Does your business have a digital marketing plan?

Many businesses have adopted digital marketing as an approach to be relevant in today’s global context. However, most of them lack a proper digital marketing plan in their marketing strategy. A good digital marketing plan requires the right digital channels, dedicated platforms and a successful website that is responsive to a wide array of devices. Your business’s online success depends on creating and implementing a plan that leads to higher sales, new customers, and long-term growth.

Here are 5 steps to help you create a successful digital marketing plan:

Review your current digital marketing plan

Digital marketing is evolving and constantly changing with the development of new trends and technologies. You need to review your current digital marketing plan before creating a new one. What worked or didn’t work in the past will give you insight into your business to formulate a successful digital marketing plan.

You need to ask the following question to find online presences you currently have:

• What is your unique selling point? What makes you stand out from others?
• What digital channels are you using actively right now?
• What is your content strategy?
• Which social media are you using to grow your business?
• Do you have a successful website that is responsive to a wide array of devices?
• What are your past mistakes and what can you learn from your mistakes?
• What are the key performance indicators (KPI) you are using to measure your performance?

This gives you a proper insight of where you are, what is lacking and what needs to be done as part of a successful digital marketing plan.

Begin with an end goal in mind

The first step is to clearly define your goals. Understanding your end goal can help you make the right decision at the right time for your digital marketing plan. Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. (SMART goals).

These goals may be to increase sales, grow your email marketing list or increase awareness of business and brand, depending on the current marketing needs of your business. For example: If your goal is to increase online sales, driving more traffic to your website can help. There are many ways to grow traffic, from paid advertising to content marketing.

Decide who your best customers are and target them with the right offer

Customers are the key to success in any business. You need to know who your customers are and target them with the right content. If you know your ideal audience, you’ll be able to execute an actionable digital marketing plan that will yield the best possible results. You can segment a large group of people into your target audience based on demographics (age, marital status, income), users behavior, psychology, geography and company-specific information.

The ideal way to understand your customer is by creating a buyer persona. Buyer personas are fictional representations of people that represent your target audience. You need to understand their ideal customers’ background, their goals, and challenges, their pain points in order to attract, sell and delight different types of personas.

Choose right marketing channel and digital platform

You need to choose the right channel that suits your business for an effective digital marketing plan. This might include various marketing channels such as Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, Content marketing, Pay per click advertising and Social media marketing.

Plus, various digital platforms include Google, Facebook, Hubspot, Mailchimp etc.  They also offer the opportunity to gain a deep understanding of the features available that can be utilized for each digital marketing plan and campaign.

Stand out from the competition

In order to stand out from your competition, you need to figure out how to use a marketing channel by studying your competitors. You need to understand the competition in order to come up with a good digital marketing plan.

When starting a competitor analysis, you can use  search engines that offer the most immediate answers:

• who appears in the top results on search engines for your product or service
• which keywords appear on their website, that is, what words are they using in the page titles on their website, and
• what messaging they use on their social media.

You can use Buzzsumo to assess the success of content that is achieving lots of shares for a given keyword. You can use Google analytics to measure tracks and reports of website traffic.

Get Help

The foundation of nearly every successful media marketing plan comes down to a well-conceived digital marketing plan. Planning is time-consuming and not every assumption you make is going to be correct. So, getting outside help can accelerate the process.

Our team of digital marketing and branding experts at Lone Tree Nepal help your companies create digital experiences, reach and connect with more customers, and grow your business online. Contact us today for digital marketing consultation and how to get started.