What does a Digital Marketing Strategist do?

To put it simply, a Digital Strategist is responsible for developing solutions that meet a client’s needs, goals, and brand objectives by using data-driven insight. Trends in current and modern technologies play a significant role in maintaining and discovering the data needed to deploy or adjust effective digital representation. Moreover, you must be at least familiar with the specialized areas of your strategy, such as SEO, email marketing, site navigation, content, and HTML language, to name a few.

Below, we will review aspects of a Digital Strategist in my favorite way, with no fluff punchy bullets.

Digital Strategy

Tangible Strategies

• Understanding the client goals and how they translate into the team’s specialized digital capabilities. Next, coordinating with the team to map out a functioning strategy and presenting it to the client in a manner that can be understood by all.
• Develop key digital products such as data capture techniques and make them functional for a wide range of clients.  Products may include Lead Magnets, Landing Page Templates, Consumer Discovery Surveys, and Google Ads Strategy – all while collaborating with team specialist.
• Organize taxonomy, also known as schema, and website internal link structure. Proper internal website links and content organization make a site user-friendly while increasing search engine ranking. Google likes seeing Page A pointing to Page B, then Page B pointing back to Page A, all without using the browser back button. This is a bit more complex than only internal links. Taxonomy provides a solid site-map for Google to crawl and know your site.

Knowledgebase and Internal Team

• Have knowledge of all aspects of the team’s specialists to know what is possible, who to ask for assets, and where to allocate resources when communicating to a Client or Project Manager.
• Maintain best practices in Digital Marketing, such as Digital Law including CASL, AdChoices, and GDPR.
• Set digital marketing strategies using all necessary tools (website, emails, social, and blogs)
• Liaise with internal teams to optimize customer experience and ensure brand consistency
• Support execution of projects to be of high quality, on time, cost-effective, and on budget
• Foster timeline development and monitor progress, ensuring deadlines are met

Knowledgebase working with Internal Team

A brief outline of digital strategy that the specialized internal team expands upon.

• SEO – Keyword analysis, proper HTML on copy and images, content, link building, image alt-tags, metadata, URL slug management, audits. Monitor SEO/SEM, marketing, and sales performance metrics to forecast trends
• SEM – PPC such as Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), programmatic bidding (also falls under automation), Google display remarketing, AdSense, Google Ad manager, and Google publisher (formerly DoubleClick)
• SMM – Marketing on all social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. Including how to leverage social scheduling tools like Buffer or Hootsuite.
• Content and Link Building – Link building has evolved over the years. It is no longer about the number of links on your site, but how relevant the source is that they point to, and if that source points back. This is known as Domain Authority (DA).
• UI/UX – User Interface and User Experience (UI/UX). Know what has been proven to work when it comes to sign-up CTA’s. It is important to have a basic UI/UX understanding for communication with the UI/UX expert.
• Automation – Programmatic bidding, automated response software with templates, such as Pardot, and data collection from set fields all comprise automated marketing techniques. It is important to know what is possible in marketing automation when speaking with the expert.
• Website development, design, and HTML – Research what is possible in custom theme sites and customer pre-built sites. Study how to read and understand HTML for better communication with your team’s developer.
• Analytics – Know how to read and respond to Data Insights on Google, individual socials, and third-party sites such as Ahrefs, SEM Rush, HubSpot. Analyze web traffic metrics and suggest solutions to boost web presence.
• CRM Systems– Customer Relationship Managment (CRM) systems, such as Salesforce, can be one of the most customizable aspects of any digital strategy. It is the consumer data organization and storage center, and data is what all campaigns work from and work towards. “Data-driven insight” – it all lives in the CRM. This is the case for most companies. Other larger businesses with ‘big data’ will use a multi-model database management system such as Oracle.

Data-Driven Marketing

Lead Magnets and Email Capture

• How, when, and where to capture valuable consumer data using lead magnets (also known as Opt-in Areas or Email Capture Fields).
• Align the client’s goals to create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and Call to Action (CTA) that works in collecting data such as emails.
• Email List Building – this is part automation and part understanding the client’s goals and campaigns.

Landing Pages

• Landing pages engage in targeted campaign specific products or services and collect data on what the consumer is truly interested in through goal setting and tracking analytics, all in an effort to best serve future campaigns and collect consumer data to re-engage.
• One of the most important data captures on a landing page is an email.

Swift Strategy Relevance

• Search Console – when strategies deploy it is best practice to re-submit the site-map to the search console for a voluntary crawl. This offers newly developed site content, links, and sign-up areas to be scanned and known by search engines. Done in cooperation with the data team, this is a generalized explanation, and search console management can change depending on the strategy.

Data Collection

Consumer Trade-off

• The age-old consumer trade-off is the most basic system of business since the history of business transactions. Knowing, or discovering, what the client can offer in exchange for the consumer’s data is the trade. So, what could be a consumer trade-off? It is usually an incentive for data. Finding the clients USP and aligning it with the client’s goals is what makes data capture a significant part of Digital Strategy. What is the incentive to sign-up, and what is the data required to drive leads and further insights?
• A popular incentive is a free digital asset, such as a helpful checklist or informative whitepaper.
• Set goals with the data tracking team to ensure data is collected properly and measured within the correct metrics, this is important to improving future strategy.

Campaign Adjustment – Data Driven Insight

• Data-driven insight means watching the data trends and adjusting the campaign to keep up-to-date with our audience’s preferences and proactively suggesting new campaigns.

Client Partnership Enhancement

Website Domain Authority

• Content linking is often one-sided, and partnership enhancement is often a client goal. By increasing Domain Authority through guest-post content on partner sites, both partnering companies benefit from a higher Domain Authority.
• A guest-post is when a partnering company posts your content on their site with a link pointing back to your site.

Client-facing

• Provide guidance to both the client and the internal team to achieve execution. This includes clear email interaction, timeline upkeep with deliverables to Account Managers or Project Managers, presentation of new concepts, and team connectivity.
• Work with the client to understand their needs and make sure their goals are achievable with clean data collection from agreed upon data entry fields that work with their CRM.
• Build strong client relationships with key contacts.

Discovery

Staying on top of the latest trends

• Whether it’s an advanced trend like Chat-bots and Blockchain, or improvements on existing trends such as popular WordPress Plug-ins, be sure to have a network of Digital Marketing Professionals to source information from, including a stream of up-to-date trends from Digital-Trends, Digital Doughnut, Udemy Online Uni, and LinkedIn groups and forums.
• Research products, services, and current strategies to identify new opportunities.
• Attend seminars, webinars, and conferences.
• Network and keep an eye on trends to keep up best practices in Digital Law, such as CASL, AdSChoices, and GDPR.

In the end, the process of learning and improving never ends in the digital space. So, just like your strategies, be sure to grow, learn, and improve every day. Good luck out there you digital champions!