Elements for a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in July 2022 and was updated with additional information in August 2023.

A large-scale digital marketing strategy is a complex undertaking, which is why, before you know it - and even though you have the best of intentions - things can get messy. Too much of this tactic, not enough of that one; a dash short on cohesion, a lack of collaboration. One tiny misstep can often send an entire digital marketing strategy careening off track. However, when the perfect mix of digital marketing solutions comes together, success flows like the magical elixir of a Disney fairytale.

With that in mind, we wanted to share the Essential Elements of a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy. With the amount of confusion, noise, and sheer choice available in the digital marketing space, it's become increasingly difficult for marketers and businesses to figure out where and how to focus their energy. Below, we outline the essential elements of a digital marketing strategy. These six components will help you cut through the crowd and deliver success.

What is Digital Marketing?

Businesses used to have to reach their target market via marketing channels like direct mail, radio, newspapers, magazines, television, and more.

But now that people spend more and more time on the internet and social media, businesses have to reach their target audience via these digital channels.

And this is how digital marketing came to life.

Some common digital marketing tactics include:

• Paid advertising
• Affiliate marketing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing and SEO
• Social media marketing
• And more

What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?

A successful digital marketing strategy focuses on a wide range of online strategies aimed at promoting products, services, or brands to reach potential customers. It involves creating and executing a comprehensive digital marketing plan that incorporates various methods. The goal is to establish a strong online presence, increase brand awareness, drive traffic to websites, and ultimately connect with the target audience in meaningful ways, all while maximizing the return on investment.

Digital marketing is any marketing tactic that relies on electronic devices and the internet. These tactics are often more affordable and easier to execute, making them a favorite amongst marketers.

Marketing Strategy vs Campaigns or Tactics

1. Marketing Strategy (The Big Picture)

A marketing strategy is the overarching plan that defines a business’s approach to reaching its target audience and achieving its long-term goals. It involves high-level decisions that shape how a company presents itself in the market.

Key Components of a Marketing Strategy:

• Target Audience: Who are you trying to reach? (Buyer personas, demographics, and behaviors)
• Value Proposition: What makes your brand unique? (Competitive advantage)
• Marketing Goals: SMART goals that align with business objectives (e.g., increase brand awareness, generate leads)
• Core Channels: Where and how will you reach your audience? (SEO, social media, PPC, email marketing)
• Brand Positioning & Messaging: How do you want your brand to be perceived?

Example:
A fitness brand creates a marketing strategy focused on becoming millennials' top choice for eco-friendly workout gear. They decide to emphasize sustainability, influencer collaborations, and social media engagement.

2. Marketing Campaigns (The Specific Initiatives)

A marketing campaign is a set of coordinated activities designed to achieve a specific goal within the broader strategy. Campaigns have clear start and end dates and typically focus on promoting a particular product, service, or event.

Key Characteristics of a Marketing Campaign:

• Goal-Oriented: Drives short-term objectives (e.g., increase Black Friday sales by 20%)
• Targeted: Focuses on a specific audience segment
• Multi-Channel Approach: Uses various platforms (email, social media, PPC, influencer marketing)
• Time-Bound: Runs for a defined period

Example:
The fitness brand runs a summer campaign called “Go Green, Get Fit”, offering discounts on eco-friendly workout gear. They use social media ads, influencer partnerships, and email marketing to boost sales.

3. Marketing Tactics (The Execution)

Marketing tactics are the specific actions taken to execute a marketing campaign and strategy. These are the granular, day-to-day activities that contribute to achieving marketing objectives.

Common Marketing Tactics:

• SEO: Optimizing website content to rank higher on Google
• PPC Ads: Running Google Ads to drive traffic
• Email Marketing: Sending newsletters to nurture leads
• Social Media Engagement: Posting content and responding to comments
• Influencer Collaborations: Partnering with industry influencers
• Retargeting Ads: Running ads for users who visited your website but didn’t convert

Example:
For the “Go Green, Get Fit” campaign, the brand uses marketing tactics like:

• Running Instagram ads with influencer testimonials
• Sending targeted email newsletters with promo codes
• Publishing blog content about sustainable fitness practices

How They Work Together

1. Marketing Strategy: Defines the long-term vision (Become a leading eco-friendly fitness brand).
2. Marketing Campaign: A short-term initiative that supports the strategy (Summer Sale: “Go Green, Get Fit”).
3. Marketing Tactics: The individual steps to execute the campaign (Instagram ads, influencer marketing, email promos)

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

1. Start By Doing Comprehensive Research

Before you can start creating an online marketing strategy, you need to do comprehensive market research.

This includes learning about your ideal customer profile, competitors, and market expectations for your industry. Understanding these factors will help you determine business goals.

Here’s what you should consider:

• Your audience: When it comes to your audience, you need to understand your customer profile, their spending power or buying patterns, and behavior. This way, you can communicate with them effectively and create online marketing strategies that relate to them.
• Your competitors: By understanding who your potential online competitors are, you’ll be able to replicate their online marketing strategies and figure out ways to beat them at their own game. Additionally, a competitive analysis can help you gain valuable insights and determine what tactics will work for your brand.
• Market expectations: By analyzing competitors, you’ll also learn emerging trends and industry standards. You can combine this data with users’ demands to determine what you should be doing to attract more customers and get ahead of your competitors.

2. Set SMART Goals

Once you’ve determined who your target audience and competitors are, you can craft some digital marketing goals. These objectives will guide your strategy and help you measure progress.

You can establish goals or targets by using the SMART goals approach.

What exactly is the SMART approach?

SMART is a goal-setting method that helps you craft effective goals.

Here’s how you can do this:

• Specific: A specific goal is clear and outlines what you want to achieve.
• Measurable: Your goal should be measurable – you can make goals measurable by relying on metrics. It’s important to measure goals since this can help you track progress.
• Achievable: Your goal needs to be achievable and realistic. To do this, you should outline how you’re going to achieve that goal. This includes listing down the tasks required and figuring out if you have the resources to achieve the objective.
• Realistic: Your goal needs to be attainable. As a result, you need to set a proper timeline and ensure that you’re capable of achieving it.
• Time-bound: Creating a timeline is a great way to ensure you work towards the goal. To do this, you should give your goal a specific time period. Once this period lapses, you’ll need to check if you’ve achieved your goal or not and decide if you should continue working towards it.

3. An Engaging, Responsive Website

With more and more people interacting with brands via their smartphones and tablets, it's necessary to ensure you're delivering a consistent and responsive experience across all devices. It should be just as easy for a user to engage with or complete an action on your website, content, and social media with their phones as it is on their laptop. And, oh yeah, the wearable market is promising; the number of connected wearable devices worldwide is expected to reach $265.4 billion by 2026, so that might be important. Don't sleep on anything related to mobile technology - we promise you'll regret it. 

4. Measured Search Campaigns

Is SEO dead? HA, a good joke; we really had ourselves going there for a second. SEO is alive and well, friends, but perhaps a bit more difficult than in the past due to an increased number of requirements and that pesky algorithm over at Google that keeps getting better and better. Then again, search marketing isn't just about SEO, so don't forget about the incredible effectiveness of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. The key, whether you're doing PPC or SEO, is to track and measure your results so you can maximize the value of your marketing budget.

5. Email Marketing

It's amazing how overlooked and underused email marketing is, even in this day and age. Sending an email to your target audience is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic, engagement, and conversion. You're missing a huge opportunity, not to mention an integral part of a successful digital marketing strategy, if you haven't implemented email marketing.

6. Add Social to the Mix

Over the last year, we've talked a lot about how vital customer service is to the core of a company or brand. And in our opinion, social media is a space where you can delight your customers with unexpectedly exceptional customer service. Increased social activity also gives a boost to your brand's awareness and adds credibility and thought leadership to your industry voice. Even though many businesses had a difficult time discerning the utility of social media, they're starting to figure out it isn't just a fad.

7. Join the Dots With Content Marketing

Ah, content marketing - the darling of the digital space for many years. With more companies heavily investing in content, there's an increased pressure to plan, organize, and deliver magical, unicorn-like content that wins the heart of anybody who reads it. Yeah, that's not reality, at least not the unicorn part. Content is becoming so huge that you really do need to seamlessly plan, collaborate, and organize your content marketing agenda to achieve success.

8. Paid Advertising

Paid advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) is an online advertising strategy that requires advertisers to bid to show their ads on a specific platform like Google.

It’s called PPC because every time someone clicks on the ad, the advertiser has to pay a fee to the platform or search engine.

PPC ads are useful for companies that want to generate results and profits quickly since these ads can reach a larger audience quickly.

9. Measure, Tweak, Improve

Everything in digital marketing boils down to value. Most companies and brands have tight budgets but expect huge results, and the only way to do that is to always, always, always measure, tweak, and improve upon whatever it is you're doing to extract maximum value.

Levers of Digital Marketing Strategies

1. SEO

SEO ensures that your content ranks well in search engines, driving organic traffic. Key levers within SEO include:

• On-page SEO (title tags, meta descriptions, keyword optimization)
• Technical SEO (site speed, mobile-friendliness, schema markup)
• Off-page SEO (backlinks, domain authority, social signals)
• Local SEO (Google Business Profile, local citations, reviews)

2. Content Marketing

A strong content strategy improves visibility, engagement, and conversions. Levers include:

• Blog posts (educational, keyword-optimized)
• Videos (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels)
• Infographics (shareable visual content)
• Podcasts & Webinars (authority-building, interactive)
• Lead magnets (ebooks, whitepapers, checklists)

3. Paid Advertising

Paid campaigns help businesses reach audiences faster. Key levers:

• Google Ads (search, display, shopping, retargeting)
• Social media ads (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok)
• Native advertising (sponsored content, promoted posts)
• Programmatic advertising (automated bidding for ad placements)

 4. Social Media Marketing

Social media drives engagement and brand awareness. Important levers:

• Organic social media (content creation, community engagement)
• Paid social ads (targeted campaigns, remarketing)
• Influencer marketing (collaborations, brand ambassadors)
• Social commerce (Instagram and TikTok shopping)

5. Email Marketing & Automation

Email remains a high-ROI marketing lever. Strategies include:

• Segmentation (tailored messaging based on user behavior)
• Drip campaigns (nurturing leads over time)
• Personalization (dynamic content, AI-driven recommendations)
• Re-engagement campaigns (win-back strategies, cart abandonment emails)

6. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

CRO ensures website visitors take the desired actions. Key levers:

• A/B testing (landing pages, CTAs, ad creatives)
• UX/UI improvements (mobile optimization, page speed, clear navigation)
• Trust signals (testimonials, security badges, reviews)
• Behavioral analytics (heatmaps, session recordings)

7. Affiliate & Influencer Marketing

Leveraging third-party credibility to drive sales. Tactics include:

• Affiliate programs (commission-based partnerships)
• Brand collaborations (social media influencers, bloggers)
• Referral marketing (word-of-mouth incentives)

8. Data & Analytics

Tracking performance to optimize strategies. Critical levers:

• Google Analytics (traffic, conversion tracking)
• CRM data (customer insights, lead scoring)
• Marketing attribution (multi-touchpoint tracking)
• A/B testing tools (Google Optimize, Optimizely)

9. Customer Experience (CX) & Retention

Retaining customers is as crucial as acquiring new ones. Key levers:

• Loyalty programs (discounts, VIP access)
• Personalized experiences (AI-driven product recommendations)
• Chatbots & AI assistants (24/7 customer support)

The Benefits of Digital Marketing Campaigns

Here are three benefits of investing in digital marketing:

It Increases Customer Loyalty

Once you finalize a sale with a customer, it’s important to nurture those relationships so that you can retain those customers. Retained customers are likely to purchase another product or even recommend your product or service to friends and family, further boosting sales. With its profound impact, digital marketing has become a strategy to engage, influence, and convert audiences in an ever-connected world.

So, how do you retain customers?

Simple: through digital marketing.

Digital marketing can help you communicate easily with your customers. Here are some ways you can do this:

• Email marketing: Sending already existing customers personalized emails like holiday discount codes or new products related to their previous purchases can help you connect with customers and encourage sales. Email marketing is one of the vital elements of digital campaigns, amplified further by the availability of marketing automation platforms that streamline outreach and nurture relationships.
• Social media: Sharing posts on social media channels like Instagram and Facebook can help you reach a large customer base and keep them engaged daily. You can encourage users to engage with your content by sharing and commenting on it.

It Helps You Target The Right Audience

Digital marketing platforms like Kissmetrics can help you separate your customer base into segments. This way, you can launch marketing campaigns that target and resonate with that specific group.

Digital marketing tools also give you access to individual buyer information like previous purchases and buying behavior. Marketers can use this information to promote specific products and services that buyers will most likely be interested in. This can also boost the customer’s shopping experience since they are presented with the right products and services.

To achieve effective digital marketing, start by comprehending the precise audience you want to reach and then develop campaigns that are specifically catered to their particular needs, preferences, and interests. Here's how to craft a digital marketing plan that resonates with your target audience along the buyer's journey:

Research and develop buyer personas. Embark on a journey to create a digital marketing plan by diving deep into your target group's demographics, behaviors, interests, and pain points. Use this foundational knowledge to meticulously craft buyer personas, which act as avatars representing your ideal customers within this specific group.

In a digital landscape where every marketing effort counts, the art of effective digital marketing is woven with the understanding that resonating with your target audience isn't just a goal; it's the journey. By leveraging the available tools, strategies, and insights, your digital marketing plan becomes a roadmap that connects your brand with the right people at the right time and in the most meaningful way possible along their transformative buyer's journey.

Measure Results With Ease

It can be difficult to measure progress with offline marketing. For example, it’s almost impossible to know how many people read your ad in the newspaper. However, it’s incredibly easy to measure the success of any digital marketing campaign. You can check how many people saw your online ad, see how long someone spends on your page and more.

These results can help you determine what kind of digital marketing strategies work for your business. This way, you don’t waste time, money, and other resources on unsuccessful campaigns.

Software like Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Google Search Console can help you keep an eye on your digital marketing performance.

Metrics encompassing key performance indicators, engagement rates on social media posts, and search engine results pages allow you to understand precisely how your audience interacts with your brand. By focusing on key metrics, you can craft a long-term strategy that not only enhances brand visibility but also ranks you higher in search engines like Google. Paid social media campaigns further amplify your reach and tap into audiences genuinely interested in your products.

Need help getting these elements into your successful digital marketing strategy? Then sign up for expert advice at WSI today!