“Show me your digital marketing strategy”

In the world of ecommerce you look at the numbers and it is hard not to see $$ flashing before your eyes.

Brett Stavenuiter, Program Manager RMIT Business Enterprise Unit, says the sheer weight of numbers is no guarantee the dollars are going to end up in your account.

Every online business needs a digital marketing strategy

Let’s have a look at some of the stats:

• 1 billion people (53% global internet users) have made an online purchase in 2016
• B2B ecommerce sales are to outgrow B2C sales, reaching 6.7 trillion USD by 2020.
• 40% of US males aged 18-34 say they would ‘ideally buy everything online
• 39% of people stop engaging with a website if it takes too long to load
• 81% of shoppers research their product online before purchasing
• Only 11% of users access the Internet via desktop only
• 44% will abandon shopping if the shipping cost is too high
• 30% of products bought online are returned – and users expect this process to be easy
• Marketing tools for e-commerce exploded – over 3,500 MarTech tools in 2016

What does this mean?

Vast opportunity, rapid change and competition like never before. It can be overwhelming to some business owners. In this hyper-busy environment, a digital marketing strategy is the best way to target the right people, through the channels with the right products and services to make your business to stand out. It is all about understanding the situation, and then coming up with the best strategies to deliver results – sustainable online business success.

What should you do?

Training for you or your staff is critical if you want to get strategic processes like this right. Humans are infamously great at strategy, not so good at execution. Enrolling in an online course is a good place to start, and there are plenty out there.

This free one that RMIT is hosting starting November 21^st is definitely worth a look. It provides you with a step-by-step guide to creating your own digital marketing strategy, to keep you on the right track towards engaging and retaining your most valuable customers online.

Explore digital marketing tools

There are so many ways you can engage online and new digital marketing tools are evolving every day, but the four main components are: search, content, social and email.

Online courses like the RMIT one will give you the ability to:

• understand digital marketing and the opportunities it presents for online business;
• realise the importance of and how to develop a digital marketing strategy;
• become familiar with the different forms of digital marketing and the best application of each;
• learn about the digital customer journey;
• learn how to develop content that works;
• exposure to industry experts and real life case studies; and
• design measurement and analytics.

Looking for expert online business advice? This article discusses one of four courses in the Online Business Success program from RMIT University. In every course, you will be guided by academics from the College of Business and the Business Enterprise Unit.