Internet Marketing Digital_marketing_for_dummies | Page 40

Establishing Marketing Objectives
Before you start a blog, open a Pinterest account, or start gathering email addresses, you
need to choose your business goals. When you know what you want to accomplish, you’ll
be able to direct your energy into the right marketing campaigns and employ marketing
tactics that move the needle on the right business metrics.
Here are six common goals that your digital marketing strategy can affect:
Increasing problem and solution awareness: Your online marketing can help
prospective customers become aware of something they need, an effect called problem
awareness. Your marketing can also make prospective customers aware that your
company provides a solution to a problem — called solution awareness. Your objective
is to help people realize that you can take them from the “Before” state, in which they
have a problem, to the desired “After” state, in which they have obtained a positive
solution. (We cover this idea in greater detail in Chapter 1.)
Acquiring new leads and customers: Gaining more leads and customers is a primary
objective of most businesses. Without generating new leads and customers, your
business will never grow beyond what it is now. You need to bring in new blood in
order to scale your business.
Activating leads and customers: If you’ve been in business for more than a few
months, you likely have leads and customers who have yet to buy or haven’t bought in
a while. You can use your digital marketing campaigns to encourage people to buy
from you for the first time, as well as to remind past customers who haven’t purchased
from you lately of the value you bring and why they should buy from you again. Your
digital marketing campaigns can activate these dormant leads and customers and help
keep your business in mind.
Monetizing existing leads and customers: Acquiring new leads and customers is
expensive and time consuming. Don’t forget to create digital campaigns intended to
sell more products and services to those new leads and customers. Monetization
campaigns make upsell, cross-sell, and other types of offers to sell more to your best
leads and customers
Onboarding new leads and customers: New leads and customers deserve special
treatment simply because they are new. They need to be taught who you are and how to
be successful with what they’ve purchased. To achieve this goal, create content such as
welcome emails or welcome packets that tell people how to use your product or
service, what they can expect, and where they can go if they need help with their
purchase.
Building community and advocacy: To move prospects, leads, and customers beyond
a shallow, transactional relationship, you need to build campaigns that create
communities of advocates and brand promoters. One of the most effective ways to