girlsgotgoalsphStep-by-Step Process to Create an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing has truly changed over the course of this pandemic.
As many business owners made their business accessible online, so has the growth and change of marketing strategies.
Most of your clients are now using digital platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. In fact, there are already 5.1 billion online users that roam around the internet actively.
So, creating an effective digital marketing strategy for your business is important to attract more sign-ups, connect with your audience, and build a community.
We will share with you how we do it for our clients and how you can use it for your own yoga business.
What is Digital Marketing and Why Do You Need It?
Digital Marketing (or Online Marketing) is basically advertising your services or products to potential clients through the internet.
In other words, if offline marketing includes billboards, business cards, magazine promotions, televisions, or radios; online marketing gives publicity to your business using online platforms like blogs, social media sites, email, and lots more.
- Now that we understand the definition of Digital Marketing, why do you exactly need it for your yoga business?
- Digital Marketing will increase your brand exposure
- Most, if not all, of your students/clients are already spending most of their time using digital platforms
- It is the most cost-effective way to promote your brand
- It gives higher ROI compared to offline marketing
- Signing up for classes will cost less effort for your students
How to Create A Digital Marketing Strategy
Marketing is not simply creating a blog and posting cute contents online, then all the sales will just follow. (We also hope it’s that easy! But it’s not.)
Furthermore, creating a strong presence online requires a good strategy, whether you’re just starting out or doing it for the long run.
These are the 8 easy steps to follow to create a strong digital marketing strategy:
- Establish your brand
- Set business goals
- Know your ideal clients
- Do market research
- Make use of marketing platforms
- Build your audience
- Do continuous research
- Evaluate your progress
Establish Your Brand
Before starting anything else, the first step is to know who you are as a business and how you want your clients (or other businesses) to know you.
Establishing your brand is the beginning of a good reputation both in the offline presence and digital presence.
Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.
The Bhagavad Gita
These are some questions to answer to establish your brand:
- What is the purpose of my business?
- What are my brand’s core values?
- What is my brand’s personality?
- Why do I do what I do?
- What services or products do I offer?
- What problems do I solve with my services?
Set Business Goals
Knowing your goals for the business can be overwhelming and that’s okay.
No worries, there are several ways to plan your goals – long term and short term.
- Do a SWOT Analysis
This is a marketing tool that allows you to check where your business currently stands.
You will analyze what your strengths and weaknesses as a business are, and your opportunities and threats at the same time.
- Create SMART Goals
Having a typical goal will not cut it and would most likely confuse you even more.
A goal should be SMART- Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timebased.
Say you want to increase followers on your social media platform, you need to specify which specific platform, to what percentage do you want to increase it to, and in how many weeks or months do you target to reach your goal?
- Think Short-Term and Long-Term
Businesses need short and long term goals to thrive. Knowing where you’re headed for the next 3 to 6 months will make your steps and processes easier.
Furthermore, you also need to have a goal for the next 5 to 10 years.
Know Your Ideal Clients
Having a clear image of who you want to sell your products and services to will save you a lot of effort, time, and money.
This will also make you stand out more since you know who you market to.
You have to know your audience to understand what they need and want from you, what problems you have to fix, what their pain points are, and what makes them satisfied customers.
Moreover, this will be your guide on what content you should be posting, how your tone of voice will be, and where you can find your clients.
Think of it this way: You can’t market meat to vegan people in a spa. That will be an outright waste of energy.
“The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”
Simon Sinek
Do Market Research
This is connected with knowing your target audience. Only this time, you will also check new industry trends, how your competitors are marketing their services, get some feedback from your ideal clients, and more.
Here are some questions to answer while doing your market research:
- What sets me apart from other yoga studios?
- What are the benefits my clients get from my business?
- How can I improve with my current product and services?
- What are the newest trends in my niche?
- Is my pricing still competitive?
Choose Marketing Strategies That Suit Your Ideal Clients
There are many digital marketing strategies that you can choose from. What’s important is to find which of these strategies work for your business.
It’s safe to choose 1-2 strategies that you can focus on while you start digital marketing and just expand along the way.
We’ve listed some marketing strategies that you may be interested to start with:
- Content Marketing – If you love sharing information, writing blogs, and creating good content, you can start with content marketing. This is also highly recommended to get more traffic and list of prospect clients
- Social Media Marketing – If you’re just starting out from scratch, social media marketing will be the easiest platform to use. You have, again, several social media sites that you can sign up on for your business and each social media has its own marketing. Currently, it’s Facebook as well as Instagram that work best for Yoga Businesses.
- Email Marketing – This is the platform with the highest ROI, if done properly. This works best when you have a list of your target audience’s emails to whom you can send email commercials such as newsletter, weekly updates, exclusive promotions, etc.
- Influencer Marketing – If your brand already has a good foundation and branding, you can choose to do influencer marketing. It is connecting with celebrities or influencers who share the same values and beliefs as your brand, that will promote your business to their followers.
Choose the strategy that is most comfortable for you and where most of your target audience hangs around. It is also important to note that creating content that speaks to your clients is the best way to increase your followers.
Build an Audience
After you’ve set your marketing strategy, it is now time to build an audience.
Having an authentic, real, and sincere connection with your clients is the most satisfying part of having a yoga business. It is also the recipe for success.
We’ve written a whole blog for this. You can read more about it here: Grow Your Online Yoga Community
Evaluate Your Progress
Different digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube have a built-in analytics tool that shows how your content is performing.
Most analytics include reach, engagement, and other data that will be helpful to track your progress and plan your next strategy.
We usually check our progress once every week and evaluate new sets of strategies (or choose to retain some) every month. This is to make sure that we always provide a fresh set of content.
Continuous Research
Stopping your market research is the worst thing you can do for your digital marketing strategy.
Changes in algorithms, trends and new technologies are the norm in the online world.
Doing continuous research also ensures that you always provide a fresh set of content and you stay on top of the trend. This will also help your yoga business be sustainable.
Doing a digital marketing strategy can be a lot of work, but it’s critical to your business’ success. You can do these steps with your team to solidify your next steps to level up your business.
If you’re an entrepreneur who wants to focus on your zone of genius and doesn’t have enough time for digital marketing, you can hire an expert in the digital industry to do it for you.
Drop me a message to find out how we can assist you in your digital marketing journey.
Digital Marketing Tips
- Use project management tools to organize all your goals and on-going projects
- Automating your blog marketing will SAVE you so much time
- Content batching + a scheduling platform is the best combo
- Always choose quality over quantity
Read more about business marketing tips:
Why you need to start your business NOW
