Step by Step Guide to Develop an Effective Digital Marketing Plan
Digital Marketers are conditioned to view marketing as routine SEO, paid ads, and content marketing activities. To least disappoint them, marketing alone will not build a massive company or brand online.
What they miss out on is the power of building a brand through effective digital marketing service strategies. For instance, for every person typing “download web browsers” into Google, 5 people type in “download Chrome”.
This blog is designed to analyze, establish, create, measure your digital marketing strategy and plan your digital marketing budget.
How to Analyze the Online Presence of Your Business?
When it comes to digital market planning, analyze the online presence of your organization that may help you identify the following:
Target Customers: Analysis allows you to understand your target audience and their specific needs. You need to know the buying behavior of your target customers, where your customers are located when your customers purchase your products or services, and what type of marketing materials influence more.
Website: Analysing the website frequently will help you know the current positioning of your website on the digital platform, user experience, social media presence, content update, and so on.
Competition: Understanding your competitors and their marketing techniques is vital in business. Look at the way your competitors market their products and services to their customers, how they are pricing and distributing a particular product or service, and how they use digital platforms to maintain their online presence.
How to Establish Digital Marketing Goals and Objectives?
Establishing the right goals and objectives while developing an effective digital marketing plan helps you achieve an unbeatable position in the market. Here is an acronym framework that can be useful for setting your goals and objectives: S.M.A.R.T.
- It has to be Specific: The objectives of your business should be clear to everyone. More often, medium-scale companies that have in-house digital marketing teams to save on outsourcing budgets, tend to be over-centralized. This hampers efficiency and content marketing in a big way. Well-defined and focused objectives help you improve your business in all ways.
- It needs to be Measurable: You should have proper digital marketing tools to measure and track the performance of your business.
There are a lot of metrics to be measured including SEO, lead tracking, managing content marketing, and more. We have listed the important KPIs to be measured and a few collaboration tools towards the end of this blog for your reference. - It should be Achievable: The objectives should be achievable while using the available resources within a time frame.
Most marketers tend to focus on ROI. For every dollar they spend, they look to gain 2 or even 3 in return. However, we would advise you to look at things differently. Focus on building a brand and a reputation. And if you become a leader within your niche, eventually the numbers will work out, but of course, it is a gamble. - It must be Relevant: You must set a business objective that should be relevant and closely related.
For instance, here’s a relevant branding strategy by India’s oldest ink-maker that started amidst the freedom struggle movement. They are branding their ink shades that have been chosen deliberately to create consciousness about sustainability: black for carbon footprint, red for global warming, blue for clean energy, and green for sustainability. It is a journey from darkness to light, from good to bad, from subjugation to being ‘swadhin’ (meaning free in Hindi)
- And it has to be Timely: Set a specific time-bound to achieve your business objective. The best option is to set a goal for a fiscal year. You also have to make sure that you achieve goals within the timeframe.
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How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy?
A proactive and data-driven digital marketing strategy is essential to make your business more profitable. While developing an effective digital marketing plan, you need to choose the relevant and most suitable digital marketing strategies and techniques with the help of a digital marketing company to grow your business and revenue.
In the following link, Marcus Mustafa, Global head of user experience, Digitas LBi, shares their insights on building a digital marketing strategy:
Here is a list of top digital marketing strategies to maintain your online presence:
SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a well-defined strategy to identify the relevant keywords related to your products and services, using which you rank higher on search results and attract more traffic.
A cliched study reveals that 30% of people search for Google’s first page, only 10% of people search for the second page. However, it’s not an easy task to be on the first page as competitors always try to get top on search engine pages via PPC or superior SEO strategy.
True that brands cannot really grow using one marketing channel alone.
Marketing will soon be all about “marginal gains.”
From split testing your title tags to get a few ranking improvements to adding checkout bumps to your order page so you can spend a little bit more on your paid ads to using Google Data Studio to better optimize for your lifetime value – it’s all about the little things.
Google’s new search algorithm will now take into consideration page experience, including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines for ranking purposes.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing aims to provide valuable information to the target audience in various forms such as video, blog, infographics, etc. When you use content marketing, you can add target keywords everywhere in your blog posts, infographics, videos.
While creating content for your website, you have to take care that the content should be valuable and informative to your target audience. Otherwise, you cannot make them spend more time on your web pages. A long-term content marketing strategy can impress your target audience as most people prefer websites with more content.
For example, when you create a blog for a beauty salon, you can choose informative topics such as ‘Top 10 home remedies to make your skin glow.’ It may allow you to include target keywords and attract more target audiences to your website. It may also create a feeling like your beauty salon uses natural products that may help you make more profit.
Social Media Marketing
As a significant digital marketing strategy, social media marketing helps you grow your business to the next level. Social media marketing primarily aims to build your brand online through various social media platforms.
About 48% of the total world population will spend time on social media daily for various purposes in 2021. Therefore, 73% of business owners believe in social media marketing to create brand awareness and to connect with more people. An active presence on social media platforms increases your business connections and followers. Being a cost-effective digital marketing strategy, every organization across every industry can launch social media marketing with a ‘zero’ investment.
For example, CLUSE develops its brand online by making thousands of followers on a range of social media platforms, especially on Instagram. The shoppable Instagram feeds of CLUSE attract more potential customers and followers.
That being said, People don’t always “search” for what they are looking for.
Neil Patel narrates his experience of buying shoes online – “When I buy shoes, I typically just go directly to Nike because I am familiar with their brand and their products. I don’t think I have ever even Googled “shoes” in my life. The same goes for ads. I have been shown ads for shoes on Facebook and Google but it’s never driven me to purchase a pair of shoes.”
Now the big question arises, do all those efforts on marketing or SEO go in vain? NO. It helps you build a brand, sometimes leads, which is what causes the majority of purchases.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best strategies to build a valuable relationship with customers. If you have regular contact with customers, there is an increasing chance to choose your products or services. Here is a list of the top 5 free email marketing tools:
Modern Marketers have identified that everyone else is using the same exact personalization strategies, and consumers are getting wise.
Our in-house marketers suggest brands to dial back the fake personalization efforts and focus on depersonalized marketing. For example, they need to stop using names in an email. It will pave way for more transparency and writing like a real, live person.
For example, home appliances are meant to be replaced after a certain time period. Here is where Bosch Home Appliances Team- India is doing a good job via email marketing.
Figure: Email Marketing Campaign from Bosch Home Appliances India
They are also sending a thank you email also after two to three years of purchase which is a good way to remind their customers about the brand and for any purchase that may follow.
Video Marketing
Most people spend more time watching videos than reading a blog or infographics. Therefore, develop informative and attractive videos to engage more people with your brand. You can create a variety of videos such as company events, instructional videos, launching of new products or services, and so on.
Today, 72.63% of businesses use video marketing to build brand awareness and increase conversion rates. The content with videos is more likely to rank higher on search engine pages than the content without videos. About 90% of people purchase products and services after streaming several videos related to that specific product.
For example, Volvo’s ‘Human Made Stories,’ a short film series, also known as ‘Nemo’s Garden’ and ‘Music of the Mind,’ is capable enough to attract their target audience and convert them as potential buyers.
Voice Marketing
Experimenting and investing with voice marketing may provide a better digital marketing experience.
Nowadays, around 50% of adults use voice assistants and expect an increase in the future. Voice SEO can be an ideal digital marketing strategy for your business in the future. To position your business in a competitive world of technological advancements, you should develop a voice marketing plan and get ready to invest in voice assistants. Here is a great solution for capitalizing on voice search traffic – Jetson.ai. It is a great tool which integrates and learns from each customer and customize the interactions.
For example, KFC uses a voice-enabled chatbot to take orders and explain menus and promotions. Through vice marketing, KFC aims to provide faster service and learn more about customers’ favorite items. It also helps them to set limited-time discount offers.
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How to Measure Results of Your Digital Marketing Strategy?
Digital marketing planning cannot be completed without having a proper strategy to measure its results. To monitor the results of your digital marketing tactics, you can use Key Performance Indicators or KPIs that allow you to understand whether your digital marketing strategies help you achieve your business goals. It also provides you with an opportunity to reallocate your budget to performance-driven strategies for better results.
Here is a list of marketing KPIs that you should measure:
- Leads
- Social media reach
- Website traffic
- Landing page conversions
- Visits to blog posts
- Organic traffic
- Lifetime customer value
What are the Best Collaboration Tools for Digital Marketing?
The coordination and analysis of digital marketing are stressful as well as time-consuming processes. However, the use of collaboration tools helps you focus on building a brand rather than creating an end-of-month report. Following are leading collaboration tools to analyze your digital marketing:
1. PromoPrep: Being a wonderful marketing calendar, PromoPrep allows you to plan, organize, and track digital marketing activities. It also enables you to share and communicate marketing reports with your digital marketing team of all sizes. PromoPrep reduces the risk of maintaining spreadsheets of digital marketing planning.
2. Cyfe: As one of the best digital marketing collaboration tools, Cyfe helps you collaborate sales reports with all your digital marketing activities such as social media activities, SEO, and other digital marketing activities. Another significant feature of Cyfe is that it can integrate with Google Analytics and AdWords.
3. Kissmetrics: Although Kissmetric is the most expensive collaboration tool, it has the potential to automate all your digital marketing strategies and processes. Kissmetrics helps you understand customer behavior and launch social media and email marketing campaigns accordingly to gain more potential leads.
4. SeMrush: SeMrush is another significant digital marketing collaboration tool that provides detailed information on social media reach, user engagement, search engine rankings, and so on. If you want to spy on your competitors, SeMrush is the best collaboration tool.
There are many new and powerful entrants in the market. Say, Amplitude or Google Data Studio scores an edge over Google Analytics in offering better business analytics.
How to Effectively Plan Your Digital Marketing Budget?
Having a well-structured and planned budget for your digital marketing strategy is essential to achieve your marketing goals.
“When you think about investing in digital marketing, think of it not as an expense but as an investment.”
Before breaking down your marketing budget on various marketing strategies, you should have a clear understanding of the following:
- What are your company’s current operational costs?
- How much can you spend on digital marketing?
- How can you set a digital marketing goal suitable for your budget?
- How digital marketing becomes your company’s key element of growth?
- What ROI can attribute to each digital marketing strategy?
Every organization has its own digital marketing approach based on its goals and objectives, target audience, business costs, and revenue. Once you understand your company’s position, you can effectively plan a digital marketing budget with a vision for business growth.
Why Should You Consider Outsourcing Digital Marketing?
The concept of outsourcing has become widely accepted among every industry ranging from the automobile industry to the real estate industry. Outsourcing may reduce the workload of internal employees as it helps them to concentrate on other productive areas. When you decide to outsource digital marketing to a third party having years of expertise in digital marketing, they can provide better results with their knowledge and competency in that particular area. Following are some of the reasons to consider outsourcing digital marketing :
- Cost-effectiveness
- Access to skilled digital marketers worldwide
- Access to the latest marketing strategies
- Reach your target audience outside your niche
- Improved internal team efficiency
Here’s another interesting read on the difference between a full-service and niche-focused digital agency. Partnering with like-minded digital marketing agencies will open up newer avenues to build a successful marketing strategy.
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Wrapping Up
Having a digital marketing strategy will help you understand your target audience, buyer personas, and competitors. Digital marketing is proven to be cost-effective when compared to traditional marketing. Digital marketing also facilitates you to track the real-time progress of your marketing strategies and evaluate what tactics work more. It helps you to restructure your digital marketing plan to adopt more effective ways to achieve your business goals. Further, outsourcing digital marketing is made efficient with numerous professional agencies and their experience in remote work culture.
In today’s changing scenario, digital marketing is also more about building a brand rather than lead conversions. Here the top strategies to pay attention to are automation, depersonalization, and alternative communication channels like chatbots. The way we use the internet is changing – so is the way we market.
We hope that we were successful in enriching your knowledge base on digital marketing. If you liked this blog, show us your appreciation by commenting down below. You may also connect with us for any business queries on +91-944-278-9110 or write to us by clicking here.
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thanks for this information.