I’ve been a communication professional for several years, but at the height of the pandemic, I realized I’d become inept at my profession. That’s why 18 months ago I decided to earn a master’s degree in digital marketing.

I don’t consider myself old, but most of my classmates were “young pups” in comparison. It was actually pretty darn cool, and I can’t even begin to express how much I learned from them. It was exhilarating.

What pushed me to ultimately make the investment of money and precious time? I knew that if I was going to continue to give my PR and marketing clients the best counsel, I needed to get up to speed when it came to digital marketing (i.e., internet marketing). The inept part was also a big motivator. Listening to the “young pups” around me started to sound like a foreign language and I didn’t like it.

So, let’s dive into what digital marketing is and how to get started — STARTED being key.

In short, digital marketing “provides an avenue for two-way communication between a business and its actual or prospective customers. Digital marketing methods include search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing (such as blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.) or pay-per-click advertising.

If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy already, here are five steps you should take:

Define Your Business Goals

Think about your company’s overall goals before developing a digital marketing plan. These objectives should be the foundation of all marketing strategies.

Research Your Target Market

Before jumping into any digital marketing strategy, it is important to understand your target audience’s needs, interests, and behaviors. Conducting market research can help you gain valuable insights into how to effectively reach the right people with your message. This can include conducting surveys, interviews, focus groups, or other analyses to better understand your target market.

Create an Actionable Digital Marketing Strategy

Once you have researched and identified whom you are targeting with your message, it is important to create an actionable plan for reaching them. You should consider what type of content will resonate with your audience, where to publish it, and how to measure its effectiveness.

Implement the Necessary Digital Marketing Tools

In order to effectively implement your digital marketing strategy, it is important to have the right tools in place. Examples of digital techniques include SEO or keyword research, email marketing, blog posts, keyword research, premium content, and webinars.

Monitor, Analyze, and Adjust

As with any marketing strategy, it is essential to monitor the performance of your efforts and adjust as needed. For digital marketing strategies, this means tracking key metrics such as website visits, conversions, or engagement to gain insights into how well your campaigns are performing. From there, you can adjust your approach or explore other tactics to help you reach your goals.

Once you have completed these steps, you should be ready to kick off your digital marketing strategy. For most people, creating a digital strategy is overwhelming. I’ve known business owners who get so frustrated, they give up and cease to grow their companies. It doesn’t help that things like algorithms and the rules keep evolving when it comes to platforms such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

The best advice I can give you is to hire help.

There are people like me out there who thrive on helping others market and grow their businesses. I met them in my classes the last couple of years. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Your business depends on it in 2023.

If you’d like help building your digital marketing strategy, I’d love to hear from you: [email protected].