4 Steps to build the right digital marketing plan
Step one: Analyse your business and marketing
First, stop, search and analyse. You need to analyse the extern of you rbusiness and the intern too. You should question about your product: What are you going to sell? What are the most important features of you product/service? What customer’s needs do you have to answer? What distingues your business from the others? Besides this, you should also define your target audience.
After you analyse your product and everything you need to offer, it’s important that you realize how your market is working. In this step, you need to know more about your competitors, how are they making their statement online, which digital channels they use, how they present their product to the audience, the prices they offer, and so on.
One of the most used analysis in Digital Marketing is the SWOT Analysis - A very useful tool to predict and evaluate scenarios.
Another suggestions is to fill de Canvas Model, an exercise that allows you to identify every strategic aspect related with your business.
Step two: Establish goals
Knowing your results from your intern and extern analyse, you should define goals. Ask yourself of what you really want to get with your digital presence. The goals should be measurable and quantifiable and you should set a timeframe for its final, like:
• Increase online sales in 30% until the end of the year;
• Doble the leads number in 12 mounths;
The use of SMART goals techinique is a great tool to help you setting your goals.
Step three: Identify the comunication channels you are going to use
Now, you should ask yourself how you are going to reach your public. You have to definy and organise your advertisement strategies. It doesn’t exist an exact and right recipe equal to all the business, because a strategy that may result with one company may not be proper to another. Anyway, your digital marketing plan should correspond to your target and to your product/service. The choosen strategy could include all the social media platforms or just one, it could include public relations actions or not. Choose channels where your potential clients are and bet on them.Step four: Team and budget
Who will be responsible to your digital communication plan? The digital strategy includes many areas of expertise and it’s necessary human ressources that are dedicated 100% to each one of them.
So, it’s evident that this implies budget. Investing in e-commerce and in a digital marketing plan requires a finantial plan. Online presence, digital advertisment, online marketing management and all of this implies costs. However, you should be aware that when you give up on insvesting in marketing, your business kind of disappear. Companies should contain on their annual budgets, the investments needed to their digital marketing strategy.
