A digital marketing strategy needs to be the right size for your company.
What we mean by this is that it doesn’t do much good if you’re a solopreneur (a one-person business) and are busy trying to market across five different channels. It will become quickly apparent that that’s too many balls to be juggling in the air!
For this article, we will look at how a digital marketing strategy must be created relative to the size of the business itself.
Solopreneurs – Know Your Limitations
As one person running a business, it’s about how much time/energy you have.
You can try to burn the candle at both ends but that only leads to burnout – which you’ll have discovered if you have tried that already.
When thinking about the crucial strategy components to an excellent digital approach, it’s necessary to determine which will be the most successful for your business. And to decide that before you begin.
Consider the activities that you feel confident you can execute well (or learn to) versus others that are outside your wheelhouse. The latter should be outsourced to a team of professionals with specialization in that area.
Partnerships – Divide and Conquer?
With a partnership, there’s the two of you. Assuming one partner isn’t just “the money” or a silent partner, then dividing up the responsibilities is more easily done.
Divvy up the digital marketing duties based either on obvious aptitude or previous experience in them. For instance, someone who’s outgoing and loves using social media would be better suited to run the social media channels. Similarly, a creative person might be perfect to produce graphic design work, such as a logo.
Once you’ve split up the necessary duties, verify whether you’ll both have the time to fulfill them. They could require more time than either of you realize or have available. For tasks that you don’t have time for or have no skills in, pushing those tasks to freelancers or a digital marketing agency is probably best.
Small Teams – Spread the Responsibilities
When you have a small team, start with staff members who take on certain responsibilities. Usually, digital marketing duties will only form part of what they’re each responsible for in their job.
Their focus is split and so it’s necessary to make allowances for this in terms of performance.
The more overburdened they are, the lower their performance will likely be. It’s important to bear this in mind.
Businesses with 50+ Employees – Deep Focus
With slightly larger businesses like one with over 50 employees, then it’s possible to have a dedicated department for digital marketing at the company.
Individual employees can be brought in based on their extensive experience in particular aspects of the digital realm such as email marketing, conversion rate optimization, content marketing, and more.
The level of deep focus will be telling in what the department is capable of producing. There’s also less of a need to outsource digital marketing tasks to third parties.
As you can see, the approach to managing digital marketing and strategy varies depending on the size of the organization. It’s important to appreciate that reality to make the right choices early on and as the company grows in size and capability.
