A step-by-step guide to structuring a digital marketing plan
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 4:44 am
How can you successfully create a digital marketing plan for your business? Your digital marketing plan should consider SEO, analytics, web positioning, strategies, social media, goals, and metrics.
Putting digital marketing actions into motion without a previously defined plan or strategy can lead to failure by not considering all the aspects that could affect its development. When developing a digital marketing plan, you should include components such as determining your target audience (buyer persona), business objectives, and an appropriate value proposition.
What is a digital marketing plan?
A digital marketing plan is a document that shares the details of all the planning of your digital marketing campaigns or actions. It details, among other things:
Short, medium and long term business objectives.
Strategies to achieve goals at the digital level.
The channels to use.
Action and development plans.
Investment and budget.
The time and the script.
According to Philip Kotler, considered one of the fathers of modern marketing, a traditional marketing plan serves to: “document how the organization’s strategic objectives architects email lists uk will be achieved through specific marketing strategies and tactics, with the customer as the starting point. It is also linked to the plans of other departments within the organization.”
With that in mind, does your business need a digital marketing plan? In our opinion, the answer is a resounding yes: 100% yes. You need it to:
Attract, convince, convert and make your customers fall in love with your product or service.
Plan all strategies and actions to reach your target customer.
Segment your marketing campaigns to provide value at every stage.
Before you can develop the steps that define the structure of a digital marketing plan, you need to feel comfortable with your corporation's online domain, your segmentation, the channels you should be present on, and who your competition is and what they do.
Below, we will outline the step-by-step structure of your digital marketing plan:
Structure a digital marketing plan step by step
Step 1: Situational analysis
The first thing you need to do when developing your digital marketing plan is to conduct an internal and external analysis (SWOT analysis) of your company. A useful framework for this is the SWOT analysis, which allows you to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of your company and the market in general.
We need to be familiar with the ecosystem in which we operate, what our customers’ needs are and where they are met. This analysis is equally qualitative as it is quantitative through factors such as digital habits, intermediaries, influencers and more.
The implementation of benchmarking techniques that aim to identify digital best practices and success stories and apply them to the business is an increasingly prominent part of global corporate strategy.
We also need to conduct an internal study to find out how our company is doing in the digital age: is our website customer-oriented? What is the usability and navigation experience like? Do we update our blog regularly? What is the current positioning of our website? And what is our presence on social media?
Step 2: Set Digital Marketing Goals
Once you have your place in the market and your strengths in mind, work on setting some goals so you have a clear idea of where your actions should take you. Whatever you plan has to work towards achieving these goals.
You can work on developing this part of your digital marketing plan with the SMART goal framework in mind: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely goals.
Here is an example:
Not a SMART goal: “I want to increase the number of visitors to my website.”
SMART goal: “I want to reach 20,000 monthly visits to my website every month within three months. To do this, I will do X, Y, and Z.”
Step 3: Define the marketing strategy
Once you’ve defined your business goals, what will you do to achieve them? Personalization is becoming increasingly important in digital marketing. So when it comes to defining your strategy to execute your plan, keep these factors in mind:
Segmenting your target audience:
Know who you want to reach, what their tastes, needs or preferences are, where you are looking to meet their expectations, etc. This is the time to create your buyer persona.
Positioning:
To achieve proper positioning, it is crucial that you are very clear (and reach your audience in the same way) about what your value proposition is and what it entails. In short, this is why the consumer should choose you over the competition. You need to know how you will communicate your unique value proposition and how to do it appropriately on the channels where your target audience is present (social media, blogs, email marketing, and more).
Content strategy:
This is important to create, distribute and manage original content that attracts users and positions the brand as a reference at the top of users' minds. In addition, you also need to map out a specific communication plan (content marketing) for each channel. Some of the tools we use to execute this strategy are:
Keyword Research: This involves identifying appropriate keywords that we can use correctly in our content to organically improve SEO rankings. This is imperative to every content strategy if you want users to find you in search engines.
Content Calendar: A content calendar is essential to ensure that your strategy makes sense. It provides value; allows you to think long-term and optimize your resources, helps you brainstorm ideas, and more. In a content calendar, you should include the publication date, author, post topic, keyword, tags to use/consider, and so on.
Social Post: Writing an article and not promoting it on social media is a mistake. It’s not spam, it’s what you’re going to publish and when it’s on all social media platforms, the most appropriate copies for each one, all with the ideal number of characters, links, hashtags and more.
Putting digital marketing actions into motion without a previously defined plan or strategy can lead to failure by not considering all the aspects that could affect its development. When developing a digital marketing plan, you should include components such as determining your target audience (buyer persona), business objectives, and an appropriate value proposition.
What is a digital marketing plan?
A digital marketing plan is a document that shares the details of all the planning of your digital marketing campaigns or actions. It details, among other things:
Short, medium and long term business objectives.
Strategies to achieve goals at the digital level.
The channels to use.
Action and development plans.
Investment and budget.
The time and the script.
According to Philip Kotler, considered one of the fathers of modern marketing, a traditional marketing plan serves to: “document how the organization’s strategic objectives architects email lists uk will be achieved through specific marketing strategies and tactics, with the customer as the starting point. It is also linked to the plans of other departments within the organization.”
With that in mind, does your business need a digital marketing plan? In our opinion, the answer is a resounding yes: 100% yes. You need it to:
Attract, convince, convert and make your customers fall in love with your product or service.
Plan all strategies and actions to reach your target customer.
Segment your marketing campaigns to provide value at every stage.
Before you can develop the steps that define the structure of a digital marketing plan, you need to feel comfortable with your corporation's online domain, your segmentation, the channels you should be present on, and who your competition is and what they do.
Below, we will outline the step-by-step structure of your digital marketing plan:
Structure a digital marketing plan step by step
Step 1: Situational analysis
The first thing you need to do when developing your digital marketing plan is to conduct an internal and external analysis (SWOT analysis) of your company. A useful framework for this is the SWOT analysis, which allows you to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of your company and the market in general.
We need to be familiar with the ecosystem in which we operate, what our customers’ needs are and where they are met. This analysis is equally qualitative as it is quantitative through factors such as digital habits, intermediaries, influencers and more.
The implementation of benchmarking techniques that aim to identify digital best practices and success stories and apply them to the business is an increasingly prominent part of global corporate strategy.
We also need to conduct an internal study to find out how our company is doing in the digital age: is our website customer-oriented? What is the usability and navigation experience like? Do we update our blog regularly? What is the current positioning of our website? And what is our presence on social media?
Step 2: Set Digital Marketing Goals
Once you have your place in the market and your strengths in mind, work on setting some goals so you have a clear idea of where your actions should take you. Whatever you plan has to work towards achieving these goals.
You can work on developing this part of your digital marketing plan with the SMART goal framework in mind: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely goals.
Here is an example:
Not a SMART goal: “I want to increase the number of visitors to my website.”
SMART goal: “I want to reach 20,000 monthly visits to my website every month within three months. To do this, I will do X, Y, and Z.”
Step 3: Define the marketing strategy
Once you’ve defined your business goals, what will you do to achieve them? Personalization is becoming increasingly important in digital marketing. So when it comes to defining your strategy to execute your plan, keep these factors in mind:
Segmenting your target audience:
Know who you want to reach, what their tastes, needs or preferences are, where you are looking to meet their expectations, etc. This is the time to create your buyer persona.
Positioning:
To achieve proper positioning, it is crucial that you are very clear (and reach your audience in the same way) about what your value proposition is and what it entails. In short, this is why the consumer should choose you over the competition. You need to know how you will communicate your unique value proposition and how to do it appropriately on the channels where your target audience is present (social media, blogs, email marketing, and more).
Content strategy:
This is important to create, distribute and manage original content that attracts users and positions the brand as a reference at the top of users' minds. In addition, you also need to map out a specific communication plan (content marketing) for each channel. Some of the tools we use to execute this strategy are:
Keyword Research: This involves identifying appropriate keywords that we can use correctly in our content to organically improve SEO rankings. This is imperative to every content strategy if you want users to find you in search engines.
Content Calendar: A content calendar is essential to ensure that your strategy makes sense. It provides value; allows you to think long-term and optimize your resources, helps you brainstorm ideas, and more. In a content calendar, you should include the publication date, author, post topic, keyword, tags to use/consider, and so on.
Social Post: Writing an article and not promoting it on social media is a mistake. It’s not spam, it’s what you’re going to publish and when it’s on all social media platforms, the most appropriate copies for each one, all with the ideal number of characters, links, hashtags and more.