As the digital era arises, growing your business on the digital platform has become complicated. In the past, more business owners are very particular in developing their traditional marketing modality such as flyers, newspaper ads, commercials, email marketing, etc.
Nowadays, more and more businesses are getting more creative with their marketing strategies and incorporating them into dozens of digital marketing channels and platforms. They have been doing podcasts, blogging, social media posts, email marketing, and video marketing.
To alleviate the dilemma of choosing the proper steps to boost your brand’s awareness, you should create a digital marketing plan.
A digital marketing plan is a strategic map of your digital marketing objectives and the action steps that you and your team will do to achieve your goals.
A Digital Marketing plan can help you make a clearer and more effective digital marketing strategy and implement those strategies into action. It gives you a more organized initiative to build more rapport with your audience and convert them into clients.
1. Be more definite with your goals and objectives
When making a digital marketing plan, you should create S-M-A-R-T (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals.
To be clear, you should provide:
- Deadlines.
- A framework in setting milestone goals.
- Specific actions to do to achieve each goal.
For instance, the first step is to optimize your site, create engaging content, and conduct marketing research before developing a strategic outreach.
2. Be familiar with your buyer’s persona
For any digital marketing campaign to succeed, you should know who you are selling your products or services. By doing this plan, you will begin to learn your ideal clients- their interests, age range, how much they are earning, where they are living, goals, and more.
Remember that your goal in conceptualizing your client persona is to know what’s inside your client’s mind and see things from their perspective. By doing so, you can utilize this to your business’s advantage by speaking to their desires and answering the dilemma that your business can provide.
3. Know your competitors
Keeping your head in the game is an essential step when creating a digital marketing plan. Creating a competitive analysis allows you to know your competitors and determine their marketing strategies.
When conceptualizing your competitive analysis, you should think of these questions into consideration:
- Which audience are they targeting?
- What are the digital marketing channels your competitors are using?
- What are their strongest or weakest points?
- How do they position their business in the market?
- How do they speak to their audience?
Keep in mind that you should be thorough in creating your analysis, and this will make you realize how you can use online marketing to outshine your competitors.
4. Create a SWOT analysis
SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is the opposite of competitive analysis. It is a framework for analyzing your own business and checking the overall framework of your market.
It is crucial because it helps you identify the things that work and don’t work; it also gives you more opportunities to grow and be proactive whenever a crisis occurs within the business.
When starting this analysis, you should think of these questions:
- What are your edge and strengths in the market?
- What is your expertise in the business?
- Do you have any resources at your disposal?
You should also consider your weaknesses- what are the things that don’t work well or don’t align with your business? What keeps your business generating sales? Where do you fall short of your competitors?
The third is to identify the opportunities that you can apply in your business. What are the new market trends that you can take advantage of? What new technology can you utilize and what your other competitors can’t?
The last step is to know if there are any threats to your business. What are the obstacles blocking your growth? Will there be any potential financial issues in the future?
Developing a robust SWOT analysis will help you develop a feasible digital marketing plan. With solid information about your business’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, create an action plan to avoid potential threats in your industry.
5. Develop a budget for your digital marketing
Having a budget will define how much you can spend on your digital marketing activities and determine which specific channels you will go to.
Although establishing your budget upfront is ideal, your business should remain flexible so you can capitalize on opportunities for more significant ROI. This means that if a specific campaign isn’t generating your outstanding sales, you should eliminate that spend immediately and place the funds on the campaign that’s getting better traction.
By doing so, your finances are dynamic and proactive in providing support mechanisms for your initiatives.
6. Know your digital channels
Your choice of channels should align with your buyer’s persona. This means you should take advantage of where your audience spends most of their time. If you have a B2B business, you may want to utilize channels like LinkedIn. If you have a younger audience or millennials, you may want to consider Instagram influencer marketing.
The bottom line is, you should focus more on where you can deliver value to your audience within the channels they favor most.
7. Strengthening your digital marketing strategies
This part goes along with your business plan; you should decide on a more comprehensive approach to focusing your mind and energy on those channels. As you create a different approach with your digital strategy, you should also consider how you outshone your competitors.
Remember, if you keep doing what everyone else is doing, it’ll be harder to stand out but always keep in mind that you should be true to your brand.
8. Create a marketing calendar
A marketing calendar is a vital document that shows when you will implement your campaigns and initiatives. Another thing is it creates accountability; it makes sure that your business stays on track and effectively executes the plan throughout the year.
You may start with a 12-month calendar and break down your calendar each month of the year- provide your strategies, goals, and action plans along with sufficient time to prepare and execute on each delivery.
Always keep in mind to stay realistic when creating your calendar. Give yourself ample time to sort each task and ensure that you deliver high-quality outputs to each assigned task.
9. Measuring your results or KPIs of your digital marketing plan
Now that everything is done, you should check the results by defining metrics and key performance indicators. It would be best if you compared the outcomes of your marketing efforts to the baseline and original goals.
If you fall under your target result, constantly adjust, optimize and measure again.
Should you need help with digital marketing, contact our team at sales@marketgrid.com
