What Areas should you Cover in your Digital Marketing Plan?

The importance of a digital marketing plan, for a business, cannot be overstated. And as Sir Winston Churchill once said, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.” Several activities or areas should be included in a digital marketing plan. Read on to find out what these are.

Digital Marketing Plan Steps

Start at the beginning

The first area you should cover is “Where is the business now?” This usually means that a situation analysis and SWOT analysis must be done. You need to know if your clients are measuring the results correctly and which channels are the most effective. To get the results you need with a digital marketing plan, you need to know what needs to be done, if you’re reaching the right audience, what the threats and opportunities are, and what your competitors are doing.

Plan to reach the stars and your audience

Next up, you need to cover where the business wants to be or, in other words, what your business goals are. Also, you need to plan which tools you are going to use to reach the your acquisition or retention goals.

It’s always a good idea to break the leads and sales goals down according to the different channels your clients are on. One of the keys to this is understanding the buy persona and their buying cycles.  Simply put, a customer buying cycle is the journey that a customer takes in his/her decision to buy your product or service. For more information, read our article.

A digital marketing plan isn’t that different from a marketing plan

A marketing plan details the activities that you will need to take in order to fulfil the marketing objectives for your company. Your digital marketing plan doesn’t reinvent the wheel. All it needs to do is to help you plan the activities you are planning in order to achieve your digital marketing goals.

Just because your marketing activities reside predominantly in the digital space doesn’t mean that you can ignore traditional, tried-and-tested marketing theories and practices. For example, one of the fundamental principles of marketing is the ‘4Ps’ of the marketing mix. This stands for:

• Price,
• Product,
• Place, and
• Promotion

In other words, in order to develop the best marketing plan for your product and/or service, you need to ensure that:

• It’s priced at a level that your target market is willing to pay,
• The product and/or service is something that your target market wants,
• You market it in a place that your target market frequents so that they will see your promotions, and
• The promotions appeal to your target market.

The 4Ps need to be an integral part of any digital marketing plan.

Strategy is key

Besides acting on goals, the digital marketing strategy is one of the most important areas a digital marketing plan should cover. The “how” of the plan is what brings it all together. It covers positioning, how clients will achieve leads and sales targets, which channels the clients should invest in and which communication strategies they should use. It is important to strengthen the brand, have a strong SEO strategy and define your distribution channels.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Become an expert in digital marketing with DSM’s Digital Marketing Course. After completing this course, that will earn you 60 CPD points with the South African Board of People Practitioners (SABBP) you will be an SEO master, social media marketing guru and digital marketer extraordinaire. If you are ready to learn digital marketing and propel yourself in the fastest-growing career of the century, then this course is just for you!