Digital marketing has become a key part of every company’s communication plan in today’s world, whatever its sector of activity, product or service, reputation or experience.

The post COVID-19 world has accentuated this effect, making it a strategic and primary choice for marketing and communications managers.

A digital marketing strategy is based on a set of actions (strategic and operational) that consists of using different online marketing channels (as opposed to offline channels) to achieve predefined objectives (mainly lead generation).

Including digital marketing in a company’s communication plan is therefore essential, as it will guarantee its success.

The benefits of digital marketing

Companies use digital marketing to reach customers more effectively. Digital marketing offers multiple advantages, applicable to all types of companies, of different sizes and means: direct interaction with customers, information obtained about consumers helps you to adapt the offer and propose a personalized product or service that matches their needs.

Digital marketing fosters customer loyalty and satisfaction through a long-lasting, high-quality relationship; it also saves on costs and budgets: offering a website costs less than setting up a physical store; digital marketing makes your company available 24/7; international expansion is made easier.

Digital marketing uses digital (online) channels to sell a product, a service, a person, or promote a brand to consumers. It relies on the growing use of the Internet (a very high number of households connected to the Internet network) and connected objects (smartphones, tablets, laptops).

The main digital marketing tools are :

• Commercial e-mailings: although this tool is losing ground in Tunisia, it remains highly effective, especially in the product launch phase and in the quest for general brand awareness. This tool also remains highly effective for B2C products and services.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): this is the spearhead of any digital marketing strategy, and the main driver of lead generation. SEO relies on a number of techniques, but content creation remains essential to the success of any SEO strategy.
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing): a strategy that pays off when it’s used wisely. The crucial difference between SEO and SEM is the difference between a marathon and a 100-meter run!
• SMO (Social Media Optimization),
• Affiliation: when a brand offers its products on another brand’s site, a highly effective strategy for B2C brands.
• display advertising (space buying): banners, RS or web page wrapping, advertorials, etc.
• for SMS/MMS, you need to know how to choose the target, the period and the frequency.
• partnerships,
• competitions: especially on social networks, they help increase brand engagement and interaction.

1 – Defining the target

For every marketing strategy, whether online or offline, it’s essential to know who it’s aimed at. The best digital marketing strategies are built around precise buyers personas, so the first step is to define and identify them.

Buyers personas represent ideal customers. They can be created by researching, investigating and interviewing the target audience. It’s important to note that this information must be based on real data. Indeed, if a company makes assumptions about its audience, it runs the risk of failing in its digital marketing strategy.

The marketing department will need to identify the following information:

Quantitative or demographic information: Location, Age, Income, Profession.
Qualitative or socio-demographic information: Goals, Challenges, Interests, Priorities.

2 – Defining objectives

Any online marketing strategy must meet specific objectives, so that the company can measure its return on investment (ROI). Among these objectives, four are paramount for most companies:

• Increased traffic on the company’s digital media (the more traffic, the greater the chance of closing sales).
• Optimization of the visitor / lead / customer conversion tunnel.
• Customer loyalty
• Improved company reputation and e-reputation

3 – Choosing the right digital marketing tools

Whatever the objective, it’s important to choose marketing tools that support the company in its campaigns and growth, and that enable the effects of each action to be measured by channel. There are many tools and software packages available to help companies monitor their digital marketing strategy.

Here are a few examples of the tools our agency uses:

• Sendible: for unified social network management, planning, moderation and reporting
• 2 SEO management platforms: position management, reporting, competitor analysis, traffic analysis, SERP analysis, etc.
• Crello: video production and creation for social networks
• Shutterstock: image and video bank
• Freepik Premuim: vecto, infography, images

4 – Assess existing digital marketing channels and available resources

When an entrepreneur is considering including his existing marketing channels in his strategy, it’s a good idea to think bigger at first, so as not to become overwhelmed. The system of internal, external and paid media helps to categorize the digital channels already in use.

In our experience, there’s no point in spreading yourself too thin over several SRs if you don’t have the resources to meet your editorial planning objectives and financial budgets.

5 – Content creation

Everything a company publishes constitutes its content, whether it’s its “about us” page, product descriptions, blog articles, infographics or posts on social networks.

Content helps convert website visitors into leads and then into customers, and enhances brand image online. Whatever the objective, it’s essential to use content to develop a digital marketing strategy.

For any content creation strategy, every company should go through a three-step process:

Evaluate existing content
The first step is to draw up a list of existing content and classify each item according to its past performance in relation to current objectives. Our agency has the necessary tools to evaluate the relevance of content and the traffic generated by each content item.

Identify the gaps in existing content
it’s important to understand that certain content, even if it exists on a company’s website, must obey certain criteria if it is to be indexed by Google… but it must also be valid for the company’s target market and generate traffic. For example, a company that sells medical equipment in Tunisia and wants to expand to France, if even the content for this product exists, the specific content for the French market is absent, and as a result we won’t be able to position the SERPs on French searches.

Create a content creation project
Based on the data collected and the gaps identified, companies need to create a content creation project outlining the content they need to achieve their objectives.

The project should include a budget if content creation is to be outsourced, or an estimated duration if the project is to be managed in-house.

A look at the main levers of digital marketing

Search engine optimization: SEO and SEA

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for increasing traffic to your site: good SEO positions you in the top results of search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Furthermore, SEO in its broadest sense is defined as all actions taken to attract traffic and influence the number of visitors.

There are two ways to do this:

– Natural referencing, using keywords and relevant content on your site to help you rank in web searches;
– Paid referencing, which corresponds to the purchase of advertising such as an AdWords campaign or banners.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to natural referencing methods (netlinking, content marketing…), while SEA is paid referencing (display only, selective display…). Although different, the two are nonetheless complementary.

Which method should you choose for your SEO strategy? Should you use both?

SEO may seem less expensive than SEA, but it’s a long-term process. It relies on the regular writing of articles to move up the search engine results. It also relies on fairly complex backlink strategies and monitoring of the SERPs to assess the competition.

SEA saves you time, but isn’t enough on its own: buying AdWords campaigns won’t do you much good for a site devoid of content or relevant information. On the other hand, it does improve your SEO by filling in the gaps left by SEO. The two methods are therefore perfectly complementary.

Digital marketing and social media

Social media or SMO (Social Media Optimization) is an integral part of effective digital marketing. By SMO, we mean the broader scope of searches via social networks, with the use of hashtags, for example.
Social networks enable you, among other things, to increase traffic to your site by publishing regular posts (publications) about your business.

SMS/MMS

With increasing access to mobile internet, smartphones and tablets, communications have gone from email to instant messaging and SMS.

With the rise in popularity of social media, SMS is an important tool in digital marketing campaigns; it’s used to boost customer engagement, provide information on products and services, update customers on company news, and more.

Below are some digital marketing tools that can enhance your SMS/MMS marketing campaign.

1. ShortStack: This is a cloud-based platform that facilitates the creation of text messaging applications (SMS applications). It gives you access to real-time analysis of your texts and lets you track campaign performance.

Its user-friendly interface also lets you easily create templates for future texting campaigns. Features include rich media support, real-time analytics, geolocation support and more.

2. Twilio: This is a cloud communications platform that enables developers to create applications around SMS/MMS messaging, voice and video.

Twilio provides APIs that enable developers to integrate voice and SMS functionality into their own platforms or applications. Thanks to their powerful APIs, developers also have access to Twilio’s control panel, which offers advanced features such as number verification/viewing.

Competitions

Contests are a digital marketing tool that companies use to encourage their target audience to engage with them, promote their brand and grow their business.

A contest is a way for a company to send traffic to its website and social media channels. A contest can also be used as a means of collecting data on your customers and potential customers.

Companies can create fun and exciting contests that will encourage people to share contest links on social media platforms.

The more people who share the link, the more people will visit the company’s website and social media pages.

Affiliation

Affiliate marketing is a way for companies, or affiliates, to earn commissions by promoting the products of other people (or companies).

Affiliates usually receive a special affiliate link to use to promote a company’s products. When someone clicks on the affiliate link and performs a qualified action, such as purchasing a product or registering for a service, the affiliate receives a commission.

Affiliate marketing is commonly used in digital marketing campaigns because it is more cost-effective than other traditional forms of advertising such as print, TV and radio ads.

Since affiliates are generally paid on a commission basis, rather than on a pay-per-click basis like search engine ads, the advertiser has greater control over budget allocation.

What’s more, affiliates can promote several different businesses on a single website, making the process simpler and easier for both parties.