As a small business owner, you know the importance of planning for success. But let’s face it, merely dreaming big won’t make your business goals a reality. What you need is a foolproof method that will empower you to not only dream big but also achieve remarkable things. You need a digital marketing plan!

The beginning of the year (and mid-year) are the two most common times when businesses make plans. But really, there’s no better time than right now!

Digital Marketing Plan

A digital marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines the goals, objectives, and tactics for implementing effective digital marketing strategies to promote your business, products and/or services online.

A well-crafted digital marketing plan provides you with a structured approach to leverage the power of digital channels, engage with your target audience, and achieve your marketing goals effectively. It provides you with a roadmap to navigate the digital landscape and achieve your marketing objectives, serving as a guide for decision-making, resource allocation, and tracking progress throughout the year.

A comprehensive digital marketing plan typically includes the following components:

1. Goals and Objectives

Clearly defined goals and objectives that align with your overall business objectives. These could include increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, boosting online sales, and/or improving customer engagement.

2. Target Audience

Identifying and understanding the target audience is crucial for effective digital marketing. This involves conducting market research, creating buyer personas, and defining the demographics, interests, and behaviours of your target audience.

3. Competitive Analysis

Analysing competitors and their digital marketing strategies helps identify opportunities and differentiate your business from your competitors. It involves assessing their online presence, messaging, content strategies, and social media activities for opportunities.

4. Digital Channels and Tactics

It’s important to determine the most relevant digital channels and tactics to reach the target audience. This includes your websites, SEO, social media platforms, email marketing, content marketing, paid advertising, influencer marketing, and more.

5. Content Strategy

Developing a content strategy that aligns with your target audience’s needs and preferences. This includes creating valuable and engaging content in various formats, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, and social media posts. And don’t forget the ever important User Generated Content.

6. Implementation Plan

Defining the specific actions, tasks, and timelines for executing your digital marketing strategies. This includes assigning responsibilities, setting deadlines, and allocating appropriate resources to ensure effective implementation (in most cases, this should’nt be the most junior member of your team).

7. Budget and Resources

Determining the budget required to implement your digital marketing plan and allocating resources accordingly. This includes considering costs for advertising, content creation, software tools, hiring external agencies, and internal team members, both in terms of their time and investing in their continual learning.

8. Measurement and Analytics

Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your digital marketing efforts. This involves tracking metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, social media engagement, email click through rates, and ROI. Regular analysis of these metrics helps in evaluating the effectiveness of the strategies and making data-driven decisions.

9. Review and Optimisation

Continuously reviewing and optimising your digital marketing plan based on your results and current digital marketing trends. This allows your business to adapt to changing circumstances, identify new opportunities, and improve your overall digital marketing efforts.

Define Your Digital Marketing Goals

Every business is unique, and so too are its goals. Whether it’s expanding your number of email subscribers, optimising website conversions, or boosting online store revenue, it’s crucial to identify the specific goals that will drive your success. By setting clear objectives, you can pave the path to success. 

Break It Down and Prioritise

You’ve set your goals—now it’s time to create a roadmap to success. Break down your goals into actionable projects. Which projects will have the most significant impact on your business? Determine the order in which they need to be completed to ensure maximum efficiency. Remember, clarity is the key to progress.

Unleash the Power of Tasks

Every project is composed of smaller steps and tasks. By deconstructing your projects, you gain a clear understanding of what needs to be done. Identify the tasks within each project and assign them to the appropriate individuals or teams. Breaking it down makes it more manageable and increases the likelihood of success. 

By breaking projects down into tasks, it also allows you to determine the order in which they need to be completed. For example, if you have a new product to launch on your website – there’s not much point working up social media content and email sequences that you intent to entice prospects to visit your sales page if you don’t yet have a high converting sales page. Figure out where your internal dependencies are and what needs to happen first.

Top tip: Sticky notes can really help with working this out. Then once you’ve moved everything into order, transfer it into a project management tool like Asana. 

Time is of the Essence

To achieve your goals, it’s essential to allocate your time, staff, and resources effectively. Estimate how long each task and project will take, providing a realistic timeline for completion. Proper time management ensures that you stay on track and meet your deadlines. 

Knowledge is Power

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, there might be areas where you lack expertise. Identify your knowledge gaps and determine what skills you need to acquire or learn. Allow time and resources for training and upskilling. Remember, investing in knowledge is an investment in success.

The Click Engage Convert Academy teaches best-practice digital marketing strategies, tactics and tools to small businesses. Our supportive team of experts provide training, mentoring and guidance to improve how our members market their businesses online so they can increase their profitability.

Strength in Numbers

Teamwork makes the dream work. Most significant projects benefit from collaboration and support. Assess what kind of assistance you’ll require, whether it’s from your staff, a digital marketing coach, or outsourcing to digital marketing experts.

It’s important that you delegate tasks that can be done faster and better by others, enabling you to focus on your zone of genius and where you can make the biggest impact with your expertise. A lot of the time, this also increases the chances of the work getting done, especially if you already have enough on your plate. 

Equip Yourself for Victory

Every task requires the right tools. Identify the necessary resources, platforms, and technologies needed to accomplish your goals. From customer relationship management (CRM) systems to website building tools, ensure you have everything in place to avoid bottlenecks and maximise productivity. 

Here’s the digital marketing tools we love. 

Budget for Success

Implementing your goals will most likely involve costs. You can’t expect to generate the equivalent brand awareness as Coca-Cola in your industry, without investing in your marketing. Similarly, if you expect to generate most of your leads from Facebook or Instagram, then for most businesses these days, that will require a budget for Facebook Ads. 

Evaluate the financial resources required for tools, hiring staff, or acquiring necessary resources. Working out how much it will cost to implement your goals can assist in clarifying your priorities. Focusing on quick wins and revenue-generating activities can be a great way to access funds quickly that can be reinvested in your marketing efforts. 

If you’re not sure whether or not you should be putting budget aside for your digital marketing, then take a look at this blog post on Why you should invest money in your digital marketing, rather than spending more of your precious time.

Transforming Plans into Action

Once you’ve determined your budget, tools, support, and timelines, you’ll start to get a more realistic idea of what needs to be done and when.

However, this may also lead to some hard truths that you won’t be able to achieve everything you want with the resources you have. If this is the case, that’s Ok. Sometimes, “Perfect is the enemy of “done!” – so work out what you can actually do within your timeframes and start there. 

It’s ok to set more realistic short-term goals and push out the timeframes of your ultimate goals. The most important thing is that you get started started, taking steps towards your ultimate goals (no matter how small those first steps may be). 

Starting small doesn’t mean compromising on quality. It means leveraging your current resources, timeframes, and budget to create a solid foundation. Progressively improve and refine as you move forward.

Schedule for Success

The old adage “what gets scheduled gets done” rings true, emphasising the importance of committing to when things will get done.

Block out time for your tasks and projects based on your best estimates and schedule them into your calendar. But also, make sure you leave a buffer to embrace any surprises and uncertainties that always seem to arise when it comes to digital marketing. 

Set yourself a month-by-month plan, prioritising projects in a logical order to turn your dreams into tangible reality. Commit to yourself and set challenging, but still achievable, deadlines that will drive you towards your goals and ultimate digital marketing success for your business.

Planning for Digital Marketing Success

Imagine the opportunities that await your business when you make the strategic decision to invest in your digital marketing efforts. Picture the exponential growth, the amplified brand presence, and the influx of new customers eagerly engaging with your products and/or services.

By harnessing the power of digital marketing training, leveraging the expertise of professionals, and allocating resources for targeted ads, you have the potential to increase the profitability of your business propel your business to new heights.