Testing the water with digital marketing is incredibly important; at some time all digital marketers face a project where something is not working as it should be (i.e. traffic not converting on a website), but what is actually going wrong can sometime take a whilst to get to the bottom of and fix.
Crawl, Walk, Run is a phased methodology for controlling elements of the online marketing mix in careful bite-sized chunks so that problems are carefully and correctly fixed.
Crawl – look at options that you directly own; this phase overs the core website design and user interaction, and media that you own/control (i.e. Content, SEO, Social Media etc). Fixing these elements first is usually the most cost effective approach to take (even if you need to outsource some of it).
Walk – now it's time to turn your attention to media that you might have less control over or need to pay for or digital marketing tactics that need to have the basics right first, for this reason you should only enter this phase after you have a solid Crawl foundation.
Here you are looking at Pay Per Click (PPC), third party advertising, email marketing, blogging, banner advertising etc.
For the Walk phase you are looking for a minimum of a 5 times return on your investment, so for every £1000 you spend you need to see £5000 returned.
Run – You'll know when you hit this phase as business will be really good for you, conversion rate will be over 10 percent, online you'll have a low <30 percent bounce rate.
Much of the activity around this Run phase is earned; by now as your business is doing well you so you might be already getting approached by third parties for comment or editorials, and valuable links to your website will be starting to come into you.
Certainly there is more marketing activity you could be undertaking for this Crawl, Walk, Run model, but hopefully this has given you an insight how what digital activities you should be undertaking and when you should be doing them!