A site is merely a site. What happens after all the codes have been written and each design drawn in? What comes next? If you build it, will they come? Unfortunately, while this is true in the Hollywood movie Field of Dreams, this is not always true in the reality of the internet. A thousand or more websites sit idle in there servers with little or no visitors everyday. As digital marketing professionals, we believe that, not unlike any explorer or traveler, everyone needs a roadmap that will get you from point A to the next in an efficient manner. A site is like any product that requires marketing, advertising and other forms of promotion to get it to the right audience. In this post, we will provide you an outline of how to get you in the right direction of marketing your website in the digital landscape.

Know yourself

Before you start strategy, it is critical to find out where you are, who you are, and how others perceive your brand or site. Finding out your place in the digital space will enable you to move forward with your plans. Audit your digital footprint; start with some questions like: How does your search profile look like? What Social Media Networks are you on? Are your Social Media profiles consistent with your brand? What networks provide you the best value? How do your profiles stack up against your competitors?

Know your customers

As in any relationship, it is a 2 way-street. It is critical to be able to know who you want to create a business relationship with. Document specific attributes of the personas you would like your company/site to attract. Define the following items about target audience: Age, Location, Gender, Job Title, Business Interests or Pain points

Document your mission statement

Before you embark on your quest for digital success, clearly define what you want to achieve and what your brand will be offer. If a digital marketing activity does not fit this mission (no matter who interesting or entertaining it is) ignore it. A mission statement will help keep you on track. There can be so many new fads and technologies that are new and exciting at first but will only create noise rather than results - if they do not help you accomplish the bottom line of your mission.

Set your Benchmarks

Consider what your success metrics will be. Do not just choose vanity metrics like number of followers created or likes. It is critical that you are able to define your digital marketing success to key metrics that matter to your site's and is consistent to your overall bottom line and mission. Some metrics you can consider are conversion rate (specific actions on your site), traffic increase, bounce rate decrease, brand mentions, total shares of your content.

Build a content plan

Once you know who you are in the digital space, what kind of your customers you are targeting, what you specifically aim to do, and what to measure to track your progress, you can then build a plan to create and curate content that is relevant to your customers. Content can come in different forms but should either educate, entertain or inform. Relevant content is meaningful to customers; the most important content you can create should help solve their most important needs and concerns with your services. The practical rule with content is to always start from what matters most to your customers (before what matters most to you) and build out it out from there.

Putting it all together

There are a number of ways to skin a cat; the same saying applies with digital marketing. While there are going to be a number of ways one can achieve success on the internet, it is always important to start with understanding where you are at present before you move forward. We hope that the simple tips above will help you when you do not know where to start with digital marketing.