The Digital Marketing Strategy Example We're Still Talking About

The Digital Marketing Strategy Example We're Still Talking About

By Casey NewmanAug 14 /2018
You want to reach more potential customers at the right time and on their terms, but putting together that elusive winning digital marketing strategy to do it probably sounds easier said than done. And most marketers would agree with you: 63 percent of marketers say their biggest challenge is generating traffic and leads. Not only that, 55 percent of marketers said their top goal for the next 12 months was growing website traffic, while 70 percent were focused on converting leads to customers.

Converting leads to customers can be especially difficult if you’re targeting an audience that’s hard to reach. Here’s how we engaged a hard-to-reach audience, the campaign elements we used, how we promoted it and the results. 

What Makes a Good Digital Marketing Strategy?

When you think of a digital marketing strategy, you’re probably thinking of an intensive effort to grow your traffic or capture leads. But in reality, a digital marketing strategy can be simplified. Think of it this way: What is your plan of action to achieve your desired goal? This can be helpful if your strategy has plenty of moving parts. Most digital marketing strategies have the following elements:

      • Buyer Personas: Before you begin creating your goals, you need to know who you’ll be marketing to. What are their interests and pain points? Where do they get their information? What is their preferred method of interaction?
      • Goals and Tools: What goals do you want to accomplish? Once you’ve established these, will you need any tools to help? These can be things like marketing automation software, social listening software, etc.
      • Assets: Do you have earned, owned or paid media you can leverage to accomplish your goals?
      • Content Creation: This can include existing pieces you can either reuse or tweak, and/or gaps you’d like to fill with your content. Depending on your audience’s preferences, your content can be blog posts, infographics, videos, downloads or any other type of content you know your audience enjoys.  

A Winning Digital Marketing Strategy Example

Ready to get started putting your strategy together? Here is a digital marketing strategy example for an unreachable audience from one of Kuno’s clients to inspire you.  

The Client: A Medical Device Manufacturer

This medical device manufacturer wanted to raise awareness of both its brand and its product for cardiothoracic surgeons. The target audience, cardiothoracic surgeons, posed a unique challenge for our team. Would the tactics we normally employed to reach audiences work with this highly specialized—and very busy—group?

After speaking to several medical professionals and creating our personas, we learned that because cardiothoracic surgeons are extremely busy, they’re likely checking emails on their phones during a free moment at the hospital. (Our data also later confirmed this).

And while they’re interested in clinical material, we also learned they would be interested in more high level content like salary statistics or the best places to practice medicine.

How We Did it

When you think about raising product awareness, you likely think about promoting said product, right? For this audience, we learned this tactic would probably be unsuccessful (they get bombarded with product marketing messages daily.) So how could we stand out?

First, we created a blog that featured content specific to cardiothoracic surgeons. However, the blog wasn’t full of the clinical content this audience was used to seeing. It featured more top of the funnel pieces about the business of medicine, specific issues surgeons faced, and more.

digital marketing strategy example blog 1

digital marketing strategy example blog 2

We took the understanding that this group of people would be interested in high level content—like the best and worst places to practice and salary information—and created an interactive cardiothoracic surgeon salary report.

We wanted to include much more than the standard salary statistics, though. To make an impact, we also included things that could affect salary, like place of work, different certifications and the best and worst places to practice. Then, each module of the report would be animated as the user scrolled through.

Digital-Marketing-Animated-ExampleBecause the reader didn’t have to fill out the form to view the report, we focused on lead capture by including a pop-up to download a different report once they got to a certain module. We also included an option to have a PDF of the report emailed to them if they didn’t have time to scroll through it when they opened their email.

digital marketing strategy example CTA

The Promotion

From our research, we knew cardiothoracic surgeons checked their emails. We also knew they were active on Facebook. To promote the report, we created an email, a landing page and a series of Facebook ads.

The Results

Because we knew cardiothoracic surgeons were busy and likely checked their emails on their phones between cases, we kept the copy short and used bullet points. We also called out the fact that the reader could view the report instantly without filling out a form.

digital marketing strategy example email

The email netted a 45 percent open rate and a click-through rate of 47 percent, highly successful metrics in any field, let alone a highly niche one like cardiothoracic surgery.

digital marketing strategy example email results

Overall, the  campaign got the medical device manufacturer 91 new contacts and 7 customers.

The Takeaways

Creating a winning digital marketing strategy may seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Before you dive into creating your content or offer, step back and think about your audience. Who are they? What interests them? What are their pain points?

Then, use your data. Look at your data to see if your emails are being opened on mobile devices or desktops. This information can help inform your copy and design, making it much more likely your email will get clicks.  

Now that you know your audience and where and when they like to interact with your brand, get creative. Sure, it seems easy and quick to throw together a blog post or email to promote your brand or product, but try something new.

Are there some industry statistics you can add a new twist to? Does your audience have a particular interest—like salary statistics or rankings of top performers—you could tap into? Do you have any original research to share?

In the example above, our cardiothoracic surgeons learned the latest information about the future of the field, and the medical device manufacturer received brand recognition. By taking the time to learn about your audience, where they get their information and think creatively about your marketing, you can reach what seems like an unreachable audience.

5 Secrets Revealed

Casey Newman
The Author

Casey Newman

A former journalist, Casey tells brands’ stories and helps to create engaging content strategies for companies. Before joining Kuno, she was in charge of public relations for marketing tech company Knotice. She earned a gold Hermes Creative Award for Knotice’s blog content and spearheaded several content initiatives that helped lead to the company's acquisition.
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