A digital marketing plan is a key component of any successful business in the modern world. This type of plan outlines all the details for online marketing campaigns and other digital actions for the business. Since the 1990s, digital marketing has been an essential part of any marketing strategy and this only becomes truer as technology evolves and becomes more pervasive in people’s everyday lives.
Razi Salih has played a pivotal role in several strategic marketing strategies throughout his career and has been involved in many digital advertising and marketing projects. There are several key differences between digital marketing and digital advertising, the most important of which are outlined in the embedded PDF.
When composing a digital marketing plan, there are various different aspects that need to be included in the structure.
SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, identifying each of these as a potential challenge or benefit to the business. Analysing strengths and opportunities places the business in a position to take advantage of these inherent benefits, emphasise strengths, and make the most of each individual opportunity.
Knowing where there are potential weak points or threats from competition or other outside influences facilitates the drawing up of plans that can counteract these negative factors, enabling the business to move forward even in the face of obstacles.
Following a comprehensive SWOT analysis, the business can put plans in place that work towards the strengths of the company or product while dealing with adversity. Benchmarking techniques can also be implemented as a result of the SWOT analysis, which can help identify the best strategies to progress effectively.
Establishing Goals
A comprehensive digital marketing plan will establish from the outset the goals of the company, looking at short-term, medium-term and long-term objectives. Profitability is almost always going to be a priority, but the ways of achieving this will vary from industry to industry.
Goals need to be broken down into a series of achievable objectives, which can be viewed as SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. An example of an objective that does not comply with SMART would be something such as: “I want to make more people visit my website.” This is a valid objective, but it is vague and hard to quantify.
A SMART version of the same objective would be: “Within the first six months, I want to achieve 10,000 visits per month to my website.” This would then be followed with an outline of the steps that will be taken to ensure this happens.
Defining Strategy
Once the objectives of the business have been defined, the next stage is to define the strategy to achieve these objectives. This includes identifying a target demographic, segmenting them and creating a buyer persona based on their expectations, needs, buying preferences and tastes.
A value proposition needs to be created that can be targeted to this audience to demonstrate why they should choose this product over the competition. This also involves identifying the best channels to get this value proposition to reach the right people in the right ways.
The marketing strategy also includes the content strategy, which must involve the publication of fresh, original content that communicates the brand values to the correct demographic.
Measuring Results
The success of any digital marketing plan can only be determined if there are measures in place to quantify the results. These can include using KPIs. An explanation of KPIs can be seen in the short video attachment.
Quantifying the results leads to information that can be used to adjust the marketing plan and generate new ideas as the business evolves.