Beyond traditional advertising through print publications, television commercials, radio spots and roadside billboards, most businesses know that in order to remain competitive in today's marketplace they must include the digital space in their marketing strategies.
"Digital … includes all forms of advertising that takes place on computers, tablets and smartphones – everything that you see and are able to interact with on a screen," said Carlos Obregon, a search- engine marketing specialist at Bloom Digital Marketing in North Vancouver.
From websites to online advertising to email marketing to social media, digital marketing lets organizations of various sizes across sectors target existing and potential customers through the biggest direct- marketing opportunity of all time: the Internet.
"You can use the web to grab the attention of the consumers you're trying to reach and bring your products and services to them," Obregon explained.
The first step to creating an effective digital strategy is to drill down and define what the goals are for your company.
"The next thing is to establish a profile of your typical customer, whether it's a teenager, pet owner or another business," he said. "This will help you determine how to best spend your budget in the digital space."
For example, Obregon says Facebook advertisements are often used to reach a younger audience while Google Adwords tend to perform better in a business-to-business campaign.
"It's also important to determine the objective of your website, which is where you'll be driving many of the Internet users who click on your digital ads," he added. "Is it an informational site where people can find your address and hours or is it a transactional site where you're actually selling things? Depending on the answer you may need to know where your customers are physically located."
Timing is also of the essence.
"If you're selling, say, Christmas trees, you can set specific dates and times for your campaign so you're not blowing your budget in July," Obregon said. "You have a lot of control in the digital space."
Jeff Berry, director of client relations at Vancouver's Smak Media & Promotions Inc., agrees.
"You can conform your digital strategy and whatever platform you're using, whether it's an app or a Facebook promo, to suit your specific needs," he said. "It's so elastic in terms of what it can and cannot do and what it needs to cost."
The days of spending "hundreds of thousands of dollars on a 30-second TV spot are over." Berry says building a video product for the digital space can be a cost-effective way to educate and engage customers about your business.
And, because digital lets you measure levels of user engagement, Berry says the feedback you receive can be used to drive your strategy forward.
"These types of measurements are worth their weight in gold in terms of helping you reach the right people at the right time," he said. "It lets you make better business decisions and helps you grow your business."
Not being in the digital space, he adds, is "severely limiting in marketers' ability to build relationships with their customers."
"Asking who needs digital strategy is like asking who needs water to live," Berry said. "But it has to be done right if it's going to be effective."
Both experts say one of the most common mistakes organizations make in their digital strategies is simply creating a Facebook page and leaving it at that.
"If your goal is to really benefit or increase your business … then there's far more to it than that," said Obregon.
"Search engines, social-media channels – these things change at such a fast pace it's hard, even for those of us who look at it all day every day, to stay on top of all the developments, so it would be really challenging for someone in-house who may have other duties to remain current."
For that reason, he highly recommends relying on an expert to create and manage your digital strategy.
"We go to mandatory courses and testing by, for instance, Google, to make sure we're up to date," said Obregon. "It's our job. If we don't stay up to date digitally we're dead in the water."
"Go to an expert to help define what your strategy is and engage your target consumer in the digital space," Berry agreed. "Really take the time to determine why you're in the digital space and what purpose it will serve.
"If you just jump on the digital bandwagon because it's new and you know you need to be there, it's likely to backfire," he added. "Take the time to do it properly or your messaging will start to get diluted and you're back to square one."
