How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan That Works: A Step by Step Guide 

87% of shoppers start their buying process with an online search. So modern businesses must make it easy for clientele to research and buy products online. Any company without a strong online reputation will find it hard to succeed in this digital age.

But how can a company develop a great online presence that helps to increase revenues and market share? The answer is to have a digital marketing plan that works. Keep reading to learn how to create a digital marketing plan that works.

What Is a Digital Marketing Plan?

A digital marketing plan is a written document that outlines the online marketing strategies that a company plans to follow to achieve its marketing goals. Having a digital marketing plan is important as it helps you deeply understand and cater to the needs of your target audience.

This plan can also help your company make the best use of its resources such as time, money, and employees. A digital marketing plan helps align all your marketing teams and other departments so that they are working to achieve the same goals.

1. Conduct a Situational Analysis

The first step you must take when creating a digital marketing plan is to establish the current position of your brand. At the end of your situational analysis, you should be clear on the following:

• Who you are as a company
• What exactly you are selling
• Who your target clients are
• What your unique selling proposition (USP) is

Two of the main tools you can use to establish your market position are the SWOT analysis and a perceptual map. The SWOT analysis will identify the strengths and weaknesses of your brand as well as the opportunities and threats that face it. A perceptual map uses customer feedback to help identify where consumers place your brand as compared to your competitors.

2. Create Your Buyer Personas

The best way to understand and meet the needs of your target audience is to create a buyer persona that represents them. A buyer persona is a hypothetical profile that has all the qualities of your ideal client or the person most likely to buy your products.

To create them, you will need to know the demographics of your target clients. Your market research should have helped you identify the socioeconomic status, age, race, gender, location, and even hobbies of your target client.

You probably have several types of people buying products and services from you so you will need to create different personas for each segment group. You will also have to come up with a digital marketing strategy for each group.

For instance, if your company sells shoes, you will have a buyer persona for women, men, girls, boys, and even teenagers. The way you sell shoes to an adult woman will be very different from the way you sell to a 10-year-old boy.

3. Set SMART Digital Marketing Goals

Now that you know your current market position and your ideal client, your next step is to set SMART marketing goals for your digital plan. Having specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed goals will help direct and focus your entire company’s marketing efforts.

Start with identifying your short-term goals and long-term goals. Short-term is the things you want to achieve in the next 12 months whereas long-term goals may be what you want to achieve in the next 3 to 5 years. You’ll also have big goals and smaller goals that will help you achieve the big goals.

For instance, you may have a goal to attain an 80% market share in the next 5 years. To achieve that goal, you may need to create a mini-goal of increasing your market share by 3% in the next 12 months. Clearly defined goals also help you to measure the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy.

4. Establish Your Budget

Before you can launch a digital marketing plan you must know which resources you can use to achieve your goals. The amount of money you have will determine what marketing channels you can use.

If you have a limited budget and also run some social media accounts, you can also try social media marketing. Giveaways are a good way to entice your customers to learn about your products. Who doesn’t like free giveaways? You can organize your customers to participate in a quiz game and can also use questionnaires to know what your customers think. And hard enamel pins are good options. They are practical and can decorate clothes and bags. They can be customized to any size, text and pattern you want on EnamelPins, and adding your company’s logo will better promote your company and products to achieve better marketing effects..

5. Choose the Right Digital Marketing Channels

The next step when creating a digital marketing plan is to choose the digital marketing strategies that you will use to achieve your goals. You have identified your buyer personas so you should know the best channels you can use to reach them online.

Some of the popular digital marketing channels you can use include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and influencer marketing. Click here to learn more about SEO rankings.

6. Measure Your Results and Adjust Your Plan

Successful marketers understand that in business you can’t manage what you don’t measure. The only way you will know if your digital marketing strategies are achieving the right results is to measure their performance. For instance, if you invest in a website upgrade, measure the bounce rate to see if more people are staying longer on your website.

Some companies have invested in expensive website transformations only to find that their users hated the changes. The quickest and best way for them to discover this is by tracking their websites’ user statistics.

Any type of digital marketing strategy you use will have analytics you can use to measure their performance. Make the best use of them and adjust your digital marketing plan based on the results you get.

Learn How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan that Works

Modern businesses cannot thrive in the current market without a strong online presence. The best way to improve your online reputation is to create and follow a digital marketing plan that works.

Following the above steps will help you create a plan that can help set your business up for success. For more digital marketing trends and tips, read the rest of our blog.