If you are unaware of what this blog will tell you, don’t worry! In this blog, you will learn about:

• What is a digital marketing plan?
• Why it is important?
• 5 stages of a digital marketing plan

By the end of this blog, you will learn how to develop a digital marketing plan aligning your goals with it. Let’s get started and examine how to create a strategy that helps your company achieve its objectives in the digital era.

Want to thrive in this hyper-connected digital world? Want to enjoy the presence of digital marketing in your business to get better results? It is very important to use digital marketing to build your online brand and attract new leads and customers. You have to be strategic if you want it. 

What is a Digital Marketing Plan?

According to the father of modern marketing Philip Kotler, a traditional marketing plan serves 

“to document how the organization’s strategic objectives will be achieved through specific marketing strategies and tactics, with the customer as the starting point. It is also linked to the plans of other departments within the organization.” 

A digital marketing plan is a document that contains all the strategies and goals of the marketing company. It plays a vital role in the form of a roadmap making your brand message reach the right people, at the right time. A good digital marketing plan contains all the details related to the target audience, competitors’ details, KPIs to track progress and a detailed strategy for every channel. 

According to Hubspot, SEO is actively funded by 64% of marketers highlighting the significance of strategy in digital marketing. You have to keep in mind some of the points while making a digital marketing plan. These are as follows:-

• Short, medium, and long-term goals
• The ways to reach the objectives on a digital scale.
• Which channels to use
• Plans related to development and action
• Budget
• Roadmap

Let’s move forward to learn about the importance of a digital marketing plan.

Why do you need a Digital Marketing plan?

Businesses need to know why they need a digital marketing plan. Here are some points that will clarify your doubts:-

• The plan gives directions: The company that does not follow the digital marketing plan lacks its strategic goals. It becomes difficult to allocate resources for the marketing strategies and to analyze the target completion. So, a proper marketing plan provides direction keeping the business objectives in mind. 
• Enables you to understand the market share: Even if you have a digital marketing degree, you may underestimate the need for your digital services if you don’t have a good plan. Understanding the dynamics of online marketing such as customer profiles, activities performed by different competitors, and the behavior of the consumer requires a strategic approach. Increasing market share and correctly positioning your brand depends on this understanding.
• Understand the Customers: Understanding website visitors is the main step of the digital marketing plan. This includes identifying and strengthening your weaknesses using various online response tools. A comprehensive digital marketing strategy includes these tools to help you better understand the wants and needs of your target audience and win them over as loyal and satisfied customers.
• Avoid Time and Resource: Some departments that take the help of different offices or purchase tools to perform the same task require an integrated plan. This not only saves time and resources but also leads to costly duplication of effort. All these processes are facilitated by a successful digital marketing plan, which promises that assets are used perfectly and tasks are not stretched.

What Are the 5 Stages of Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing has different types of paths that help the business to be successful. As people are aware digital marketing has been rising from a long year ago and now has taken over the whole strategy. Here, we will discuss the 5 stages of digital marketing to make you aware of the lifecycle of marketing campaigns.

1. Setup/Plan

The foundation of digital marketing strategies is the setup or planning phase. It is the time-taking stage. In this stage, the business or marketers examine their goals, objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs). To develop a marketing plan, a piece of information related to channels, budgets, and timelines is required. It offers a roadmap on how you can achieve the desired outcomes by aligning the objectives of the business. When you have to boost sales and increase the awareness of the brand you need to work towards it. After this, the next step is to ask your team some questions. 

You should have answers to these questions while taking the meetings.

• What will be your target audience?
• For whom are you creating content for?
• Which social media platforms will help you in finding your target audience?
• What’s your plan for publishing the content?

2. Implementation/Traction

After the setup or planning phase, let’s move forward with the implementation phase. This is the execution phase where your plans are converted into actions. Launching of the campaigns, content creation, and engaging with the audience across different social media platforms are being executed according to the strategies outlined in the plan. The implementation stage builds a strong bond with your audience by engaging them and knowing about their interests. 

3. Conversion/Expansion

Conversion/Expansion is the third stage of the digital marketing plan. In this stage, you convert the target audience into paying customers. You start with this stage by giving information about the company, and brand, and explaining the values of the brand. After making you engaged with the target audience you have an opportunity to take them to the next step. Upselling, cross-selling and using loyalty programs can help with all of this. In addition to reaching a wider audience by scaling effective strategies, expansion also requires finding new niches to accelerate growth.

4. Interpretation of Client Desire/Adaptation

Through this phase, you will come to know whether your marketing strategy worked well for you or not. If by chance it does not work well don’t be tense look for the gaps and start working on it. But if your marketing campaigns have achieved your goals try to bring more improvement in it rather than just stick to it. 

It completely draws the attention towards the customer’s desires. Doing so can help the company maintain the relevance and loyalty of the customer. Thanks to this continuous cycle of feedback and change, the company is guaranteed to remain customer-focused and adaptable to market changes.

5. Reap Rewards/Adapt/Repeat

This stage is known as the data collection phase. This is because by now you might have collected a lot of data from your customers and your buyers. Now it’s time to allow the data to work further for you. Not only it will help you fill your gaps but also make a campaign about your brand and the buyers. 

How to Develop a Digital Marketing Plan?

To develop a digital marketing plan you must know about the two steps. Firstly, to make your project function you should discuss the professionals who are capable of doing it. Secondly, you must understand that for developing a plan there is no magic formula. Each company has its own way of selling its products. So, a deep understanding of your business is needed before moving forward with it. Let’s discuss some points on how to develop a digital marketing plan.

• SWOT Analysis SWOT analysis is a tool that focuses on strategic planning. Its main objective is to understand all the factors that help in influencing a business from the external to the internal. SWOT is termed as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Strengths and weaknesses come under the internal while opportunities and threats are external. By using the SWOT analysis you can point out the areas that are working good or bad. It is the best possible way to explore the situation of the business.
• Goals Setting
  
  After the SWOT analysis, you will start working on the points your company lacks. By doing so, you can focus on your priority and create the objectives out of it. For example, taking an internal analysis shows that your brand is working on generating leads but has a weakness in converting them into customers. In the same way, something can occur externally that looks for threats and opportunities. You can identify your chance to connect with your target customers on various social media platforms that your brand does not explore. Tracking the strategy KPIs plays an important role just as setting goals.
• Budget Setting
  
  You have to set a budget before starting a business. A less amount of resources are available to use in digital marketing. To gain success the right quantity of funds is needed. Businesses have to set proper marketing strategies and examine which strategy can be used to make them effective. Consider the cost used in different digital marketing channels such as SEO, PPC Campaign, email marketing, etc.
• Define your Buyer Persona
  
  Buyer persona is one of the difficult steps while making a digital marketing plan. They focus on marketers to prepare content that tells about their target audience and about who they are in detail. To prepare it you have to do thorough research about each target audience. The persona must contain the first name, hobbies, needs, etc. of the buyer. When you are aware of the persona details you can easily convert them into loyal customers.
• Measure Results and KPIs
  
  After knowing about your buyer persona, you know about the results you achieved in a short period. But don’t think that your work is complete. In digital marketing new trends keep on arising that can impact the most successful approach. You have to collect data and analyze it. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to examine the strategy. If you keep an eye on the number of clicks on the websites, it will take some time to bring changes and reduce damages.

Conclusion

Are you ready to develop a marketing plan for digital marketing after going through this blog? The digital marketing plan is a very important blog where you will understand the progress of your strategy. This allows you to focus on the right audience and adapt yourself according to the marketing strategy. The key element of this is to make continuous evaluation and adaptation. 

You all know that it is very important to build your brand awareness among all the competitors and reach the right target audience. Reaching the right audience and converting them into paying customers is the main role of marketing. So, want to learn more about digital marketing stay connected with W3era. We offer digital marketing services and online marketing services that will help you achieve your goals.