional/freelancer, or through an agency. Different businesses’ requirements and efforts vary, determining what is best for you.
You can opt for digital marketing if you have enough time, are willing to learn, and want to take it slowly and steadily.
Hire a freelancer if you think you know the requirements and don’t have enough time to focus on the micro details.
And, if you want to go big with digital marketing through a broad number of channels, you probably need a team.
This team could be internal, or you could outsource it to a marketing agency.
But make sure to consult first with a Digital Marketing Expert.
We at Digital Gurkha provide free online and offline courses and also answer your queries regarding digital marketing in Nepal. Let’s connect, and we can find ways to collaborate for your growth.
Step 4: Start with creating properties
If you have not created your online properties, you should first make them.
Website is your most extensive estate on the Internet that establishes your credible presence.
You need an interactive and informative website that reflects your value and allows your customer to receive your service.
Add up photos and blogs to make it richer and your property attractive.
Social media is your place to start if you cannot make a website in the short term(you will have to make it over a long time).
Make profiles on the following platform and do the following activities.
Facebook :
- Create a page with your name, logo, and contact details
- Optimize your profile to start your branding: Update the cover photo or Video
- Write Your Story and Add Your Services, if any
- Invite Your Friends and Team Members to like the page
- Start Your First Post: It could be
- Integrate Pixel Code into Your Website’s Code
Instagram:
- Create Your Instagram Profile as a business account
- Update Your Category and Bio: Keep it short and simple
- Add Hashtags relevant to your business on the bio
- Add a link to your website or other applicable pages
- Update Your Display Picture
- Link it with Facebook Page
- Start following people that are relevant to you
- Decide the theme for your profile
- Start with your first story as an introduction
Youtube:
- Create a Gmail Account for your business (make it different from personal email.)
- Create a channel with your name and profile picture
- Add Channel Art: Cover Image
- Update About us and other contact information, including links to other social media profiles
- Add featured channels, if any.
- Set default tags for your business: e.g., digital marketing agency, digit.
LinkedIn:
- Create a Linkedin Profile for your business
- Create Your company profile and fill in basic information
- Set Roles for the Page
- Add Products and Services
- Write Your About Us text and fill in the keywords
- Start with Posts. Include Relevant hashtags
- Review your progress and follow through
Pinterest:
- Go to Pinterest for the business page and join with accurate credentials
- Complete Your profile with a profile picture, an about us section, and a location
- Confirm your website by copying and pasting the website’s index page HTML text
- Create boards with proper information
- Start Pinning
- Add descriptions to pins and link them to the website.
Google My Business:
- Start at https://www.google.com/business/
- Get on Google with an existing or new Google Account
- Find Your business in the area. If you cannot find it, then you will have to create it
- Add the Correct Name, Address, and Phone Number
- Add your services and opening hours
- Add Photos and Upload Posts (Include keywords for better results)
Step 5: Make a consistent theme across all your channels
In general, one of the most important aspects of branding or marketing is maintaining consistency in your voice and tone throughout every marketing effort.
It would be best if you had a proper brand guideline.
What colors does your brand resonate with?
What are your logos and design elements?
What fonts are you going to use?
What is your content narrative/marketing message?
First, decide your brand colours, logos, fonts & assets. You can play around with colours, but fix your base colour palettes and use them where possible.
Like in Digital Gurkha, our primary colours are Green and Blue, with secondary colours as Black and White. We, however, don’t hesitate to play around with bright yellow or bold purple.
Suppose you are using multiple channels to market your service product and brand. In that case, you need to be sure about how to appear as the same brand while keeping the diversified algorithm and audience on different platforms in mind.
This also includes but is not limited to:
- Having the same username all across
- Having the same profile picture across all platforms
- Having the same contact information (phone & email)
- Having the same call to action
Step 6: Make your content strategy
Once you are clear about the way you want to market and present yourself, it is time for you to start pushing content.
The content you create needs to be aligned with your team’s values, vision, and services products as well as with what interests your audience. After all, you are creating content for your audience.
Before you start posting content, it is better to have a content plan.
First, define your content narratives, and the marketing message you want to communicate.
For Example, for a marketing agency, their content narratives could be:
- Creativity is at the core of what we do and our work is a platform to showcase it
- We do not sell packages, we sell results
- We believe in co-creation with our clients for getting the best results.
The content narrative above clearly showcases the brand values as well as gives the client an idea of what to expect. Moreover, this will help you get a consistent message on all present platforms.
However, you may be overwhelmed with what to create.
It is always a good idea to have content pillars for easy content creation.
A content pillar is a broad topic under which you can create multiple content.
Taking the example of a Marketing agency again, different content pillars could be:
- Team & Office: showcasing different team members, how work happens at the agency, sharing daily happenings, etc.
- Services: Creating content to showcase what services you offer or how you can help your clients
- Informative: Sharing tips, tricks, and tools related to digital marketing, etc.
- Portfolio: Showcasing the work done for the clients and how you helped them
After the content narrative and pillars are ready, it is time to start creating actual content, including brainstorming, writing, designing, filming, editing, etc.
But, you will need a content calendar that showcases the specifics of the schedule for your content.
What sort of content to publish?
How often do you post them?
Will there be a weekly or daily theme?
Do you post photos, images, videos, or GIFs?
Are the important festivals included?
What are the marketing copies?
Who will post the content?
Also, to couple it with SEO and Content Marketing, you need to plan out the blogs you will post.
How many blogs are you going to post?
What are the blogs going to be about?
Will there be graphics and images inside each blog?
Who uploads the blog and optimizes it for SEO?
Where will the blogs be shared?
Start with a weekly plan, and expand to a monthly, or quarterly until you can finally plan for a whole year.
Step 7: Launch Campaigns
Once you have set up your content plan and have a consistent and balanced profile going on, it’s time for you to launch a campaign.
A campaign has a fixed objective, time duration, and distinct theme.
One of the first campaigns you can run is the Page Like Campaign.
This applies to social media, especially Facebook and Instagram.
It’s analogous to Google: Display ADs or PPC Ads that take your brand to the Internet through a network of Google Partner Websites and Applications.
This is for your awareness phase where you say to the Internet world, “I am here. This is Me.”
Likes are considered a metric for social proof. Brands with a high amount of likes or followers are deemed credible.
This is the start of your brand-building phase, where engaging with the audience and providing them value is the next step for consolidating your presence.
Step 8: Analyze & Optimize
The best part about Digital Marketing is that you get access to all relevant data of your marketing effort in real time.
All digital platforms are equipped with analytics for businesses. These analytics provide you with data relevant to your business and marketing efforts.
Moreover, Google Data Studio and other third-party tools allow you to connect all your marketing channels, including the website, and get collective data. This helps
- How much money did you spend on advertising?
- How many people were you able to reach?
- How may they engage with you?
- How many new followers did you garner?
- How many leads did you collect?
- How many sales did it drive?
- How much time are people spending on your Website or Application?
- Which content worked the best?
- Which platform drove the most results?
- What is your cost-per-acquisition?
- What is the ratio of organic vs. paid growth?
- What were the major concerns and questions from your customers?
- What was the driving factor behind sales?
Step 9: Remove & Repeat
The next step is to identify things that did not work out and remove them while doubling down on what works.
If TikTok is giving your business the most traction in terms of engagement and sales, you need to keep creating more TikTok.
Digital Marketing is all about experimentation as it is easier to execute and cheaper than traditional media.
You need to constantly test out your content strategy, ad strategy, or platform-specific strategy.
This will help you find the best strategy that works for you.
Conclusion
Taking your business online with Digital Marketing is possible and it is not as complicated as people make it to be.
You can start with minimum investment and explore it as it suits your brand. But, more than that you must do the groundwork of defining your unique value proposition, identifying your audience, and analyzing your competitors.
So, what are you waiting for? Use Digital Marketing to get your business online.
