Define ambitious dutch online marketing strategy in 2025

Introduction

A successful online marketing strategy is not an accident, but the result of a careful and structured approach. Yet many companies struggle to translate business goals into concrete online actions, leading to disjointed campaigns, wasted budget and lagging results. While competitors with clear, data-driven strategies grow consistently, companies without a focused approach are left behind in a digital world that is changing at lightning speed. So how exactly do you determine the online marketing strategy that fits your business, target audience and market?

This article shows step by step how to structure, make smart choices and create the edge your business needs to be digitally successful.

What is an online marketing strategy?

An online marketing strategy is a structured and goal-oriented plan in which an organization establishes how business objectives will be achieved through the effective use of digital marketing tools and channels. It forms the foundation upon which decisions about budgets, audiences, content and channels are based (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019).

Without a clear strategy, online marketing efforts are often deployed randomly, resulting in fragmented campaigns and unnecessary waste of time and money. A well-defined strategy prevents this by making it clear exactly what the company wants to achieve, which target groups are relevant for this and through which channels and means they can be optimally addressed. As a result, investments are better utilized and the effectiveness of online marketing activities increases.

Analysis current situation

Determining a successful online marketing strategy always starts with a sharp mapping of the current situation, also known as the baseline measurement. This provides insight into where your company is now, what is working well and what could be improved. A thorough analysis includes three essential components:

1. SWOT analysis

With a SWOT analysis, you systematically identify your organization's internal strengths (Strengths) and weaknesses (Weaknesses), as well as its external opportunities (Opportunities) and threats (Threats). This helps you leverage your competitive advantages and identify areas for improvement.

2. Competitive Analysis

Analyze your main competitors in terms of online presence and marketing activities. Look at them:

• Marketing channels used (SEO, SEA, social media)
• Positioning and distinctiveness
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Content strategy and degree of interaction with their target audience

This will help you find distinctive opportunities and not fall behind your competition.

3. Online reputation analysis

Research how your organization is perceived online. One way you do this is by:

• Analyze reviews and ratings on platforms such as Google, Trustpilot and social media
• To see what people are saying about your company online (social listening)
• Assess your visibility and reputation within search results (SEO performance)

By monitoring your online reputation, you gain insight into your brand image and discover potential risks or opportunities for further improvement.

Clearly mapping these three components provides a strong foundation for making the right choices as you further develop your online marketing strategy.

Define objectives and KPIs

After analyzing the current situation, it is important to determine concrete goals and corresponding KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). These goals form the basis of your strategy and ensure that your performance is measurable and controllable.

1. Set SMART goals

Formulating SMART objectives provides clarity and focus on results. SMART stands for:

• Specifics: What exactly do you want to achieve?
• Measurable: How will you measure this success?
• Acceptable: Is there support within your organization?
• Realistic: Are the goals achievable with the available resources?
• Time-bound: When should the goal be achieved?

For example, "Within 6 months, we will increase organic website visitors by 25% through targeted SEO and content marketing campaigns."

2. Examples of objectives for online marketing:

• Increase brand awareness and reach (awareness)
• Lead generation and customer acquisition (lead generation)
• Increase involvement and interaction with customers (engagement)
• Increasing sales through online sales channels (conversions)

3. Establishing KPIs

To monitor whether your goals are being achieved, set relevant KPIs. Examples are:

• Brand awareness: reach, impressions, share of voice, growth in social media followers.
• Lead generation: Conversion rate, number of leads, cost per lead (CPL).
• Engagement: Engagement rate on social media, email open rates, click rate (CTR).
• Sales and revenue: cost per acquisition (CPA), average order value (AOV), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

By setting clear KPIs and evaluating them periodically, you can adjust quickly and respond effectively to new opportunities or challenges.

Target group analysis and customer journey

The success of an online marketing strategy depends heavily on how well you know and understand your target audience. Without understanding who your potential customers are and how they behave online, it becomes difficult to develop effective campaigns. A targeted audience analysis and customer journey mapping are therefore the basis for a successful strategy.

1. Target group analysis

A good audience analysis provides insight into characteristics, behaviors, preferences and needs of your potential customers. Important components are:

• Demographic characteristics: age, gender, education level, income.
• Geographic characteristics: location and regions.
• Psychographic characteristics: interests, values, lifestyle.
• Behavioral characteristics: buying behavior, online activities and interactions.

Make use of personas, developing archetypes of ideal customers. This helps create targeted content, ads and messaging.

2. The customer journey

The customer journey describes the journey that potential customers go through before becoming customers. An effective customer journey analysis typically includes the following stages:

• Awareness: The customer discovers the problem or need and seeks information.
• Consideration: Customer compares different solutions and providers.
• Decision (decision): The customer makes a purchase decision and definitively chooses your offer.
• Retention & Advocacy: The customer stays engaged and recommends your company to others.

For each phase, map out:

• What information or content the target audience needs.
• Through which channels they search and find this information (e.g., Google, social media, review platforms).
• Which touchpoints are crucial for conversion.

By clearly mapping out your target audience and their customer journey, you ensure that your marketing efforts effectively meet their needs and expectations.

Channel selection and resources

Then the part most companies start with: selecting the right marketing channels and resources. Not every channel fits every business, target audience or objective equally well. Making informed choices ensures maximum impact from your campaigns and optimal return on your budget. Popular marketing channels and when to deploy them:

1. SEO and content marketing

• Suitable for creating long-term visibility.
• Effective for increasing organic traffic and authority within your industry.
• Works well for knowledge-driven businesses, blogs, or web shops.

2. SEA and display advertising (Google Ads).

• Ideal for quick results and reach.
• Used to promote concrete offers, promotions, and to drive direct conversions.
• Helps to quickly appear at the top of search engines and target specific audiences.

3. Social media marketing

• Suitable for increasing brand awareness, engagement and loyalty.
• Perfect for reaching specific target audiences in detail through platforms such as LinkedIn (B2B), Instagram, Facebook and TikTok (B2C).

4. Email marketing and automation

• Strong channel to maintain long-term relationships, nurture leads and activate existing customers.
• Cost-effective, measurable and effective for personalizing customer communications.

5. Video marketing

• Excellent for powerfully conveying brand identity and storytelling.
• Effective for making complex messages understandable and increasing engagement through channels such as YouTube, Vimeo or social media.

6. Influencer and affiliate marketing

• Suitable for quickly generating broad reach through trusted ambassadors.
• Strong for niche markets, lifestyle products, fashion, cosmetics, and B2C consumer goods.

How do you determine which channels fit your strategy?

Choose channels based on:

• Objectives: For example, SEA for conversions, SEO for long-term results.
• Audience behavior: Which channels does your target audience actively use?
• Budget: What are realistic costs and ROI per channel?
• Competitive analysis: where are opportunities missed by competitors?

Making deliberate choices based on this creates a balanced channel mix that ensures measurable results.

Budgeting

Determining the right budget and allocating it smartly across different channels and resources is crucial to the success of your online marketing strategy. This ensures maximum return on every euro invested and prevents precious resources from being wasted.

1. How do you determine the marketing budget?

There are several ways to set your budget:

• Percentage of sales: For example, set aside 5-10% of your annual sales as a marketing budget.
• Objective-related: Calculate what it takes to achieve specific goals, such as number of leads or desired revenue growth.
• Competition-oriented: Analyze what competitors are spending and determine your budget relative to it.

We actually always opt for objective-related budgeting, but it goes without saying that you shouldn't spend 50% of your revenue on marketing.

2. Allocation of budget across channels:

The distribution of your budget depends on several factors:

Cost efficiency by channel:

• SEA offers quick results but at a higher direct cost.
• SEO and content marketing are cost intensive in the short term but deliver long-term results.

ROI and conversion potential:

• Focus more budget on channels that have a higher Return On Investment (ROI), such as proven conversion channels or past successful campaigns.

Stage in the customer journey:

• Awareness (SEO, social media, display advertising)
• Consideration (content marketing, video marketing)
• Decision (SEA, remarketing, email marketing)

3. Practical guidelines for effective budgeting:

• Always have a budget buffer available for experiments and innovative channels.
• Ensure flexibility so you can make quick adjustments if certain channels perform better or worse than expected.
• Use benchmarks from your industry to test budgets for feasibility and realism.

By carefully budgeting and strategically allocating, you create optimal conditions for maximum online marketing results.

Implementation and planning

After determining the objectives, target groups, channels and budgets, it is time to implement your online marketing strategy in concrete terms. Successful implementation requires clear planning, clear division of tasks and consistent follow-up of all marketing activities.

1. Establish a clear content calendar

A content calendar is the central pivot in your implementation process. This calendar includes:

• When content is published (day, time, frequency).
• What content will be produced (blogs, social media posts, videos, newsletters).
• Through which channels the content will be distributed (website, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Ads).
• Who is responsible for creating, publishing and controlling this content.

2. Campaign planning and timing

Effective campaign planning ensures that you are visible to your target audience at the right time. Important focal points here are:

• Seasonal influences, such as holidays, vacations and peak times within your industry.
• Product launches or corporate events.
• Planning peak and off-peak periods to maximize budget utilization.
• Coherence between different campaigns and communication channels.

3. Clear division of labor and responsibility

Proper implementation requires that everyone on your marketing team knows exactly what is expected. Ensure:

• Clear division of roles (e.g., content creators, designers, analysts, social media managers).
• Concrete deadlines for delivery and publication.
• Clear lines of communication, we work for example with tools such as Trello and Basecamp.

4. Monitoring and interim adjustments

Schedule regular review moments to check whether your goals are being met in a timely manner:

• Use dashboards to monitor results.
• Establish clear checkpoints (e.g., monthly reviews).
• Adjust campaigns quickly based on interim results and new insights.

By carefully planning and creating clear processes, you ensure the successful and manageable execution of your online marketing strategy.

Measure, evaluate and optimize

A crucial part of any online marketing strategy is to continuously measure, evaluate and optimize performance. Without this step, it is impossible to know whether your efforts are actually leading to the desired results and where opportunities for improvement remain.

1. Measuring with analysis tools

Use reliable tools to gain insight into how campaigns are performing. Well-known and effective analytics tools include:

• Google Analytics (GA4): For in-depth analysis of website traffic, user behavior, and conversions.
• Google Search Console: To monitor SEO performance, keywords and organic visibility.
• Social media analytics (Meta Business Suite, LinkedIn Analytics, etc.): For tracking engagement, reach and interactions on social media.
• CRM and marketing automation tools (HubSpot, ActiveCampaign): To accurately track leads, customer behavior and conversions.

2. Evaluating and interpreting results

When evaluating results, the focus is on:

• Comparison of realized results with predetermined KPIs and goals.
• Identification of successful campaigns, as well as underperforming components.
• Understanding the causes behind performance (e.g., market trends, competitive behavior, or internal factors such as campaign structure and content quality).

3. Optimize based on insights

Use collected data to optimize your strategy:

• A/B testing and experimentation: Test variations of ads, landing pages, emails and CTAs to improve conversions.
• Conversion optimization (CRO): Improve page elements (such as text, images, forms) based on behavioral data and user feedback.
• Adjust channel mix and budget allocation: Invest more in high-performing channels and reconsider or reduce budgets where results are lagging.

By consistently measuring, critically evaluating and adjusting based on data, you will get the maximum return from your online marketing strategy.

Famous examples

Applying an effective online marketing strategy has already helped many companies greatly increase visibility, leads and revenue. Below are some inspiring examples of successful real-world strategies.

Example 1: Coolblue - Excellent content strategy

Coolblue distinguishes itself through a strong, customer-focused content strategy. Through extensive product reviews, video explanations, and a highly accessible writing style, they build trust and authority with customers. This approach has not only helped them get to the top of Google, but also to retain customers permanently.

Example 2: Rituals - Smart use of social media and influencer marketing

Rituals has effectively used social media and influencer marketing to increase brand awareness. By partnering with micro and macro influencers, combined with engaging visual content, they strengthened their brand experience and effectively reached new audiences.

Example 3: Booking.com - Data-driven personalization

Booking.com has achieved success by being extremely data-driven and personalized. With smart use of personalization and A/B testing of content and ads, they continuously optimize their conversion rate, making them the global leader in online hotel reservations.

Conclusion

Defining a strong online marketing strategy is essential to making your business digitally successful. From focusing on concrete goals to analyzing target audiences, smart channel choices and careful budget allocation, each step contributes to maximum online growth and returns. By continuously measuring, evaluating and adjusting, you stay one step ahead of competitors and make the most of opportunities.

But developing and implementing a good strategy is not easy.

Could you use help from an online marketing agency with highly experienced specialists in defining your online strategy? Then contact us with no obligation.

Resources

Agnihotri, A., Kulshreshtha, K., Tripathi, V., & Verma, V. (2023). Digital Marketing Strategies and the Impact on Customer Experience: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Business and Management Invention (IJBMI), 12(1), 19-28. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368374089_Digital_Marketing_Strategies_and_the_Impact_on_Customer_Experience_A_Systematic_Review

Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice (7th ed.). Pearson Education Limited. https://digilib.stiestekom.ac.id/assets/dokumen/ebook/feb_27aff686c21a3ec16bdc9e2e8d785bf6b8d8e4e8_1655821975.pdf