Definition of Digital Marketing Plan
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 the creation of personalized products and services and the measurement of everything that happens to create unique and memorable customer experiences for mutual benefit.
The Digital Marketing plan is a very elaborate report in which we specify the objectives to be achieved, as well as the strategies and tactics that we will use to achieve them. It is of vital importance that this document is correctly planned and is the result of in-depth research.
The ability to develop successful Digital Marketing Plans can be a differential point for a professional in this sector. Not only does it help justify what has happened so far, but it also explains the direction the company intends to take. How To Do Digital Marketing?
How to develop a Digital Marketing plan?
When developing an Online Marketing plan, a series of key points must be taken into account.
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 so that it helps us to know the motivations of the users and in this way, we can design much more focused and personalized actions.
#1. Analysis of the situation
First of all, we must be very clear about what the brand is, what it does, for what reason it does it, its justification and its reason for being, and its USP (unique selling proposition).
The first concept to include in an Online Marketing plan has to be the study of the current situation or analysis of the environment. For this reason, we will study the environment by carrying out an analysis, both internal and external, of the sector in which we operate and in which the product or service in question is framed, always making clear demographic, economic, technological, political or sociocultural factors, which they are vitally important. In the same way, we will analyze direct competition in order to improve and take advantage of every opportunity that arises.
For the external analysis part you have to do:
- PESTEL analysis
- Porter’s 5 Forces analysis
For the internal analysis section, you have to do:
- VRIO analysis
- SWOT Analysis
- CAME analysis
online presence
At the same time, and very importantly, before carrying out an online marketing plan, you must know what your online presence is, know what online platforms you have or don’t have a presence on, and know what history the online presence of the brand has.
At this point you have to pay special attention to the research to keep in mind the tools that have been used to maintain their online presence, as well as what strategy and tactics they have followed in the past. This information is essential to be able to follow a line of communication that does not stray from the one established up to now.
To finish the analysis of the situation, we must make a great effort to know in detail what are objectives we want to pursue through the digital marketing plan and what budget we have for its execution.
It is in this first section where it is worth highlighting the importance of defining objectives, knowing the target audience in detail and carrying out the SWOT analysis, which can help a lot to succeed with the strategy to follow, taking advantage of opportunities and detecting weaknesses. that have 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 carrying out detailed research on the online presence, both of the brand and of the competition. For this, it is highly recommended to use both free and paid tools to detect the status of the brand and that of competing companies.
Tools like SEMrush, Sistrix, Moz, aHrefs or the social networks themselves can help a lot to identify the state of the online presence, offering data that makes the investigation much easier, since they save us from doing many things manually.
Analytical data such as daily and monthly visits, direct, organic and paid traffic, bounce rate, indexed pages, number of backlinks, number of fans and followers, level of engagement, etc. These are some of the metrics that we have to take into account when analyzing the brand and fundamentally the competition.
#2. Definition of objectives
Once we have all the research done and the situation we are starting from is known, it is time to start designing the digital marketing plan. 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.
a) Business objectives
Business objectives are purely economic, and 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 compared to the previous year or to improve market share, which means growing in contrast to the competition.
b) Marketing objectives
Marketing objectives are those that make the business objectives are met. These objectives can consist, for example, of increasing traffic to the web through SEO or SEM, or getting leads (emails or contact numbers) among others.
A fundamental detail when establishing the objectives is to follow the basic rules for the achievement of objectives, the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Temporally limited).
(S) Specific : you have to look for specifics, in order to identify what you 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 if the objectives are viable and if there is a possibility of achieving them.
(R) Realistic: when setting the objectives you have to keep your feet on the ground and not speculate too much about the objectives, otherwise the results will not be able to be evaluated later.
(T) Temporarily delimited: the execution times must be marked very well in order to have control of the start and end of the project.
For the control and monitoring of the objectives, it is advisable to design a Dashboard, which will facilitate daily, weekly, monthly, or annual control, in order to be able to keep track of and check progress.