Creating a digital marketing plan is essential for any business that wants to reach and engage its target audience online. But how do you know what tools to use and how to use them effectively? In this article, we'll show you some of the basic tools you need to create a digital marketing plan that works for your goals, budget, and industry.
Before you dive into the tools, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your digital marketing plan. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. They help you focus your efforts and track your progress. For example, a SMART goal could be: Increase website traffic by 25% in the next 6 months using SEO, content marketing, and social media.
Most teams are able to set a specific goal within a time frame like "Increase impressions from personal profiles on primary social media channels (Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook) by 2,000,000 within the next 2 months". But SMART goals also include two other key bits "Attainable" and "Relevant". How do you know that 2,000,000 views on social will lead to any meaningful downstream impacts? What shows you this is the case? And is 2,000,000 attainable? What leading indicators give you confidence this is a reasonable goal?
Here are 5 examples of SMART digital PR goals for financial institutions who want to position as credible and trustworthy partners: 1. Increase positive sentiment in online conversations by 20% over the next 12 months. 2. Increase the number of positive brand mentions on authoritative financial news websites and blogs by 25% in the next 9 months. 3. Increase organic traffic by 20% over the next 9 months to website pages with content that highlights the bank's efforts (for example) to improve its security measures and gain trust. 4. Increase engagement (likes, shares, comments) by 30% on social media posts over the next 9 months 5. Improve share of search for trust-related keywords from 10-20% in the next 12 months.
Creating a successful digital marketing plan requires a toolkit that combines strategy, analytics, and execution. Start with research tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush for data-driven insights into your audience and competitors. Next, a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or HubSpot is vital for website optimization and blogging. Email marketing platforms like MailChimp help nurture leads. Social media management tools like Hootsuite or Buffer simplify posting schedules. Finally, graphic design software like Adobe Creative Cloud ensures compelling visuals. CRM software, such as Salesforce or HubSpot CRM, keeps track of customer relationships.
Without knowing where you want to go, you’ll inevitably travel in vain. Make sure you’re crystal clear with where your business is at right now and what is truly needed to fuel growth - or whatever your top priority is currently. Do you want to focus on improving the customer experience? Or maybe it’s time to pump the growth brakes and seek feedback from your customers in order to learn more from them. There’s no wrong answer. Just be honest with yourself. It’s also important to note that SMART goals don’t always have to be yearly or monthly or quarterly. Give yourself some breathing room if any of those timelines don’t fit into your circumstances. And be willing to adjust course when needed.
For a digital marketing plan, consider: 1. Goals: Google Analytics for tracking, Ahrefs for SEO insights. 2. Audience: Facebook Audience Insights for demographics. 3. Content: Hootsuite for social media scheduling, WordPress for blogging or website. 4. SEO: SEMrush for keyword research, RankMath for on-page optimization. 5. Social Media: Buffer for posting, Canva for design. 6. Email Marketing: Mailchimp for campaigns, Constant Contact for automation. 7. Ads: Google Ads for PPC, Facebook Ads Manager. 8. Performance: Google Data Studio for reporting, Hotjar for user behavior. 9. Management: Trello for tasks, Slack for team communication. You can blend these tools to craft, execute, and measure your strategy.
A SWOT analysis is a tool that helps you assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to your competitors and your market. It helps you identify your unique selling proposition, your competitive advantage, and your areas for improvement. A SWOT analysis can also help you spot new trends, gaps, and challenges in your industry and adjust your strategy accordingly.
So underrated –?and invaluable. We always hear that "comparison kills" but we can't ever make informed marketing decisions without understanding the full picture of the environment we're marketing in. Threats keep organizations future-focused and innovative. Digital marketers that don't consider the threat of consumer privacy laws tend to get stuck using strategies that become obsolete. I like to highlight Strengths over Weaknesses. If we can find 2-3 things that our organization is strong in and getting the full power of that, we'll be more effective than constantly focusing on our weaknesses. Fixing our weaknesses is difficult, exhausting, and marginally improve us. Maximizing strengths, on the other hand, is a force-multiplier.
First, look inward at your strengths and weaknesses. What are you truly great at? What do you hear feedback about? Understanding your strengths allows you to play to your superpowers, while recognizing weaknesses helps pinpoint areas for improvement. Then, look outward to opportunities and threats in your broader environment. What industry changes or new trends could work in your favor? Conversely, what challenges might arise? Awareness of opportunities helps with targeting, while threats help with risk management. By gaining insight in all four areas, you can craft a marketing plan that capitalizes on your inherent advantages and any beneficial shifts in the market. It gives you the best chance for success.
The power of SWOT analysis lies in its ability to reveal the bigger picture. By dissecting your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you gain clarity on your business landscape. It's like holding a mirror to your strategy, helping you refine and adapt to stay ahead in a dynamic market.
In the realm of digital marketing, a SWOT analysis takes on even greater significance. It helps marketers understand their digital presence and competitive landscape. By assessing strengths such as a well-established social media following, weaknesses like a poorly optimized website, opportunities in emerging digital channels, and threats posed by aggressive competitors, digital marketers can craft more effective and adaptive strategies. SWOT analysis empowers digital marketing professionals to maximize their strengths, mitigate weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities, and prepare for potential challenges, ultimately enhancing their online performance and ROI.
Master Your Market with SWOT Analysis in Digital Marketing Identify Strengths: Recognize what sets your business apart. Use customer feedback tools like SurveyMonkey to understand your strong points. Acknowledge Weaknesses: Pinpoint areas needing improvement. Analyze customer reviews and engagement data to identify weak spots. Spot Opportunities: Look for market trends and gaps using tools like Google Trends and industry reports. Assess Threats: Be aware of competitive and market challenges. Use competitive analysis tools like Ahrefs to understand your market position. Actionable Tip: Regularly conduct a SWOT analysis using a simple template or a tool like MindMeister for visual mapping. ??Share how you've used SWOT below.
Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers based on data and research. They help you understand your audience's needs, preferences, behaviors, and pain points. By creating buyer personas, you can tailor your digital marketing plan to the different segments of your audience and deliver more relevant and personalized messages. You can use tools like surveys, interviews, analytics, and social media to create buyer personas.
Try ChatGPT to be more efficient and gain some basic understanding of your audience (their ambitions or pains). Prompt example: "Act as an online business coach who works from home, age 35-55, and who needs reliable internet connection to host seamless video sessions. Describe your ambitions and fears. Provide result in a markdown table format." Here are few results: Ambitions: - Establish a reputable online coaching brand that attracts clients globally. - Expand the client base through word-of-mouth and positive testimonials. Fears: - Internet connectivity issues disrupting sessions and harming professional reputation. - Not being able to connect personally with clients due to the virtual nature of the job.
I have developed 100+ marketing plans for my clients, I found this one thing common. "Buyer personas" Your entire marketing plan depends on this one thing. If you have previous data, that's good. But don't make it fictional pls. You have got plenty of time during the awareness stage of your brand. Use it wisely. Don't niche it down too early. Target everyone during the awareness stage. You will be amazed to find your buyer personas. Completely different, from what you imagine. Try it!
For B2B, especially ABM, right message to the right person at the right time is key. Using 6sense you can see what your target customers are searching for. RESEARCH is key here. Use tools like GWI to learn about buying behaviors. Interview your customers through brand studies with partners like YouGov. Dive into G2 to see what their pain points are and what your selling points are in your customer's words.
Just about every struggling business I've worked with lacked planning documents like buyer personas. The best time to create your buyer personas is before starting the business. The second best time to create them is now. Most people will find themselves working with the second option. Though these are fictional representations of your ideal clients, remember, they should feel real. Really real. The goal of this is to develop empathy with the situation and needs of the people you'll be communicating with. My favorite tip? The sales department is your best friend. They have real conversations with these people every day, so they can tell you what they need and how you can help. And don't forget the updates! These are living documents.
Be super careful with buyer personas. At multiple jobs I've seen them morph into cultic idols that lazy marketers would use to avoid having to do the hard work of digging into the data. If you're going to build personas, every aspect of them should be based on data, and they should be malleable to changes in the market. They should always come with the caveat that personas are nothing more than probabilistic heuristics. They don't represent your total addressable market, and they aren't a substitute for a targeting strategy.
A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan, organize, and schedule your content creation and distribution across different channels and platforms. It helps you align your content with your goals, buyer personas, and keywords. It also helps you avoid duplication, inconsistency, and gaps in your content strategy. You can use tools like spreadsheets, apps, or software to create and manage your content calendar.
Some bad practices from my personal experience with content calendars (from Excel, Canva, Facebook to Airtable, etc): - Making the content calendar overly complex or too detailed - this can lead to confusion. -Failing to define clear goals for your content calendar. Ensure that each piece of content aligns with your overall marketing objectives and has a specific purpose. I have always had success with keeping content calendar simple and available to interested stakeholders.
In my experience, for a practical content calendar, we need to have a deep research on keywords and also derp competitors analysis to find out what are top searched keywords and topics which are relevant, Seo friendly and competitive
Well-organized calendar content and road map are the key. I usually divide several campaigns to run strategies on several platforms, such as social media, websites, and the news. After analyzing the content and campaigns, it's crucial to determine the primary and supporting platforms. For instance, in the case of my business, the website serves as the primary platform for user transactions, while social media and news are utilized as platforms to attract leads to the website.
While managing your content calendar, embrace a more flexible approach and let your ideas flow naturally for a more authentic and engaging content strategy.
Regardless whether you're using software or a pen and paper, you rarely need to schedule content for a long period of time. You need to find the right pace for your business and how fast your industry moves, but you might benefit from only scheduling and processing a quarter at a time. The best reason to NOT schedule a lot of content at a time is so that you can measure the effectiveness (i.e. the ROI of your content creation budget) and then choose a new direction, new keyword strategy, new topic focus, or even a completely different marketing channel or medium.
Analytics and reporting are tools that help you measure and evaluate the performance and impact of your digital marketing plan. They help you track and analyze your key metrics, such as traffic, conversions, leads, sales, ROI, etc. They also help you identify what's working and what's not, and optimize your strategy accordingly. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Facebook Insights, etc. to collect and visualize your data.
Here are some best practices to follow when presenting digital marketing reports to stakeholders: -Always keep in mind the recipient for whom you create the report. -Add or remove details - the CEO or CMO will probably have specific questions about the marketing campaigns. -If you have a lot of data to present, consider using a dashboard or a presentation. -Lead with concrete results that show the impact of your marketing efforts. -Focus on the results and what they mean for the business. -Make sure your report aligns with the company's overall goals. -Prioritize the metrics that matter most to the business. -Start your report on a positive note by finding some quick wins.
Always opt for tools that help you identify and observe traffic behaviour via different sources. Traffic stand alone will not make sense unless you start looking at the complete funnel. For businesses starting up it is always a safe bet to start with a limited number of acquisition channels (AB TEST your way in) your specific business niche will have a One super star acquisition channel and use your initial dollar to figure out the key 1/2 channel(s) for acquisition. My best bet to unlock insights will be Mixpanel in most circumstances.
When it comes to Analytics & Reporting, I usually recommend 3 key considerations: 1. Data: The raw numbers (eg Likes, Comments, Shares) & its derivatives (eg Engagement = Likes + Comments + Shares) 2. The Narrative Are you telling a story of how you used digital channel strategy to increase engagement? What was the results and how did you achieve it? 3. Learnings and Recommendations Here, it's helpful to clearly differentiate between learnings and insights. Where possible, have both. Learnings: Implications of the data and its derivatives (trends, patterns, anomalies, correlations, etc) Insights: An interpretation of what the implications mean for the larger objective at hand
Measurement is so underated by some clients. They know they should ask for ROI data but then ignore post campaign when they should be planning the next based on previous wins and loses. When presenting KISS is the word as many are overwhelmed by too much data and it's our job to make sense of it for them, simply in picture format if required. More memorable and digestable then.
Leveraging Analytics for Smarter Marketing: 1. Google Analytics Expertise: Focus on traffic, conversions, and audience behaviors. Utilize advanced features like segmentation and behavior flow. 2. Maximize Google Search Console: Track website health, search performance, and optimize SEO strategies. 3. Harness Social Media Insights: Analyze engagement, demographics, and trends using platform-specific tools like Facebook Insights. 4. Data Visualization: Use Tableau or Google Data Studio for tailored visual reports and KPI tracking. Actionable Tip: Set up automated reporting and integrate both quantitative data and qualitative insights. ?? Share how you use analytics to enhance your marketing tactics in the comments!
Testing and optimization are tools that help you improve your digital marketing plan by experimenting with different elements and variables. They help you test your assumptions, hypotheses, and ideas, and compare the results. They also help you find the best combination of factors that increase your conversions, engagement, and satisfaction. You can use tools like A/B testing, multivariate testing, heatmaps, etc. to test and optimize your website, landing pages, emails, ads, etc.
Testing is the only way to continuously move the needle in a positive direction. If you never stop testing and optimizing, you'll never stop improving. Organizations that get too comfortable with something that "works okay" will find themselves behind at some point, scrambling to make ends meet.
Don't neglect testing to start campaigns. Try to check and optimize the results during the campaign. In cases where you have doubts or are not sure, make sure to use A/B testing to get the optimal conditions.
I would not only consider the various forms of copy, static content and video content, but also take into account the fact that today, people typically watch only 1 to 3 seconds of your video. Therefore, it's essential to tailor your message to those brief moments in order to effectively convey your intended message to your audience.
Testing & optimization: Embracing them means you're always on the path of improvement. In the fast-paced digital landscape, complacency with something that merely "works okay" can lead to a future where you're racing to catch up with the competition. Stay proactive. Keep testing, and you'll consistently find ways to enhance your strategies and stay ahead of the game.
The core thing that works here is data. Data drives digital marketing by providing insights into customer behavior and preferences. Through data analysis, marketers can understand what resonates with their audience, informing decisions for website optimization, ad targeting, and content creation. It helps identify trends, measure campaign effectiveness, and predict future consumer behavior. Essentially, data transforms guesswork into strategic, evidence-based actions, enhancing personalization, relevance, and ultimately, the success of marketing efforts.
BUDGET is the probably the single biggest factor to on any digital marketing plan, and is the one most plans conveniently overlook until the end. Here are 3 tips with budget: 1. Play the Long and Short Game: Aim to spend 60% of your budget on brand building / demand generation digital tactics like SEO, PR, video tofu content, and 40% on purely performance tactics l like PPC and targeting. 2. Diversify: digital marketing is broader then digital advertising. Distribute your $ among paid, owned, and earned, with an emphasis on owned and generating 1st party data. 3. Benchmark, iterative, and scale - Don't spend all you $ at once. Instead & deploy a small campaign, benchmark performance, iterate to improve, and then scale with added $$.
I keep it simple and focus on 3 phases: Discovery --> Research, analysis, due diligence Planning --> Content, messaging, branding, budget, campaigns etc. Execution --> Do, test, experiment, measure and analyze, pivot, repeat. A lot goes into each phase. But generally speaking, you need to understand the current state, then plan for the desired future state, and finally execute your plan.
An often overlooked part of marketing planning is distribution planning. When I taught my content marketing course at UCSD, besides building a content calendar as part of the final project (and doing ICPs, buyer personas, SMART goals etc.) I also had them discuss distribution. Who else is resharing this content? How are you repurposing content (say if you go on a podcast, what are all the ways you could use that content)? Do you have partners you can co-promote with? Too often companies operate solo and publish only to their small communities and networks. The more effective play is to lean into distribution and have this be a core part of your GTM strategy.
A digital marketing plan should respond to two questions: who is the audience, and what action do you want them to take? It's easy to overcomplicate it, but without answers to those questions, the rest could quickly take the plan off course.
Achieving digital marketing goals often requires specialists who think outside of the box, and can uncover unconventional paths. For instance, a new client of mine aiming for reach via Spotify assumed programmatic or direct IO were the only routes. However, exploring options together I revealed Spotify's self-service platform with a mere $250 entry barrier was available in Australia. In this instance, specialists can unveil unique avenues, ensuring your objectives are met even in unexpected ways.