Digital Marketing Plan – How to Create One Effectively?

Digital Marketing Plan – How to Create One effectively?

This is a million dollar question. As digital marketers, we are aware of the many aspects of digital marketing such as SEO, PPC, Display Ads, Social Media, and Content Marketing etc. Creating a comprehensive digital marketing plan requires different thinking hats.

But how do we integrate all these digital marketing channels and formulate a plan to execute effective digital marketing activities and beget results for the client?

We at CAMS Infotech have created an approach, a simple methodology to create Digital Marketing Strategy and Plan.

Let’s take a look at the same Step by step.

 



 

Stage 1- Creating the Structure

In this stage, we at CAMS Infotech work on 4 aspects

  • Situation Analysis
  • Competitor Analysis
  • Gaining Competitive Advantage
  • Defining Your BVP (Business Value  Proposition)

 

 

 

Situation Analysis

Situation Analysis consists of 4 steps

  1. Where are you now in terms of your digital marketing activities?
  2. How effective have you been so far in your digital marketing efforts?
  3. Analysis of your Current Website- Traffic to your website, from which channels do you receive traffic to the website, what are the top keywords through which you receive traffic, analysis of your social media channels, content marketing efforts etc.
  4. How successful your previous activities have been?

Once we have the answer to the above questions, it will give us a clear picture of your current situation and where do you stand in the digital marketing roadmap.

 

Competitor Analysis

Analyzing your competitors is a crucial step. We need to understand the following factors while doing the competitors analysis

  • Who are your competitors in the digital marketing landscape?
  • What is their SWOT Matrix?
  • Where do they stand in terms of traffic to their website?
  • Where do they stand in terms of their digital marketing efforts?

When we have answers to the above questions, we will be now able to identify the Gaps between you and your competitors to find out your competitive advantage. Consider using ahrefs to understand and analyze your competitors

 

Gaining Competitive Advantage

What is your competitive advantage? How do we find that out?

You don’t get to the number one position by chance. The only way to outdo your competitors is to be different and better than them. To arrive at your competitive advantage we ask the following questions.

  • What activities your competitors do in the digital arena to promote their business?
  • What are their product and service offering and what are yours?
  • What is that you offer which is different or better than your competitors?

When we find answers to the above questions, we will have the competitive advantage of your business in our hands.

 

Defining you BVP (Business Value Proposition)

Your brand or business being identified for a product or service by the niche you are targeting is your business value proposition.

Are you offering the lowest cost in the industry, do you have an innovative product that will solve the real problem that your niche target audience needs a solution to, or are you strong in terms of your distribution network?

If you have something that your target audience wants and need, something that your competitors can’t deliver but you can, that is what your BVP is all about. The next step is to communicate the same on your website and all other marketing channels.


Stage 2- Audience

Audience analysis consists of the following steps. In this stage we do a complete analysis of our audience, create their profile, use content marketing to target, pull them to our digital marketing channels and create a loyal following for your brand. There are 4 steps here:

  • Research on your target customers
  • Building Customer/Buyer Personas
  • Ranking the Audience
  • Hitting the Sweet Spot

 

 

Research on the Target Audience

We start researching on your target audience by asking following questions.

  • What is the age and gender of your target audience
  • Where do they live and work
  • What are the other demographic and psychographic factors
  • What are their interests and family profile
  • What are their needs and which digital marketing channels they use to find solutions to their problems

Once we have answers to the above questions, we will have a clear picture on their profiles. What next? Create Customer/Buyer Personas to have the more in-depth understanding.

 

Building Customer/Buyer Personas

A Buyer Persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on the research and real data of your existing and potential customers. We include their demographic factors, behavior patterns, motivations and goals while creating them.

Depending on the business, product or service you offer you might have to build a 4-5 type of buyer personas.

 

 

 

Ranking Your Audience

The objective here is to know, where to focus and what kind of messages and content needs to be developed for your audience. Now how do we rank them? We consider the following factors while ranking your audience.

The Value they bring to your business: What quantities do they buy, how often do they buy, what is the likely expenditure you can get from them in a total year and so on.

Accessibility: Even if we consider them to be a valuable customer, are they online? How often do they browse or use digital marketing channels?

Why are they online? what are they trying to do online? How do they get there? What channels do they use?

We need to send different messages for the different group of audiences. Sending the same message will not help your business to grow.

Hitting the Sweet Spot

What does it mean to hit the sweet spot? What is it? The sweet spot is nothing but the easiest people to sell to. Not only do they really want what you have, but also they respond very well when you are running an offer or promotion.

These people should make up the most of the audience that you spend most of your time trying to engage, sell and influence online. Focus on the activities that make the most sense to your sweet spot audience.

 


Stage 3- Defining the Activities

In stage 3, all the research and the analysis we did gets into a shape, to device a digital marketing plan which can be executed with full confidence.

In this stage, we follow the following steps to kick start and execute the most exciting and fun part of the whole digital marketing plan. We spend most of our time at this stage.

  • Setting Objectives for Digital Marketing Campaign
  • Choosing the Digital Marketing Channels and Tools
  • Budgeting
  • Developing a Calendar
  • Developing Content
  • Promotions

 

Setting Objectives for the Digital Marketing Campaign

Setting objectives for the Digital marketing campaign gives a structure, defined targets, accountability for ROI and a basis for measurement and analysis. We employ many specific tactics to help your business grow.

At CAMS Infotech, we are not vague about any aspect of your business objectives. We put numbers against them and take commitment. Following are the few types of objectives which we derive at. It can be a single business objective which needs to be achieved or a combination of multiple objectives.

Business Objectives- With business objectives, the focus is on generating a certain number of leads, sales or level of revenue over a period of time.

Audience Objectives- the Focus is on adding new audiences or making an existing one more aware of your product.

Product Objectives- The objective is to launch test products or new products

Brand Objectives– With this objective, the aim is to build brand awareness so that people know who you are

Marketing Objectives– Focusing on building awareness about your brand in different markets.

 

Choosing the Digital Marketing Channels and Tools

The choice of channels is based on the understanding of your audience. Ask, research and find out the answers for the following questions.

  • Which social media channels your customers are using
  • What are the kind of search queries they use to find a solution to their problem
  • What are their interests and what kind of websites do they visit often
  • Do they check their emails on a regular basis

The answer to these questions gives a solid foundation to choose the digital marketing channels to build on and the tools to use.

 

 

Budgeting

There are many different types of costs associated with digital marketing which can be broadly classified into three types

Media Spend: If you want to reach your target audience, you have to spend money on the digital marketing channels and tools which are selected to promote the content. The costs vary from channel to channel and also it depends upon the target you wanted to achieve.

Digital Media: The text, visuals, and graphics are going to make up the content for your digital marketing channels. There is a cost involved in developing them.

People Costs: The amount you are going to invest in internal and external staff for your digital marketing efforts

 

 

Developing a Calendar

We develop calendars to map your digital marketing campaigns on a weekly-monthly basis. Whether it is developing a content calendar for the social media channel, blog or website, be precise and plan well.

Certain channels will have a beginning and end date, but some channels might need a continuous improvement and will be on an ongoing basis.

 

 

 

 

Developing Content

Content is what will tie all your digital marketing efforts together and give direction to sail forward. Be it developing the content calendar for social media channels or for blogs and websites, we plan it ahead to develop and promote it.

Developing an effective content marketing strategy to reach out to your target audience and pull them back to your digital marketing channels is the key.

 

 

 

Promotions

Now comes the game-changing aspect of digital marketing. Developing a content, publishing it and waiting for the miracle to happen is an obsolete approach. We need to promote it to reach out to your target audience to educate them, solve their problems, and generate leads and sales.

The Ad tools available in social media channels and other digital marketing channels allows us to reach out to your target audience in the defined target market.

 


Stage 4- Analysis

Now comes the stage to measure the results. We have done everything and now it is time to reap the benefit of our efforts and optimize the same, improve it and get the maximum out of it.

There are three steps in this stage

  • Measuring the results
  • Calculating the ROI
  • Iterating, Tweaking and Improving it.

We focus on Google Analytics and the respective analytics tools of other digital marketing channels to measure the results, calculate the ROI and improve upon it by tweaking and iterating it.

 

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