We all have some basic knowledge of how web search and social media work in order to promote our products or services.

“You have to share on facebook” is something that even a 5 years old kid knows.

Others, more experts, know that some days and some hours’ range are better than others for sharing our content.

So far, so good but from this point onwards 90% of people totally ignore what to do to create a digital marketing strategy that will help them to gain new customers.

Let's see what can mark the difference between an average online marketing strategy and a great one!

The unfamiliar stratagems to grow your customer base:

• Begin with the end in mind – define your buyer persona & the buyer’s journey:

The buyer persona is our ideal customer.

This may sound obvious but defining who is your customer is crucial and you cannot even imagine how many people open a business without a clear definition of who is the ideal customer they want.

Imagine to go to the grocery store without a shopping list. If you are lucky you may end up buying things that you actually needed as well as many other products that you did not want or need. It is a waste of time and money.

The buyer’s journey is the process a potential customer goes through to choosing you based on three stages – awareness (of a problem), consideration (of solutions), and decision (of the company to help, in this case hopefully you).

Each of your buyer personas has his/her own way of defining what the problem really is, researching potential solutions and vendors and then coming to a decision to buy from you or work with you.

• Work on your content:

Once you have defined your buyer persona and your buyer’s journey everything will be more efficient.

All your efforts will aim to target the people you want as customer.

Your digital marketing strategy, all your content, your keywords, the day and hour you will share on social media, your On-page SEO will be tailored on this buyer persona.

If you want to do business online, whether you are selling products or providing a professional service, you need to be on the first page of Google and the reason is that

80%percent of people do NOT go past the 1^st page results in Google!!!

I will not go into the details of how Google works in this article, however I will quickly explain a basic concept:

In order to exist, Google needs content, quality content! Thus it will be easier for you and your business to be on the first page of the most popular search engine only if you create quality content on regular basis.

All the promotion in the world won’t build a thriving audience if your content is bad.

Everything you do online has to start with creating something great, that people want to read and share.

• Work on your keyword and don't Forget On-Page SEO

Start with a list of relevant keywords based on your buyer persona goals, challenges, pain points and the questions they are asking at each of the stages of the buyer's journey.

This is your base list of topics and their main keywords that are important for your buyer personas and so for your business.

Your quality content must be built around the keyword you identify and do not forget the technical side, always optimize your blog posts, landing pages and site pages for your keywords, you must have them in the headline, in the content body, in your header tags and URL.

• Write guest articles for other blogs.

This is still one of the most effective and underused strategies for building your own audience.

• The best audience is a captive one.

Instead of constantly relying on other sources of traffic, create your own by getting your visitors to subscribe for updates from you (focus on email first, social media second).

• Link out freely to content you admire and think your audience would appreciate.

  Linking out is one of the best ways to get noticed and start making friends online. Make sure you include the name of the site or content author you’re linking to increase the chances of the author learning about your link.

And there you have it! A simple guide to coming up with a new structure for all your online efforts. Start defining your persona, define the questions at each stage of the buyer's journey, work on the keywords you will build your content around and remember to have them in the headline, in the text, in your header tags in the images and URL.

What do you think?

Now that you know more, take a look at this infographic:

Take also a look at these neophyte mistakes that you should avoid.