Digital Orientation

Here in this post we will explain how a Digital Marketing Plan is structured.

The plan shows the details of the entire planning of your digital marketing campaigns or actions.

It is detailed in short, medium and long term business goals with strategies to achieve the objectives at the digital level. Organizing the channels you will use as well as the action and development plans. And finally the investment and budget available for this. Calm down, you will need to invest, but it doesn't have to be a lot at the beginning!

Let's start with the basics! Some steps will always be necessary in the process towards the customer and this way they will fall in love with your product or service!

We will need to:

Attract;

Convince;

Convert;

Delight;

Step by Step Structure of the Digital Marketing Plan

Step 1 - Company Analysis

The first thing to do when developing your digital marketing plan is to perform an internal and external analysis (SWOT analysis) of the company. A useful framework for this is the SWOT analysis which allows you to look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and weaknesses of your company and the market in general.

We need to be familiar with the ecosystem in which we operate, what our customers' needs are, and where they are addressed. This analysis is as qualitative as it is quantitative by looking at factors such as digital habits, intermediaries, influencers, and more.

The implementation of benchmarking techniques that aim to identify digital best practices and success stories and apply them to the business is an increasingly prominent part of the company's overall strategy.

We also need to conduct an internal study to find out how our company is doing in the digital age: is our website customer-oriented? How is the usability and navigation experience? Do we periodically update our blog? What is the current positioning of our website? And what is our social media presence?

Step 2 - Set Digital Marketing Objectives

Once you have your place in the market and your strengths in mind, work on setting some goals to get a clear idea of where your actions should take you. Everything you plan needs to be worked towards achieving these goals.

You can work on developing this part of your digital marketing plan with the framework of planned objectives in mind: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely objectives.

For example:
- Unplanned goal: "I want to increase the number of visits to my website."
- Planned goal: "I want to reach 20,000 visits per month to my website every month within three months. To do this, I will do X, Y and Z".

Step 3 - Define the Marketing Strategy

Once you have defined your business goals, what are you going to do to achieve them? Personalization becomes increasingly important in digital marketing. So when it comes to defining your strategy to accomplish your plan, keep these factors in mind:

Segment your Target Audience:
Know who you want to approach, what their tastes, needs or preferences are, where you are looking to meet their expectations, etc. This is the time to create your buyer persona.

Positioning:
To achieve proper positioning, it is crucial that you are very clear (and reach your audience in the same way) about what your value proposition is and what it entails. In short, this is why the consumer should choose you and not the competition. You have to know how you are going to communicate your unique value proposition and how you are going to do it properly in the channels where your audience is present (social media, blogs, email marketing, etc.).

Content Strategy:
This is important to create, distribute and manage original content that will attract users and position the brand as a benchmark at the top of users' minds. In addition, a specific communication plan (content marketing) must also be outlined for each channel. Some of the tools we use to execute this strategy are:

Keyword Research:
This involves identifying appropriate keywords to use correctly in our content in order to organically improve our SEO positioning. This is imperative for every content strategy if you want users to find you in search engines.

Content Planning:
A content planning is critical to ensure that your strategy makes sense. It provides value; it allows you to think long term and optimize your resources, help create ideas and more. In a content planning, it is interesting to include the publication date, author, topic, keyword and the Tags to use/take into consideration.

Social Media Publishing:
Writing an article and not promoting it on social media is a mistake. It is not spamming but planning what you will publish and when on each social media platform with the most appropriate copy for each, all while having the ideal number of characters, links, hashtags, and more.

Tip ---> Think about the profile of your audience; which topics you will talk about; what tone you will use and how often to make the publications.

4th Step - Digital Strategies and Tactics

Based on our objectives (attraction, conversion and loyalty), we will start to carry out different strategies: email marketing campaigns, social media, CRM, web optimization, SEO strategies, paid advertising on social networks and etc...

Nowadays, considering that the number of channels to manage is multiplying and the amount of information we get about our customers is increasing. Therefore it is essential that we use automation tools in Marketing that allow you to automate marketing campaigns.

Thanks to these tactics, you can create workflows that will allow you to create hundreds of campaigns with just a few clicks. You will be able to customize messages based on your buyer persona, increasing your chances of success. Not only that, but you will be able to take them, depending on your interactions with the brand, all the way to the point of purchase.

Technology has become a fundamental tool for implementing digital strategies, which makes it critical for you to learn how to make the most of it.

Step 5 - Measuring Results and KPIs

The work doesn't stop there once you have designed and implemented your digital marketing strategy. The next step is one of the most important! The analysis of results that has become a critical pillar to successfully optimize digital marketing performance and spending.

We have to measure each action using KPIs to figure out if we got the ROI (return on investment) we expected. Measuring the effectiveness of the strategies and activities we implement in our digital marketing will help correct what is not working to achieve the goals we have set.

Make sure you have an effective real-time data visualization system. The digital world evolves quickly, so you need to be constantly on the lookout to identify opportunities and room for improvement in an instant.

Keep these steps in mind when creating your digital marketing plan and leave nothing to chance, that is your biggest enemy if you are looking to position yourself and boost your presence in the digital space.

Likewise, keep in mind that technology can become your greatest ally in creating personalized, automated, and lastly an analytics, successful marketing campaigns. As the task becomes complicated, new tools allow you to simplify your work and boost your performance.