A tightly run digital marketing strategy is essential for aligning marketing efforts with business objectives and staying competitive.
Robert Hufton
In today's fast-paced digital environment, having a solid CRO strategy (Conversion Rate Optimisation) is essential to your digital marketing plan. It's not just about getting more traffic to your website; it's about ensuring that every visitor is more likely to take meaningful action. Here's why integrating a CRO strategy into your digital marketing approach is vital for success:
Here’s a few reasons why:
A well-executed digital marketing strategy acts as a roadmap for success, linking your business goals to the behaviours and needs of your target audience. However, without a CRO strategy, this connection often remains underdeveloped. CRO helps fine-tune your messaging and user experience so that every part of your website—from landing pages to calls-to-action—serves the dual purpose of satisfying users and meeting business objectives.
In a crowded digital landscape, standing out is key. While SEO and advertising can drive traffic, CRO ensures that the traffic is well-targeted and effective. It allows you to analyze user behaviour, test elements like headlines or button placements, and refine your site’s content. This makes your brand more visible to the right audience and more relevant in the moments that count.
Marketing efforts without CRO can lead to wasted resources. Imagine spending thousands on ads only for visitors to leave without converting because of unclear navigation or confusing calls-to-action. By focusing on optimisation, you can get more out of your existing traffic, reducing the need for excessive ad spend while increasing ROI.
Digital marketing thrives on data. CRO uses A/B testing, heatmaps, and analytics to guide decisions, helping you understand what’s working and what’s not. This ensures that you’re not guessing, but making informed, strategic moves that improve conversion rates over time.
“A digital strategy gives your team a ‘North Star’ enabling everyone to move in the same direction of travel - confident they’re heading the same way”
- Alex Smith - Senior UX consultant
A lack of clear strategy can lead to inconsistent messaging, leaving visitors and even staff wondering, “What the heck is our website about?” This disconnect creates confusion both internally and externally, making it harder for potential customers to engage. A CRO strategy helps ensure that every touchpoint reflects the essence of your brand, aligning your digital presence with your core business values and objectives.
The digital world is constantly evolving, and businesses need to adapt to stay ahead. A strong CRO strategy helps you keep up with changes in user behavior and market trends. It enables you to stay agile, continually improving the user experience and staying ahead of competitors who may not be prioritizing conversion optimization.
Incorporating CRO into your digital marketing strategy means that your website isn't just a digital storefront, but a high-performing tool that actively converts visitors into loyal customers. By aligning your CRO strategy with your broader digital marketing goals, you ensure that every element works in harmony to achieve measurable success.
Another scenario would be a member of staff looking at their company website thinking ‘what the heck is our website about? This isn't us!’ It could be the case that no one really knows in your organisation what your website should be used for.
The net result is confused potential customers, staff that lack clear direction and a massive mismatch in what you do as a business and how the digital landscape portrays you.
Having identified potential problems created by failing to plan and execute a digital marketing strategy, we need to talk about what one is.
In short, it’s how you use digital channels (your website, email, social media, Google etc.) to reach the right audience. The more you know about that audience, the better you can target those people.
In a constantly evolving digital landscape, this means designing and executing a carefully organised plan which, if done correctly and effectively will breed positive results and revenues. To achieve this, your business should be willing to invest, as you would any other member of staff or asset you feel is required to grow your business.
"Start with aligning your marketing objectives with your overall growth goals. When you know what the business needs to achieve, then you can immerse yourself in the tactics associated with customer engagement."
- Andrew Thomas - Digital Transformation Coach
The days of advertising in print and on the radio are surely numbered. At a time when attention spans are limited and everyone has a digital device in their pocket, digital marketing is essential for any business that wants to grow.
The range of channels involved in digital marketing can be daunting to many people. If in doubt, talk to an expert.
Start with aligning your marketing objectives with your overall growth goals.
For example - SMEs might need immediate revenue; Enterprise clients might want to build brand relationships or awareness. Areas like SEO and social media usually require very similar tactical applications - write content designed for the user, post it up and build an audience. Social media and paid advertising are good for immediate return, while SEO is great for long-term objectives. But everything needs to work together.
When you know what the business needs to achieve, then you can immerse yourself in the tactics associated with customer engagement.
“The worst thing people do in digital marketing is scattergun approach”
- Ben Jarrold - Head of Content Creation
The world of digital marketing is rather vast. Unsurprisingly, it’s really easy to ‘dig in the wrong hole’ as they say. This means to work like mad on a certain channel or piece of content which attracts the wrong kind of people. Now this might sound easy, but actually it isn't so straightforward. You need to know what your target audiences objectives are - then make content to appeal to them.
Make a list of the main user groups and job titles of people your organisation wants to talk to. New staff members, senior decision makers, suppliers or people to help grow your network.
Create user personas by job title, then fill out their priorities and objectives. This will inform the type of strategy you need based on the goals of your target users. It will also help you discover where you might find them on the web.
Making a list of the main objectives is a great way to understand the priorities of your customers. Again, think lean. Making a relatively short list of 10 high priority items helps you whittle down tasks with highest priority.
Please keep your user personas and top tasks handy and readily accessible by everyone. They are your go-to place when making decisions about direction.
- You might find useful our article on The Lean Approach To Digital Marketing.
LinkedIn for professionals. TIkTok for under 25s. Instagram for cool products. SEO for everyone. Pay Per Click for some but only if you have a solid landing page strategy. These are a few obvious examples of how certain channels work for demographics. This also varies from country to country so do your research and think about where your target audiences might be.
“Placing information on a website will only get you so far, and that’s because there are so many possibilities in respect of the way in which information can be structured and presented. It's very easy to get it wrong and limit performance in the process.
Digital strategy in the context of the services and advice that we've been given, has meant applying logic to the site in a number of ways, from the way in which content is written, to page layout, to site structure, all with consideration of SEO. So 'strategy' equates simplistically to a better, higher- performing site, with which we can win more business.”
- James Hockey - Trace Basement Systems
I would always advise you work on audience and top tasks before jumping into designs, colours, photos and tag-lines.
While brand guidelines are important, they shouldn't be discussed when you are setting out an initial digital strategy. That should come after you know who it is you're approaching. Understand your users’ needs and the tone and message becomes simple.
Having a website without visitors is pretty pointless. Having people on your site that aren't your user personas is also not ideal. So do some research into the areas your user personas move in. What websites they use, what blog posts they will find interesting. Then get yourself in the same digital marketing spaces.
All digital marketing starts with a journey. The user journey describes the steps that your users’ take while they interact with your company. If you don’t understand these customer journeys and design appropriately, the users of your website or app will lose interest.
Presenting a user with something unexpected can result in a poor experience, and they are more likely to drop off your website.
“A customer journey needs to be enjoyable as well as functional.” Paul Boag - UX guru.
Someone may have seen an advert on the TV, on Google or on a social media post. They will take action by clicking, calling or sharing.
- If you are in doubt about how to approach customer journey design. Talk to a User Experience Agency like us.
A review across the Social Media and other digital channels of your main competitors can quickly reveal some aspects of their digital strategy.
What kind of posts are they pushing and why? Their website may also give some clues. A well designed blog section should have been directed by a digital strategist, so a quick scan around some competitors blog areas also provide ideas to help with your planned approach.
Once your team are happily directed and beavering away working on amazing video or blog post content, you should set time aside to analyse performance.
On blog posts you should look at ‘bounce rate’ and time on page. For social media likes and shares. These are all usually quite obvious to identify.
If you need assistance locating the bounce rate of a page, talk to our website analysis team.
For paid advertising, problem areas can often be harder to identify. Some of the usual suspects might be spending on the wrong keywords for your service or product, or the location you’re targeting may have the wrong audience. Or there could be a step in your sales funnel that throws your visitors off, totally destroying all the hard work your PPC and landing page team have done.
If you need to get more from your PPC advertising, it's worth hiring a Conversion Rate Optimisation specialist to help.
When I say this I don't mean every hour of every day. Although that’s easily done.
Continuous optimisation means you should be reviewing your digital marketing strategy regularly and keep working forward by gathering insights from online tools such as Google Analytics for websites, Ahref for SEO, Iconosquare for Social and Google Adwords for paid advertising.
The performance of your marketing channels should always be gathered and presented in a slide deck for stakeholders to review. This way you can collaborate and make informed decisions about your next round of work.
If you need help with analysing your website talk to our team today.
Users change periodically and with market shifts. You only think about TikTok, Facebook and Instagram to see how users move channels as trends change. So it’s worth every few months revisiting your user personas and check if they're still current.
Performing regular keyword and social post analysis can help you keep growing in new areas most relevant to your business.
“Without one it’s practically impossible to succeed digitally & even determine what will constitute success. A good digital strategy will also help drive any tactical decisions that are needed and will essentially serve as the torch that shines on your path & direction in an increasingly online world.”
- Declan O’Boyle - Partner at Strategic People
“Having a digital strategy is like looking into the future. For instance, you can edit and adapt ad campaigns or SEO campaigns depending on current results to achieve the end goals. Your digital strategy prevents any second guessing or mistakes.”
- Billy Mushet - Catchfish Online
This article was written by Robert Hufton, a User Experience consultant at Higher Ground Marketing.
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