How to create a Digital Marketing plan in 5 steps

What Is a Digital Marketing Plan?

Simply put, a digital marketing plan is a document that sets out all the marketing goals of your company. The plan acts as a road map to the goals and helps you communicate your brand message to the right people at the right time.

Digital marketing harnesses the power of the online world, where so many consumers are influenced, and life-long relationships are built with your brand.

A digital marketing plan incorporates a variety of digital marketing tools like content marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, paid searches, advertising, SEO, reputation marketing, social media marketing, web analytics, webinars, and more.

What can you achieve with Digital Marketing?

Exploring Digital Marketing is the only way to meet modern consumer expectations.

In the post-digital transformation era, audience habits have undergone drastic changes. If you want to achieve business success, it is necessary to adapt to it.

A recent study indicates that 1.8 billion people already shop online. Even if we consider those who don’t, 63% of shopping begins online. In other words, the Internet is used by the public both to buy and to discover information about products.

With a wide variety of channels, the digital environment is excellent for attracting your target market and nourishing them with content that builds a relationship of trust. And, believe us, this is more important than many people think.

The 4.0 consumer, as specialists call them, gives extreme importance to their journey’s quality. If you manage to delight them during the marketing funnel, the chances of conversion are tremendous.

What’s more, satisfied customers tend to attract even more leads to your company, generating a profitable cycle.

Why do you need a Digital Marketing plan?

Digital Marketing is such an advantageous strategy that you just need to apply it and reap the rewards, right? Wrong!

As we’ve mentioned, a strategic approach is key to creating a competitive advantage for the brand and outperforming your competitors.

That’s why the Digital Marketing plan is important to achieving your goals. The plan serves as a guideline for managers and employees to work together towards the same objectives.

Thus, it is also easier to monitor the progress of the strategy. Just look at the projections made when the plan was drawn up and compare them with what was actually achieved.

Then, you will be able to evaluate the efficiency of your efforts. From there, you can make more reliable decisions.

Therefore, we can define the Digital Marketing plan as a document that establishes the actions the company must take to achieve specific objectives. This includes choosing the best strategies, channels, and content that will be explored by Digital Marketers.

The plan must be clear and direct, leaving no doubts about its guidelines. This is essential to ensure that all employees understand what is expected of them and act according to the company’s needs.

It is worth remembering, however, that the plan can be changed along the way if you find the need for it.

What Are the 7 Ps of Digital Marketing?

The 7 Ps are not unique to digital marketing. Initially, 4 Ps were created before the advent of digital marketing. The 7 Ps take into account the type of marketing incorporating both product marketing and customer service. Let’s take a glance at each one.

• Price – What is the price of your product or service? Are there any discounts?
• Product – What are the features of your product or service? How is it different from everything else that is on the market?
• Place – Where is your product or service sold?
• People – Who are the people that sell your product? What do they look like to your customers?
• Promotion – What creative elements does your product or service have that make it recognizable to customers?
• Process – How is your product delivered to the consumer?
• Physical evidence – What does the consumer take with them during the entire process?

Using the 7 Ps effectively can hone your digital marketing plan, drawing more customers in and increasing your sales.

What Are the 5 Stages of Digital Marketing?

Like any marketing plan, a digital marketing plan has many moving parts that will likely involve various teams within your brand. Any successful digital marketing plan will likely flow through five key stages. They are:

1. Setup/Plan

In the setup/plan stage, you are identifying the target audience. How do you do this? Take a look at what you want to accomplish.

What are you doing that works? What needs to be tweaked? How do you measure your current success? Taking a good hard look at where you are now can help you identify where you need to take your plan.

2. Implementation/Traction

In the second stage, you have developed the plan, and now it is time to put it to work. In this stage, you are focusing on the relationships with your customers.

Build engagement, gain followers, and set your brand up for success by collecting data and studying the results of your current digital marketing.

3. Conversion/Expansion

Stage 3 is a time to evaluate your digital marketing by looking at measurable results. Look to see how you can improve and what you need to let go of.

By taking the time to interpret data, you can waste less time and money on marketing that is not performing.

4. Interpretation of Client Desire/Adaptation

At this point, you should be reaping the benefits of your digital marketing plan. If not, it is time to step outside your comfort zone and try something new.

There are constantly new digital marketing tactics and strategies. If your plan isn’t working, pivot.

5. Reap Rewards/Adapt/Repeat

The fifth stage is really a misnomer. The goal of any digital marketing plan is to constantly adapt to your audience and the world around you. Being stagnant won’t get you anywhere in the digital marketing world!

How to develop a Digital Marketing plan in 5 steps?

In order to develop a Digital Marketing plan, you must understand two things. First, if you want your project to work, you must count on appropriate technologies and professionals capable of operating them.

Then, it is worth remembering that there is no magic formula for developing your plan. Each company has its unique selling points and you must consider them during the strategic process.

Therefore, everything starts with an in-depth analysis of your business. How to do this? Check out the first of the 5 topics below.

1. Carry out a SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis is an analytical tool focused on strategic planning. Its objective is to map all factors that can influence the business, from the external — such as political and economic variations — to internal — such as employee productivity.

With such information, it is possible to generate a complete diagnosis of the company’s situation, pointing out opportunities and threats. Counting on this kind of knowledge is essential for you to develop a perfect Digital Marketing plan.

The analysis is composed of four elements, whose initials form the word SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The idea is to analyze each one of them and prepare to explore the situation in the best possible way.

2. Establish your goals

After carrying out a SWOT analysis, you will see what points you need to improve in your company.

This way, you can create an order of priority and establish the most urgent objectives. What about an example?

Let’s imagine that the internal analysis result has indicated that your brand is excellent in attracting leads but weak in converting them.

Immediately, increasing the conversion rate should become one of your major goals. Something similar can occur in external analysis, which looks for threats and opportunities.

You may identify the chance to connect with your audience in a social network that your brand does not yet explore. If so, you should direct your efforts to expand your digital presence and implement an efficient strategy on that platform.

In addition to setting goals, it is vital to establish the Key Performance Indicators that will be used to measure the strategy’s progress. They will be essential decision-making factors in the future.

3. Define your buyer persona

Defining a buyer persona is one of the most critical steps in a Digital Marketing plan. The persona is nothing more than a semi-fictitious character simulating the characteristics of your ideal customer.

To create it, you’ll need to go beyond the demographic data related to your target audience. The persona must include more specific and intuitive details such as first name, hobbies, needs, pains, and motivations.

The idea is to facilitate the development of strategies that may impact your potential clients. When you see them as a persona, it is easier to explore their characteristics which leads them to conversion.

4. Define your marketing strategy

After studying your company, defining your objectives, and structuring your persona, it’s time to sculpt the details of your marketing strategy.

This begins with choosing the most appropriate channels for brand promotion and customer communication.

Note that these details depend directly on your predefined objectives and the characteristics observed in the persona.

If you want to reach a younger audience, for example, you should pay attention to social networks used by your target audiences, such as TikTok and Instagram.

The goals should also influence the methodology you will adopt. If the focus is simply to promote a product and achieve the highest possible reach, investing in paid advertising may be the solution.

However, if the idea is to educate the consumer about your products and services, creating a relationship of trust, using a Content Marketing strategy is the best alternative. At this point, it is worth remembering that these approaches can co-exist beneficially, as long as you know how to manage them.

In all cases, your Digital Marketing plan must be consistent across all channels. Your brand must present a recognizable identity and act according to its missions and values. It is the only way to create authority for your business.

5. Measure results and KPIs

Even if you achieve terrific results in a short period, never make the mistake of thinking your work is complete. Digital Marketing is characterized by rapidly changing trends and this can impact even the most successful approach.

Therefore, request feedback from your employees and customers to gather different impressions on the strategy’s impact. Also, collect data and prepare reports to facilitate your analysis of the situation.

Remember that we talked earlier about defining your KPIs? That’s right; they’re critical for you to monitor your strategy and ensure its stability.

So if you notice a sharp drop in the rate of engagement or the number of website visits, it may be time to make some changes and reduce damage.

On the other hand, if you don’t pay attention to these variations, you’ll end up throwing away all the efforts that led you to this point.

The Digital Marketing plan is an important document that will guide and evaluate the progress of your strategy. To develop it, it is necessary to study the characteristics of your company, define your persona and establish your primary objectives. If all goes well, you will notice considerable growth in your results.