A digital marketing strategy is more than posts on social media or a monthly email. It starts from your audience, the message they respond to and the channels that reach them. This post shows the five areas of a digital marketing strategy and four steps to align it with your company OKRs (objectives and key results).
Learn these skills in the course Digital Marketing (MC-DM), module 1: Developing a Digital Marketing Strategy.
Who This Is For
Marketing, product, sales and business development teams, and business owners who plan digital marketing for sales leads.
Why the Strategy Comes First
Without a strategy, each campaign stands alone. A strategy links every campaign to a business goal, so you can see which activity brings leads and which one only spends budget.
Align Your Strategy With Your OKRs
- Set clear objectives. Write what your digital marketing will achieve for the business this quarter.
- Define the key results. Make each one specific, time-bound and trackable, for example the number of qualified leads a month.
- Execute with focus. Do first the activities that move a key result. Stop or postpone the rest.
- Review and adjust. Check the data each month. Keep the activities that move the key results and change the others.
The Five Areas of a Digital Marketing Strategy
- Audience analysis: the needs, priorities and behaviour of your buyers.
- Content marketing: useful content that answers the questions your buyers search for.
- SEO and paid advertising: organic search traffic, supported by paid search and social campaigns.
- Social media marketing: relationships with your audience and traffic to your website.
- Analytics and optimisation: the data that tells you what to keep, what to change and what to stop.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Starting with a channel instead of a goal. Choose the channel after the objective and the audience.
- Key results that cannot be measured. “More awareness” is not a key result; a number and a date are.
- Setting the strategy once a year and never checking it. Review it each month against the key results.
Try It This Week
Write one marketing objective for next quarter. Under it, write two key results with a number and a date. List the three activities that move them most.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a digital marketing strategy include?
An audience analysis, content marketing, SEO and paid advertising, social media marketing, and analytics with regular optimisation.
Why align digital marketing with OKRs?
So that every marketing activity supports a business result that the company already tracks.
Next Step
Read the full outline of Digital Marketing (MC-DM). Public classes: 25 and 26 January 2027; 31 March and 1 April 2027. All dates are on the Training Calendar. For a group from your company, get a quote for in-house training. More Work Tips are in the skill area Martech. Read also:
