How To Create A Digital Marketing Plan
According to Search Engine Journal, it's estimated that 49% of SME businesses do not have a concrete marketing plan.
A strategic marketing plan is essential to help businesses of any scale reach their target customers. A well-crafted marketing plan allows you to reach your target customers, understand your competitors, and help you differentiate your product or service in a crowded market, without relying on ancillary internet marketing services.
Words like ‘marketing strategy’ and ‘marketing plan’ may sound abstract, overly technical and potentially daunting, but it doesn't have to be. Our team has put together this concise step-by-step guide to help you get started in crafting your digital marketing plan.
STEP 1: CREATING A BUSINESS SUMMARY
As the name suggests, a business summary is a summary of your business operations, objectives, and mission. Include essential information about your business name, team, financial summary and mission statement of your company. It’s also helpful to always delineate the specific problem your business is solving.
One way to do this is to conduct a SWOT Analysis, which stands for "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats".
A business summary is useful for you to refer to during a crowded headspace, to send to potential investors or new hires, and also to send to your freelance digital marketer to help them get up to speed on your business quickly.
STEP 2: SETTING UP GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
The next step is to set and specify your business goals, objectives, and consequently the specific metrics upon which these traditional marketing goals and objectives will be measured over time.
Business goals vary, from "increasing market share" in your industry, to "increasing nett revenue to the business". It then needs to be accompanied with a set of business objectives to reach these goals.
For example, in order to reach the goal of "increasing market share", objectives would be "gaining more unique visitors" on your website, or "improving the conversion rate", or "increasing the size of newsletter list". It would vary according to your industry, business model, and target audience.
STEP 3: KNOWING YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS
Buyer personas, competitor analysis and refining your unique selling point is essential to understanding your target customers.
A buyer persona is a general description of your ideal customer. When creating an ideal buyer persona, ask yourself the following questions.
- The Basics: What is the gender, age, level of education, work location, and home location of your target customers?
- The Values: What problems does your customer want to solve when using your product/ service? Do they care more about price or quality? What values do they have that resonates with your product?
- The Channels: Which social media platform(s) does your customer use the most? And how could you leverage these channels to reach your customers?
After creating your buyer personas, you can then start researching into your competitors, and understand their target demographics, brand values, and existing advertising channels.
his ties back to the SWOT analysis we mentioned in step one. Ask yourself: what are your competitors’ strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats? And why is your product/ service sufficiently different that it appeals to your target customer?
STEP 4: KNOWING YOUR BUDGET
Depending on your goals and objectives, list down the items within your marketing plan, and budget your expenses across the different ad channels and paid media.
Traktion's Marketers have a strong track record of success in helping companies delineate the allocation of funds across their campaigns. For your digital advertising campaigns, it is almost always recommended that you start with a small budget split over numerous experiments for your paid media, before finding the channels relevant to you, and at a cost-per-acquisition that works well with your margins.
STEP 5: COMING UP WITH A MARKETING STRATEGY
Your marketing strategy would comprise of the above components.
The section would first contain ‘three Ps of marketing.’
- Product: Why is my product/ service unique? What problem(s) can my product/service solve?
- Price: What is the price point of your offering? Does it match your target customers’ budgets? Would you have sufficient margins to offer discounts or offers?
- Promotion: How could my business actually promote this product/service to our customers? What content can I produce around my product/service that would deliver value to my customers, and at what budget? How can I build trust, longevity and a relationship with my customers?
Remember to then incorporate and consider the following advertising methods to reach out to your customers through your digital campaigns:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
- Content Marketing
- PR
- Email Marketing
- Affiliate Programs
- Partnership Marketing
- Leveraging Existing Platforms
