Emulous Creative’s Hierarchy of Digital Marketing Needs

Digital marketing consists of any marketing efforts that take place on the internet or electronic device. Any marketing efforts on the internet, social media, and emails are considered digital marketing. I would say that digital marketing is the most popular form of marketing today.

According to the Pew Research Center, 85% of adults are online at least once a day. 31% of adults claim to be almost constantly connected, a number that has grown from 21% since 2015. 48% claim to be online several times a day.

One way marketers successfully capture their market share is by using psychology. These techniques help marketers catch a glimpse into how customers make decisions. Look at crobox’s blog 46 Psychological Marketing Examples for Smarter Marketing for examples of psychological tactics marketers use. I want to focus on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how that can be applied to establishing a digital marketing workflow.

Emulous Creative’s Hierarchy of Digital Marketing Needs uses the base concept of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We adapt Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs to fit our client’s digital marketing needs. This analysis of the digital market as a whole helps us identify what is most important to help our client’s audience. Making it easier to build their brand and grow their business.

What is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

Dr. Saul McLeod states in his Simply Psychology article that, “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.”

The foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy contains our physiological, or base, needs. Followed by the need to keep your base needs safe. Together, these needs form our basic needs.

The next two needs form our psychological needs. The need for love and a sense of belonging in society. Next comes the esteem needs, or the need to feel respected.

The basic needs and psychological needs are considered our deficiency needs. These are needs that arise from being deprived of something.

The final desire is growth. Our self-actualization need is the need best version of ourselves. This is also considered to be the self-fulfilling need.

How is Emulous Creative’s Hierarchy formed?

We base our digital marketing hierarchy of needs on the same structure as Maslow’s hierarchy. At the base is what we call presence. Where safety would be is relevance. Engagement takes the place of love and belonging. Conversion replaces esteem. Finally, advocacy take the place of growth/self-actualization. Each aspect is similar to Maslow’s hierarchy, but translated to represent the building blocks of a digital marketing strategy.

Presence

Presence is where all your content will be posted, and where all your marketing and advertising will point back to. It is your business’s digital home base. We believe your digital foundation is made from your digital marketing channels like your website and social media channels. This applies to mobile devices and laptops/desktop computers.

Relevance

Relevance, or the safety needs, are what is important to keep your digital foundation safe, secure, and healthy. Safety measures for your website include technical SEO and site health audits. Your social media channels gain safety through proper management and social media strategy. Other safety methods include digital marketing strategies and market analysis.  

Engagement

Our interpretation of love and belonging is how an organization engages the community. The main way to promote what products and services are relevant to your community is through branded content marketing.

Creating branded content like blogs/articles on your website is a simple but important way to keep potential customers informed. Affiliate marketing is another great way to use your community leaders to engage a niche audience. Using email marketing, SMS text marketing campaigns provide direct communication with your followers. Finally, We also include more search engine optimization like position tracking and some on-site optimization. 

Conversion

Conversions represent the esteem section of the Hierarchy of Digital Marketing. The goal is to achieve growth through paid ads using digital marketing techniques and campaigns that build confidence in your brand. Social media marketing, display advertising and search engine marketing are channels an organization can deliver their message to gain conversions.

Advocacy

Advocacy is the growth section -the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy. Customer reviews, recommendations, awards, or any accolades that the brand has earned can help build up your brand’s perception. Turning your shoppers into brand ambassadors is an incredible self-fulfillment for any marketing effort. By letting your audience speak for you, your marketing dollars will go farther and have a higher impact.

Why use the hierarchy of digital marketing needs model?

The hierarchy of digital marketing needs model allows for some clear outlines. This helps small businesses and marketing teams prioritize what is the most important factor to spend their marketing budget on. The model provides growth potential for marketing automation and digital media performance. Most importantly, as you move higher up the pyramid, your marketing efforts become more agile and nimble.

Moving up the pyramid also helps your marketing team build stronger brand awareness with internet users. You are building off what is already established instead of treating each campaign on its own. Having high brand awareness is crucial in today’s online marketing efforts.

High brand awareness helps your brand stand apart from your direct competition. Brand awareness also helps beat indirect competitors. The ability to outreach your direct and indirect competition provides your business or non-profit will save you money.

What does all this mean for you?

While each business’s or non-profit’s needs are different, we all need to successfully reach our audience. Emulous Creative’s Hierarchy of Digital Marketing Needs is specifically designed to help you scale your digital marketing and social media presence.

Our hierarchy model helps map out what is important to both you and your target audience. Identifying the needs of your target audiences will help you craft your branded messages in a way that leads to conversions.

Your brand strategy will already highlight the key points of interest for your brand. Your brand strategy will also help you craft the user experience and user interface of your website. Making it easier for you to build your website.

Some small businesses choose to start with a social media presence before building a website. Even without any posts, a social media platform allows these businesses to share information about themselves with interested consumers. Some social media platforms even allow the business to share their hours of operation.

In the end, your goal will be to direct traffic back to your website and/or your social media platforms. Creating your marketing strategies will increase the likelihood of your digital marketing efforts succeeding. Each strategy is designed to highlight the purpose of a campaign that ties back to the branded message on your website.

You fulfill your market strategies by creating branded content. Branded content is more than a post that has your logo on it. True branded content adds value to your audience’s understanding of your products or services. Elevating your brand to one that your audience trusts and is loyal to.

Successful communication with your audience increases your chance of gaining a review. Your reviews and recommendations help build trust with the community. It also builds confidence in your brand. Another way to build confidence in your brand is to share any awards or accolades your organization has earned.

Finally, you need to grow your business. If you have followed Emulous Creative’s Hierarchy of Digital Marketing Needs, then you are already maximizing your organic reach. Leaving paid ads as the last way to expand your brand to new audiences. Paid ads can be created from new content or from already established content.

How can Emulous Creative help you?

Emulous Creative is a branding and digital marketing agency that focuses on helping our clients tell their stories and stand out. We understand that you need a customized strategy that will adapt to changing market conditions and societal trends. A strategy that will provide an exceptional user experience. Our digital marketing campaigns are goal-oriented with measurable feedback which allows us to customize and update our plans accordingly.

If you have questions on how Emulous Creative could help you stand out, just contact us. The initial consultation is free and could help your organization reach its goals by strengthening your branding.