What Is A Digital Marketing Plan And How Is It Done? (Part I)

A Digital Marketing plan consists of a document that contains all the objectives and the planning of strategies and Marketing actions to be developed with the aim that everything that is set out in the document has a justification and can achieve the objectives set.

To do this, you must first define what you want to achieve, to whom you want to address the communication and how you are going to perform the actions.

Definition of Digital Marketing?
How to develop a digital marketing plan?
How to present a digital marketing plan to customers?
How to execute a digital marketing plan?

1. Definition of Digital Marketing

In short, digital marketing is a form of online marketing that only uses new media and digital advertising channels such as the internet, mobile or IoT and that thanks to the power of technology allows you to create personalized products and services and measure everything that happens to create unique and memorable customer experiences for mutual benefit.

Here are the points to keep in mind when developing an online marketing.

2. How to develop a digital marketing plan?

The First Contact with the Customer

Before starting a digital marketing plan, it is vitally important to establish a first contact with the client to detail and specify what the objectives are.

In this first contact, we must try to get as much information as possible to the customer so that it is very clear the entire strategy when planning the marketing plan.

All information is welcome to avoid that when we present the digital marketing plan we have overlooked something or there are confusing concepts for not having consulted them previously.

Analysis of the Situation

First of all, we must be very clear about what the brand is, what it does, why it does it, its justification and its raison d’être, its USP (Unique Selling Proposition). In short, to know, the more in detail the better, your target audience.

The first concept to include in an online marketing plan has to be the study of the current situation.

That is why we will study the environment carrying out an analysis, both internal and external, on the sector in which we operate and in which the product or service in question is framed, always leaving clear demographic, economic, technological, political or socio-cultural factors, which are of vital importance.

In the same way, we will analyze direct competition in order to improve and take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.

Online Presence

At the same time, and very importantly, before making an online marketing plan it is necessary to know what your online presence is, what online platforms you have or do not have a presence on, and to know what history the online presence of the brand has.

At this point we must pay special attention to research to keep in mind the tools that have been used to maintain their online presence, as well as what strategy and tactics have followed in the past.

This information is essential to be able to follow a line of communication that does not depart from that established until now.

To finish the situation analysis, we will have to make a great effort to know in detail which are the objectives that we want to pursue through the digital marketing plan and what budget we have for its implementation.

It is in this first section where it is important to highlight the importance of defining objectives, knowing in detail the target audience and carrying out the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses Opportunities, Threats) analysis, which can help a lot with the strategy to follow, taking advantage of opportunities and detecting the weaknesses that need to be improved.

Online Research

Once we know what the client wants, the brand information and we are clear about our target audience, it is time to start conducting detailed research of the online presence of both the brand and the competition.

For this, it is highly recommended the use of both free and paid tools to detect the status of the brand and that of competing companies.

Tools such as SEMrush, Sistrix, Moz, aHrefs or the social networks themselves can help a lot to identify the state of the online presence, offering data that facilitates a lot of research, since they save us from doing many things manually.

Analytical data such as daily and monthly visits, direct traffic, organic and payment, rebound rate, indexed pages, number of backlinks, number of fans and followers, level of engagement, etc. are some of the metrics that we have to take into account when analyzing the brand and primarily the competition.

Definition of Objectives

Once we have all the research done and we know the situation from which we start, it’s time to start designing the digital marketing plan.

In order to do this, we have to be very clear about the business objectives and the marketing objectives, the latter being the ones that have to act as the root of the business objectives.

Business objectives

Business objectives are purely economic, measurable in the short term. Those that, as their name indicates, are synonymous with business viability depending on whether they are met or not. A clear example of a business objective is to increase turnover with respect to the previous year, or to improve market share, which means growing in contrast to the competition.

Marketing objectives

The marketing objectives are those that make the business objectives be fulfilled.

These objectives can consist, for example, of increasing traffic to the web through SEO or SEM, or capturing leads (emails or contact numbers) among others.

A fundamental detail at the time of establishing the objectives is to follow the basic norms for the attainment of objectives, the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Temporarily limited).

(S) Specific. We have to look for the concretion, in order to identify what we really want to achieve.

(M) Measurable. It is essential that the objectives can be quantified or qualified in some way, in order to compare the result.

(A) Achievable. Taking into account the work of all the components involved in the project, it is necessary to evaluate whether the objectives are feasible and the possibility of achieving them exists.

(R) Realistic. When setting the objectives, keep your feet on the ground and don’t speculate too much with the objectives, otherwise you won’t be able to evaluate the results.

(T) Temporarily delimited. The execution times must be marked very well in order to have a control of the beginning and end of the project.

For control and monitoring of the objectives, it is advisable to design a Dashboard, which will facilitate a daily, weekly, monthly or annual control, in order to keep track and check progress.

Continue reading at What Is A Digital Marketing Plan And How Is It Done? (Part I)

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Larry O'Connell