Are You Ready for Digital Growth?

First of all:
What is Digital Growth?

Let’s start with a quick definition so we can get on the same page. Digital Growth is Solid Digital’s proven way of connecting your business objectives to an effective digital marketing strategy. Using a well-designed website as a foundation to create user engagement, Digital Growth will help you monitor, measure and track how your website adds to your Digital Value.

Make your way through our Digital Growth Worksheet to track your progress while you check off action items in relation to your established KPIs. Haven’t established your KPIs yet? Don’t know how to define them or where to start? Our top 4 KPIs to measure: content pieces created, organic website visitors, keywords ranking in the top 20, and conversions/goals achieved.

What should I do to prepare for Digital Growth?

Before you embark on this journey, it’s important to have a few pieces (and people) in place, at the ready, and in mind. You have your KPIs set up, you have your Digital Growth worksheet waiting to be filled in. But before you break out the pencil, do the following:

Have People in Place

Start building your team. First, there should be a Marketing Director or marketing leader in place. To successfully run a Digital Growth program you should be a marketing team of no less than three. Next, look in your department and outside of it. You can check across all departments in your company to find the experts you need for design, development, content creation, SEO tasks (and more). For every blog you want to write there are probably a handful of colleagues that could pen them. Subject matter expertise is the name of the game. (And if you can’t convince them to write it, they can at least help you with it.)

Maybe you’ve already sought out every person possible in your own company, and you’re still not able to find a solution to every need. Being aware of what resources you have and which resources you still need is essential—even if you’re not sure what kind of person should fill it. Have a list of tasks and items that you can’t handle within your current team, and then it will be clearer who you’ll need to bring in to help whether it’s a new team member, contractor or agency.

Ready the Content

All Digital Growth requires new content every single month. It’s the primary driver of all the other KPIs established. You must have the ability to put new content up on the website regularly, whether it’s done within the team or accomplished by someone else. For all content, there are four main steps: SEO and keyword research, writing, editing, and publishing. This takes time, energy, and access. Make sure you have all three. This is another area where your team can come to your aid: create a list of topics, make a calendar with assignments and deadlines for submission, editing and publishing, and ensure that everyone knows who’s doing what and when. Congratulations, you’ve just greased the wheels for Digital Growth.

Expand Your Mindset

Change can and should be good, but Digital Growth, no matter how much we love it, is not for everyone. And that’s okay. If you’re not ready to grow your team, website traffic, revenue, or leads, then the Digital Growth journey may not be for you. It’s important for you to believe in that growth (the digital kind) and not just in-person sales, for example.

If you are interested in expanding your marketing team—accomplishing more, magnifying your efforts, and streamlining your processes to bring about an outcome that will impress both you and the rest of your company, keep on reading.

While Digital Growth can show an immediate change as you improve your content creation and regularity, most of our clients experience Digital Growth as a slow-and-steady type. Growth will always be more sustainable when you build long-term habits, adding value to your marketing efforts.

Take Measurements

Before you jump into Digital Growth, it may be helpful to have specific metrics identified. For example, using HubSpot forms and results for your MQLs, or looking at your open rate for your recent newsletter campaign, or even tracking how many prospects took advantage of a free consultation offer.

It’s also possible you fall into two other camps: Either you’re not making goals while you track (ask for help) or you’re not tracking metrics at all because you have too much going on (also ask for help). Both situations happen. Part of Digital Growth is making the report and comparing month-over-month numbers, giving you a concrete view and valuation of your efforts. And when you’ve created a particular number, that can stand as an answer for your efforts to upper management when you ask for, say, a bigger budget for media spend.

Beyond those specific metrics, have Google Analytics set up and at the ready. This helps measure organic traffic, website visitor behavior, keyword tracking, bounce rates, session length (time visitors spend on your site), and allows you to compare traffic across channels (where is everyone coming from? Google Organic? Social media? Newsletter links?) Set up goals in Google Analytics, while you’re at it. It’s a lot of information, but take advantage of this gold mine to find the info that’s ultimately going to help your Digital Growth.