The success of any company, nowadays, depends on its digital actions. Therefore, having a Digital Marketing Plan is essential if what you want is that your business works today and that its future is prosperous.
Many organizations have not yet taken this step professionally and continue to leave it in the hands of people who are not specialists in digital communication, which makes them reach approaches that either do not fit with the rest of the actions that the company has planned, or with the overall objectives.
For this reason I want to show you how to create a Digital Marketing Plan in which all the efforts made by the other areas of your business come together.
Let’s see it in a very practical way and with an example, so you can follow all the steps that we will see.
What is a digital marketing plan and what are its objectives?
A Digital Marketing Plan is a document that includes the online actions that a company develops to satisfy the desires of its target audience and achieve its corporate objectives.
Keep in mind that it is not only about advertising on the Internet, but the Online Marketing Plan goes beyond that and covers from the moment the product or service is born until after it has been sold.
I have also been careful not to write, in this definition, the word “sales”, as this corresponds more to the commercial department. However, one of the objectives of Digital Marketing is to accompany and facilitate them. For example, designing a specific Social Selling strategy is what I usually recommend for the B2B online businesses I work with.
Why is it so important to have a digital marketing plan?
We are in the IV Industrial Revolution, that of Industry 4.0, characterized by uniting physical, biological and digital aspects.
In this context, digital transformation, as I said at the beginning of the post, marks the future of the existence of companies. If you don’t digitize today, tomorrow you will no longer exist. Your potential customers move in online channels:
forums,
social networks,
websites,
online stores, etc.
What does this mean?
That you, as a business, must be where they are. For there to be a sale, the product or service and the buyer must come together at the same time. Today, the Internet has crept into the lives of consumers and this is the great opportunity that you can take advantage of to reach them.
As with any other strategy, you can’t do it in a crazy way, but you need an order and this is where the importance of having a specific online marketing plan for your company comes into play.
You decide if you join the evolution of the world or if you stay anchored in old schemes that no longer work. I hope you opt for the former and decide to apply the content of this post.
What are the main objectives of a marketing plan?
The next aspect I want to address with you is to know the main objectives of a marketing plan.
In the previous definition I told you what this strategy is and what it is not. But what is clear is that with online marketing we intend to bring together the objectives of the rest of the areas of the company and thus facilitate its achievement.
What are these objectives?
- Facilitate sales
One of the objectives of a digital marketing plan is not to sell, but to help sell. And for this you have to plan what actions and at what times this strategy will be involved.
Read on, I will tell you how digital marketing helps you to sell more.
- Persuade your target customer
Customers don’t like you to sell to them, they want to be the ones who decide what to buy, when and where. Your task, as a company, is to know how to be in the right place at the right time so that the sale is made and this is where your digital marketing plan is key and appears as a competitive advantage.
With a digital marketing plan for companies you can create that attractive environment that makes your target audience feel attracted to your brand and your products or services.
- Define how to communicate to your customer and where to do it.
Each type of digital marketing target audience speaks in a different way and moves in a different online spectrum. You have to define your digital communication model.
It’s not the same to talk to business managers, who require a more formal tone, as to eco-moms, who communicate in a more colloquial way. Moreover, you will find the former on LinkedIn and the latter on Facebook, Instagram and thematic forums.
Choosing the right message for your “Buyer Persona” is key so that your business approach is clear and direct and you don’t waste resources going “like a headless chicken”.
These decisions are made in the digital marketing plan.
- Capture leads that turn into customers
A lead or prospect is a potential customer who has voluntarily provided us with their personal data.
The digital marketing plan seeks to obtain these records to treat them in the most appropriate way, in order to turn them into real customers.
- Customer loyalty
If you are in the business world, you already know that it is more expensive to attract customers than to keep them. Therefore, with digital marketing we devise formulas aimed at this goal. - Identify the most appropriate keywords for your sector
We talk about keywords, SEO, knowing how to use them to achieve the best positioning in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc..
In addition…
There are many objectives of the digital marketing plan that you can include and it depends on the global ones you have set for your company. Therefore, below, I show you others that you may consider relevant to your specific case. Include them if you think so:
Increase the digital reputation of your brand.
Accompany the launch of a new product or service.
Enhance the visibility of a specific campaign.
Show the mission, vision and values of your company.
How to make a digital marketing plan for a company in 11 steps. A real example
We have reached the key point of this post, where you and I wanted to be.
In the previous sections I have explained the previous information you need to know before you start creating this strategy, but now I am going to detail the steps to design your digital marketing plan with a real example.
I want to clarify that, for privacy reasons, the example we are going to choose is a real company, but with imaginary nuances that I wanted to include. Let’s simulate how to apply these steps in the following company:
Example:
Our company is called “Pañalitos” and it is an ecommerce of ecological and washable cloth diapers that starts in the Spanish and Latin market. As they are organic products, they pollute less than disposable diapers.
In addition, moms only need two or three units per size, plus the absorbent pads, which can be disposable or washable, so they save in the long run (with a second baby, diaper costs would be zero).
- Internal analysis of your company
We start by taking a critical look internally to see if your company is ready for it. Review:
What has been done so far.
What is currently being done.
Which are the social networks in which your brand moves.
How is the usability of your website.
If there is a blog.
Example “Pañalitos”:
“Pañalitos” starts just now, so it has no history of digital actions. There is a website audited by a specialist, who validates its usability and confirms that the user experience is good. (If this is not your case, apply the corrections that they suggest so that the conversion of customers on your website is optimal).
- External analysis of the market and competition
We cannot stay with an inbred vision of our project; therefore, we have to look at what our competition is doing, analyze what works for them and improve it in our strategy.
We have to be different, authentic and better (yes, of course you can do it 💪). It is advisable to do a “benchmarking”.
Example “Pañalitos”:
We see that the competition is not much, we identify the competing brands and check that their whole strategy is based on natural parenting.
We can’t get out of this approach, since we detect that this is our target audience. “Pañalitos” has more models of diapers and the quality is much better. We also detected that there are cheaper prices.
Most ecommerce do not have a blog and are very strong on Instagram. They also work on Facebook, but less so. This study has helped us to detect the keywords used in the sector.
- SWOT analysis
It is time to know our strengths, weaknesses, business opportunities and external threats. It is the moment to make a SWOT.
Keep in mind that this step is very important, because it will mark much of your digital strategy. In addition, it is a document that you have to update, at first every three months, then every six (at least).
- Define your target audience for this digital marketing plan
You should know the technical differences that refer to your potential customers, because based on them you will select the actions of your digital marketing plan, the most appropriate for each one:
Target: all potential customers who can buy from you.
Target audience: is the person who has already shown an interest in your brand.
Buyer Persona: the archetype of your ideal customer.
The least important for your strategy is the first one.
How can you identify your target audience in digital marketing?
Here are some questions to help you with it:
What is his/her name (make up a name and photo for him/her).
What does he/she look like?
What does he/she like?
What social networks is he/she on?
At what time does he/she connect?
What are his/her work and personal goals?
What is the most important thing in his life?
Example “Diapers”:
We are talking about Marta, a 33-year-old married woman who is about to have or has just had her first child. She has a medium-high purchasing power and is an advocate for the planet and the environment.
She likes to upload photos of her baby to Instagram. There are her friends and her favorite cosmetics brands, but she also likes to be on Facebook, where her whole family is and where she can share content with a stronger emotional component.
She likes fashion, fitness and healthy eating. For her, what is important is the health of her baby and the well-being of her family. She wants to be a model mother, to offer the best possible education to her child and counts on the support of her partner to do so.
At work, she is now on maternity leave, but she is responsible for a department in the company where she works. She is a middle manager.
She currently connects all day to social networks, because the availability of time allows it, but when she returns to work (her baby will continue to wear diapers) she will have a reduced workday and will be online after noon, just before dinner and later, when the little one is already sleeping.
- Define the Smart Objectives of your marketing plan
If I ask you: what is your company’s objective, what do you answer?
Most people say “to sell more”. But that is not an objective. Selling $1 more in 1 year fits that answer. But is that really your goal? Of course not!
That’s why you need to define Smart marketing objectives.
- Have a Contingency Plan
So what do you do if you don’t achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself? It’s time to draw up a contingency plan that will help you rectify your planning and reorient it, making extra decisions that will focus you towards achieving those goals.
Check what you can do if you do not reach x% of the objectives set. You can see it here, in our example.
- Integrate your social media strategy into your online marketing plan.
We have already seen that each customer talks differently in different places. So now you must decide in which social networks you are going to be and the tone of communication you are going to use.
Parallel to this strategy, you will see that it is very convenient to create the Social Media Marketing Plan, which helps you to work the social digital media.
- Create a Crisis Management Plan
Too many companies go into the digital communication of their business without having a crisis plan. I would not like this to be your case, so I recommend that you include it, yes or yes, in your digital marketing plan.
In it you have to contemplate what are the common questions that your potential customers ask (something I always try in my Community Manager courses), to be able to react to them accurately and in a short space of time.
In addition, you will need to plan how to deal with possible reputation crises, those that go beyond simple negative comments or trolls.
Example “Diapers”:
It is complicated to give a complete example for this case, but I am going to leave you some that can help you focus on the repetitive themes of your project.
We may find ourselves with repeated doubts from users with which we can elaborate a list of FAQ’s:
Question: What is the life span of a cloth diaper?
Answer: Your “name brand” cloth diaper has many uses, so many that you can use them again with your second child.
Question: At what temperature should I wash the diaper to make it last longer?
Answer: We recommend that you wash it cold. You can use the washer and dryer without shortening the life of your cloth diaper.
- Analyze the results
If we said at the beginning of the chapter that we want SMART objectives to be measurable, it is obvious that we need to analyze the results on a regular basis. I recommend this at least once a month.
It is not only to know if we are on track to achieve the goals set (if we do not measure, we cannot know) but, above all, it is the way you have to improve and face new challenges that will take your company to where you want it to be.
So: measure, measure and measure.
- Budget your digital marketing plan
It is as important to define your online marketing plan as it is to implement it.
Once you have designed all the actions we have seen in this post, you need to know how much it will cost you to carry it out. I’m talking about money, yes.
You have the personnel costs (the web developer, the Community Manager, the Social Media Manager, etc). Calculate how much each one costs you.
You also have to take into account the budget you are going to invest in digital tools and ads, both in networks and search engines. The same with the hosting and other expenses of your website.
