A digital presence is becoming increasingly important as customers and companies are almost always online. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on a digital marketing strategy. If a business does not create and implement a digital marketing strategy, it may miss new opportunities and lose existing and potential customers. The reason it works so well and delivers strong results is that it uses digital tools and platforms to create flexible strategies that can adapt to change.

A good example of this can be seen with Digital Opptur, a digital agency that collaborated with Blå Kors, running a campaign to increase awareness and the number of inquiries to Blå Kors’ online therapy service. According to their article, Blå Kors had previously attempted this campaign without much success. From that initial attempt, they could already gather data and identify what worked and what didn’t. Using Blå Kors as an example, we’ll break down a digital marketing strategy into several stages to illustrate how data from digital platforms influences how you develop, implement, and evaluate a digital marketing strategy.

Develop and Understand

The first step in a digital marketing strategy is to define a main goal and conduct research. It’s wise to define KPIs — Key Performance Indicators — which are used to track and measure success. What do you want to achieve? Increase click-through rates? Reduce bounce rates on a landing page? Or, in Blå Kors’ case, increase awareness and the number of inquiries? Once you’ve set your goal, it’s much easier to plan how the rest of the strategy will unfold. It’s also smart to research around your goal. There are many methods and analyses you can use here.

The SWOT analysis is a popular tool because it covers all the aspects you should focus on, allowing you to gather data about yourself and potential competitors, threats, and strengths. If our goal is to increase inquiries and awareness, it can be useful to define a target audience. Once you’ve done that, you should find out things like: how much time they spend on social media, which platforms they use most, and how many grew up in homes affected by substance abuse. That gives you valuable data that takes you to the next step — understanding the customer journey.

It’s no use creating a great campaign if your target audience never sees it. That’s why thorough research on the customer journey is crucial to ensure you reach them. Blå Kors’ service is aimed at people aged 13–35. How do you ensure the message reaches them? Do they search for it on Google, Instagram, or Facebook? Have they heard about it from a friend? A valuable digital tool here would be SEO. With SEO, you can identify which words and search phrases perform best, helping you rank higher in search results — increasing the chance your target audience progresses along the customer journey.

One method Digital Opptur used for Blå Kors was “always on,” focusing on a continuous presence across various social platforms. By using multiple and relevant communication channels, you can collect data showing where and how much time your target group spends on different platforms. This information helps identify which platforms are most used and how user behavior differs across them. From this, it becomes easier to create relevant content and tailor your message — improving the customer journey.

Implement

It’s easy to think it’s enough to use your own communication channels, but this often proves ineffective — especially in digital marketing. As mentioned earlier, the “always on” method is highly effective. The article notes that by using this approach, you can adjust your messaging, materials, and target audience along the way, while also communicating complex messages more clearly. Doing this expands your opportunities and provides more data on which platforms perform best and where to focus your efforts.

If you have a lot of content and are unsure what to post, this is the stage to begin testing. You can create content in different variations — text, images, and videos — and test them. On some platforms, you can use what’s called A/B testing.

A/B testing involves testing two different versions of content — for example, an ad or campaign — and showing them to two equally sized target groups, then analyzing which one performs best over a set period. If you’re unsure what works best in a digital marketing strategy, A/B testing is a brilliant tool. We also see this with Blå Kors, which ran as many as 78 variations of ads across different platforms and achieved excellent results.

Evaluate

This is the final and most important step of a digital marketing strategy. To determine whether your ads were effective, you must be able to analyze the data. A useful tool here is Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, you have access to real-time reporting, allowing you to see data such as traffic sources (direct, referrals, campaigns, keywords), new vs. returning visitors, and active sessions.

Inquiries to Blå Kors increased by 400%, a dramatic and impressive improvement — but that alone doesn’t explain what caused the increase. Therefore, it’s smart to dig deeper into the real-time data. In this case, it would make sense to analyze traffic sources, as this reveals where the inquiries are coming from.

The article mentions that ads were run on Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Here, you should analyze which platform performed best and which performed worst, then decide where to invest more based on those results. This type of data analysis provides valuable insights that help you optimize content and placement for the best possible results.

Now that you know how to create and implement a digital marketing strategy, it’s time to craft an excellent campaign! Read here for video ideas that work for your business.