One of the cornerstones of successful marketing is learning exactly who your customers are, and tailoring your online presence to answer their needs. Your business needs to go beyond just guessing at a target demographic, and instead make the effort to analyze who your customers truly are, what they truly want, and what they do online.

By researching things such as gender, age, social media activity, education level, online activity and level of familiarity with using the internet, your business can lay out a comprehensive approach that includes, website architecture, content strategy, email campaign outreach, and social media integration. An exhaustive audience analysis will take effort and time, but once you implement the findings into your digital strategy, it will prove beneficial.

The first step in creating a more effective digital marketing campaign is evaluating your current online footprint and the digital marketing trends specific to your industry. By performing a competitive analysis of digital marketing tactics that have been successful in the past, you can gauge what approach to take in your own digital marketing efforts. Typically your industry’s best practices should only be used as a reference point, and you should try to market to your customers with appealing and innovative methods that set you apart from your competition.

There are many ways to market to your audiences with a measurable ROI (Return on Investment). For example, an email campaign that features an instructional video, a whitepaper that includes an interactive infographic, creating a webinar or podcast on a topic relevant to your audience, or even coordinating an event and encouraging attendees to live-tweet with personalized hashtags are just some of the unique ways you can expand your online reach.

When considering expanding your existing marketing efforts to include digital marketing, it is important to remember that immediate results are not common, and that it may take months or longer before your business will see measurable improvement. Before revamping or rejuvenating your online presence, you first have to assess the existing resources and assets your business may be able to re-purpose into branding material to attract new customers.

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of your business’ current marketing efforts can help you understand which types of online marketing channels you should focus your budget on and where you can save money by eliminating ineffective tactics. Carefully planning and analyzing your digital growth over time and executing a digital marketing campaign takes perseverance and determination, but can be a massive addition to your brand influence when applied correctly.

In order to be successful, any marketing campaign requires constant updates and assessments for it to remain effective in growing your digital footprint. Just like your industry has evolved over time, so has digital marketing. DIgital marketing is a fluid industry, and your business’ digital marketing strategies need to change as well, if you hope to continue attracting and converting customers. Without consistent revisions to your online marketing efforts, your campaigns will lose effectiveness over time, and you will begin to see decreased ROI from your marketing budget.

Outdated online marketing tactics look spammy to your customers, and can be detrimental to your marketing efforts. Antiquated approaches may even cause them to switch to a competitor whose marketing campaigns reflect current digital marketing trends. By staying on top of your online marketing efforts and making appropriate changes, your business’ digital presence should continuously induce conversions, and grow steadily over time.