Building a Bulletproof Digital Marketing Strategy

Market: Know your target audience better than your competition

Don’t get us wrong, knowing your competition is a great start. But knowing your target audience so well you could invite them over to a Sunday BBQ is even better. 

If you can’t literally invite them over to get to know them, put in the work to understand exactly who they are and what drives them. Understanding your target audience is fundamental to your successful digital marketing strategy because knowing who they are will help you understand which tactics to use to draw them to your brand. 

1. Create buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. 
2. Consider their lifestyle, demographics, challenges and pain points, online behaviour, what things they’re thinking about and researching and interested in.

Imagine your ideal customer as actual people (because they are). What’s their name, what stage in their life are they, what’s their occupation or income level, what are their pain points and challenges? 

For example:

You might be a property manager specialising in first home buyer/builder packages. 

One of your buyer personas could be: 

Nancy and Nick, the Newly Weds. Young couples in their late 20’s and early 30’s, engaged or just married, looking to live in their first home together and start their life. They have restricted low-to-middle incomes at entry level jobs with a combined salary of $120k, but also would like something new and modern with a luxury feel. They haven’t owned a home before, so they need honest expert guidance that can explain things simply with transparency. They prefer to communicate over emails, where conversations can be recorded and so they don’t miss any bit of information. They want to make sure their first home purchase is well thought out, and need a specialist who can be patient with them through the whole process. 

By that demonstration, we gave the ideal customer entire buyer personas so that we, as hypothetical first home buyer specialists, know how to reach them via online digital channels.

Message: How to talk to your customers so well they can’t ignore you

Ads, website copy, social media posts and posters are written to either create an idea in the mind of your customers, create better brand awareness, or to sell something. But it’s easy to write the wrong message to the right person, or the right message to the wrong person. Either way, the leads will be low quality and irrelevant to your brand. So how do you write the right message to the right people? 

1. Consider your position in the market: Where do you sit amongst your competitors in terms of pricing, quality of products and services, niche, and specific solutions to specific problems? What makes you stand out and what makes you unique? 
2. Understand your buyer personas: having a clear understanding of who they are, let’s you predict their online behaviour and use the right language and tone to address them
3. Choose the right channels: by understanding your audience, you can know which online channels they’ hang out on, whether it’s Instagram or Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Spotify, Pinterest and the likes. These days, people are on multiple channels, but for different reasons. 
4. Create relevant and personalised content: Tailoring your content to address specific pain points and provide specific solutions shows that you understand your customer’s unique needs, and helps you become a figure for authority and trust.
5. Listen and engage: Communication is a two-way street. Listen to your target audience's feedback, questions, and concerns. Engage with them in posts and conversations and don’t leave those inquiries waiting for too long!

Medium: How to reach your audience is up to you! Organic marketing vs. Paid marketing

A solid digital marketing plan in general can help you reach a larger and wider audience. There’s so many ways to do it! But knowing what to do can get confusing, especially when you learn about organic marketing vs paid marketing. 

Organic marketing uses digital marketing efforts on earned media like social media channels, email marketing and blog posts to earn the attention of your audience, rather than paying for it. 

• Advantages include: Cost effectiveness, great for brand awareness and long term goals.
• Disadvantages include: Takes time and is challenging to get right.  

Paid advertising uses paid marketing tactics like display ads, social ads, Google Ads and sponsored posts. 

• Advantages include: Instant results, targeting control and flexibility.
• Disadvantages include: Can get expensive across different channels, temporary results based on trend seasonality, and continuous investment to keep up with results. 

Both organic and paid marketing have their ups and downs, and can generate different results, at different speeds. It all depends on the nature of your business, your clearly defined goals and objectives, and what resources you can allocate. To understand how organic and paid marketing works and which one you should invest in, read this!

The Bulletproof part: Making brand-aligned decisions in everything you do

Businesses sell goods and services. Brands create value and connection - this is the bulletproof part of your digital marketing strategy. Building a strong brand is not just about having a cool logo, aesthetic colours or catchy tagline; it's about creating a cohesive identity that resonates with your target audience. Every decision you make in your digital marketing strategy should align with your brand and have a better impact on your overall brand image.

1. Identify your brand identity: What do you stand for? What makes you different from your competitors? What is your mission? By knowing exactly what your brand is all about, you'll have a better understanding of the decisions that will support your purpose and your vision.
2. Involve your team: Share your brand vision and values with them, and encourage their input and feedback. Collaborative decision-making keeps your team rowing in the same direction, towards a shared vision.
3. Seek customer feedback: Your customers are your ultimate brand ambassadors. Seek feedback from your customers to understand how your brand is experienced, and use that feedback to constantly improve the way you do things.

No matter how you build your digital marketing plan, it's important to always keep your brand in mind. Having a clear brand and knowing what makes your brand unique, sharing your vision with your team, and welcoming customer feedback will ensure your brand stays strong and bulletproof.

On your way to better growth and brand reach

You only need to keep our MMM Framework in mind when creating a bulletproof digital marketing strategy in 2023.

1. Market: knowing your audience better than your competitors
2. Message: Talking to your audience so well they can’t ignore you
3. Medium: Understanding the difference between organic marketing and paid marketing
4. Making brand aligned decisions in everything you do

Whether you’re looking to do SEO, PPC, build a website or create better content, with our MMM Framework in mind, success in the digital realm is within your reach.