The traditional marketing revolves around 4 Ps – product, price, place, and promotion.
This marketing mix helps marketers choose a product with a unique selling point, set a selling price, determine the distribution areas, and create marketing campaigns that will sell the products.
But in the 21st century, we’re moving past the conventional ways.
People are spending more time online, and that’s where businesses should showcase themselves through digital marketing.
Digital marketing has its own 4 Ps for success – process, people, platform, and performance.
The 4 Ps of digital marketing can help you:
- Define the processes to market your product or service.
- Understand the demographics, behaviors, preferences, and needs of the target audience.
- Determine the platforms you’re going to market your products on.
- Evaluate the performance of the marketing campaigns.
Do you see the difference? The 4 Ps of digital marketing creates a customer-centric approach, unlike the traditional marketing mix, which focuses on the product itself.
So, if you want to grow your business in today’s world, you need to keep up with the technology and trends by creating a digital marketing strategy that provides a personalized experience to your customers.
Let’s discuss how to create an effective digital marketing plan to get you the leads your business needs.
9 Steps to Develop an Effective Digital Marketing Plan
1. Define Your Brand
The first step to creating a digital marketing strategy is to know the ins and outs of your brand so you can sell it to your audience.
What makes your business unique? What makes it different than your competitors?
It’s very important to clearly define the unique selling point (USP) of your product or service because it will convince your audience to choose you over your competitors.
Aside from the USPs, you also need to define your brand’s mission. It’s what motivates you to run a business and why you do what you do.
For example, Walmart’s mission statement is ‘save people money so they can live better.’ They provide low prices on everyday products because they aim to make people’s lives easier. This mission statement also acts as a USP and allows customers to shop from Walmart rather than anywhere else.
So, figure out what makes your brand unique and design your strategy around it to make your business successful.
1. Set Marketing Goals and Budget
Setting a goal before creating a marketing strategy will save you time and mistakes.
When you have a goal that you want to achieve, you can create a plan that leads up to it. Break that plan into actionable tasks and activities, and you’ll be on your way to getting the most out of your strategy.
A framework called SMART goals can help you set achievable goals for your brand. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
For instance, ‘we want more customers’ is vague and hard to measure. Instead, if your goal is to get 500 new leads in 60 days, that’s more specific, measurable, and attainable.
Another thing to clarify at the start of your strategy is your budget. You don’t want to waste your money on non-performing campaigns.
Set a realistic budget and allocate it to different campaigns like SEO budget, Facebook ads budget, influencer marketing, email marketing, etc.
Monitor the results closely and adjust the budget accordingly.
1. Create a Buyer’s Persona
You can’t sell your products or services to everyone. You have to target specific people from the entire population and sell your products to them.
But who are these people? They are your target audience or potential buyers.
To create an effective digital marketing plan, you must know who you are selling to, which is why you need to create a buyer’s persona.
A buyer’s persona is the fictional personality of your ideal customer or the person who is most likely to buy from you.
To create an accurate buyer’s persona, you need to know the following information about your target audience:
- Location
- Age
- Income
- Job title
- Hobbies and interests
- Goals
Having a buyer’s persona can help you create effective marketing campaigns. For example, when running a Facebook ad, you can choose the demographics and preferences relevant to your targeted audience, which helps you get the best results possible.
2. Conduct a Competitor’s Analysis
The great thing about digital marketing is that it is easy to see what your competitors are doing online.
To understand the market better, you need to know who you’re competing against so you can create a strategy that will outperform them.
Here are some things that you need to look at while comparing:
- Target audience
- Strength and weaknesses
- Marketing strategy
- Tone of the brand
- Market position
When you analyze what your competitors are doing online, you can better understand what you need to do to succeed.
Do a SWOT Analysis
It’s not just your competitors that you have to analyze. You need to assess your brand, too.
SWOT analysis is a technique that can help you take a deeper look into your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Once you have the full picture of your business, you can create successful marketing campaigns by highlighting your strengths and taking full advantage of the opportunities in the market.
1. Choose Your Marketing Channels
Once you’ve studied the market and your target audience, you can figure out which marketing channels you should focus on to get the most leads.
Some channels that can help you achieve your goals and reach your target audience include:
- Social Media Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising
- Influencer Marketing
Choosing the right marketing channels also depends on your goals.
For example, if your goal is to raise awareness and engagement for your brand, it’s best to use social media marketing. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook have billions of users you can reach and spread the word about your brand.
2. Convert Your Strategies into Actionable Tasks
Now that you know which marketing channels to use, it’s time to plan the activities needed to have a successful digital marketing strategy.
Take social media marketing campaigns, for example. What tasks would you need to do to launch a successful social media marketing campaign?
- Create a unique brand tone and design style
- Optimize your social media profiles
- Conduct keyword research
- Make a list of relevant hashtags to use
Similarly, for other strategies like SEO campaigns, your to-do list will include a different set of tasks. It’s important to break down your strategies into tasks, so you know you’re going in the right direction.
1. Create a Marketing Calendar
After creating the strategies and campaigns, it’s time to execute them.
Since you can’t publish all of your marketing material at once, you can use a marketing calendar to organize, plan, and schedule it over a period of time.
Marketing calendars should include the following details:
- Project name
- Start and end dates for the campaign
- The visuals and graphics
- Relevant content
- Goal for the campaign
- The platform for which the post is designed
You should plan your marketing material a month ahead so your campaigns can stay current. But since your business and marketing strategy can change, don’t plan too far in advance.
2. Set Key Performance Indicators to Monitor Your Campaigns
A digital marketing plan is incomplete without a monitoring strategy.
You can start executing your campaigns, but if you don’t have key performance indicators (KPIs) set in place, how will you know if they are working or not?
For social media marketing, your KPI could be getting 200 more followers in the next month. So, you run a campaign, and if you actually get 200 followers by the end of it, that means your campaign was successful. If not, then it’s time to enhance your strategy and try something else.
Conclusion
A strong online presence plays a significant role in the success of a brand.
Nowadays, people look online for everything, including any products or services they require. If you have a good digital marketing strategy, your target audience can see your brand online prominently.
The key to creating an effective digital marketing plan is to do proper research beforehand. Analyze your brand, competitors, market, and target audience to create campaigns and strategies with the strongest impact.
Remember, a digital marketing strategy is not about promoting a product or service, it’s about building a connection with your audience and delivering value to them.
If you want to build an online presence for your brand but don’t know where to start, contact us at Design Genious. Our creative experts can create unique digital marketing strategies that will kick-start your business the right way.
Let’s get your brand out to the world today.
