In today’s world, we are surrounded by digital media. We use our smartphones, tablets, laptops, televisions, and game consoles to connect to the internet for a variety of reasons.
This uninterrupted connectivity is a treasure trove for brands that want their target customers to discover them. That’s why digital marketing has become crucial to business success.
This article will give you an overview of digital marketing, as well as some things to think about when building a digital marketing plan and the various digital marketing channels available to you.
But first things first –
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, is the promotion of brands through the use of the internet as well as other forms of digital communication to connect with potential customers.
This includes multimedia and text messages as a marketing channel in addition to social media, email, and web-based advertising.
Simply put, digital marketing refers to any marketing campaign that uses digital communication.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan?
With people spending more time online, marketing budgets keep getting shifted to digital. With digital marketing offering so many opportunities, many get tempted to jump right into the execution mode.
However, building a well-thought-out strategy is among the most effective ways to increase your digital ROI. A well-defined strategy eliminates waste, focuses your efforts, and expands on everything that is already working.
Here’s how to develop an effective digital marketing plan:
1. Determine the persona of your target audience
First, determine who you’re targeting (also known as your target persona) and where they are in the funnel.
This will make taking every subsequent decision ten times easier.
A target persona is an image of your ideal customer.
It combines demographic information (such as age, gender, location, language, etc.) and psychographic information (such as interests, desires, values, opinions, etc.) about your target customers.
Creating a target persona will enable you to better comprehend who you’re marketing to beyond metrics such as sales, users, or visitors. Creating a persona is typically accomplished by:
- Gathering demographic information about your target customer
- Gathering psychographic information about your target customer
- Creating a target persona
- Sharing with your team and continuing to fine-tune based on discoveries
Next, determine which stage of the sales funnel your target persona is in.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is simply a model for how a person progresses from being a stranger to a customer, a repeat buyer, and lastly advocate for your product.
The sales funnel typically has four stages:
- Top of the funnel
- Middle of the funnel
- Bottom of the funnel
- Retention, monetisation, and love
2. Determine the digital assets your consumers use to consume content
When thinking of creating content, most people think of publishing blog posts, but it does not have to be that always.
The digital asset you use could be anything from an email form response to a product review, a social media post, a podcast, a video image, or a social media ad.
It could even be a digital tool you created or a product demo.
Choosing a digital asset is dependent on who your target persona is and where they are in the funnel. Your job is to utilise this information to select the digital asset relevant to your target persona.
3. Determine the medium and channel of distribution
Once you’ve decided on the nature of your digital asset, you must decide where it will reside (the medium) and how it will be distributed (the channel.)
In general, your website will be the most common medium, but it is not always necessary.
You could also use YouTube, Amazon, Google Places, App Store, Yelp, or Pinterest as a medium.
Each medium is usually suited to a particular type of digital asset. A long video, for example, is probably better suited to YouTube than to Twitter or Instagram.
When you’ve determined the medium, you must decide how you’ll get this asset to its intended audience via that medium. In other words, choose the channel.
Channel selection, like every aspect of your strategy, is influenced by previous decisions you have made.
4. Optimise content to reach as many people as possible
Simply put, this includes doing everything you can to boost the number of users who receive your asset via the channel you chose.
If you choose digital advertising to drive traffic to a landing page, optimisation will include testing ad graphics, copy, placement, targeting, budget, and so on.
If you choose SEO to drive traffic to a blog post, optimisation will include things like keyword research, post content optimisation, link building, and solving technical issues.
If you choose email marketing to drive webinar registration, you’ll need to test email subject lines, CTA, send times, and subscriber segmentation.
You get the idea.
Each channel is unique, and you must learn how to make the most of the one you choose.
5. Nudge the users to take the next logical step
This is the framework’s most important feature. Simply put, the nudge is how you move users down the funnel to the next logical step. The goal of the nudge is to achieve results.
Getting individuals to consume your content isn’t enough. As a digital marketer, you must always think about the next step.
A nudge could consist of a call to action to download a reward in exchange for something like an email address (middle-of-the-funnel). A nudge could be a blog post that is attracting a lot of new traffic (top-of-the-funnel).
A nudge could be a deal to enrol for a limited-time discount if you’re hosting a webinar with a large number of attendees (bottom-of-the-funnel).
Whatever digital asset you build, consider how it will help you move your users closer to making purchases
Key Pillars of a Successful Digital Marketing Plan
Because digital marketing is a multifaceted, complex system of tools and systems. It can be difficult to figure out where to begin.
The problem with the majority of digital marketing plans is that they are built on shaky ground.
Many businesses overlook a critical step in developing an effective digital plan – market research. Before you sell anything to a customer, you must first get to know them.
If you don’t have this information, your ad campaigns will be based on speculations rather than facts.
So, with that in mind, let’s look at the core pillars required to build a solid digital marketing plan.
1. Sales Funnel
In digital marketing, a sales funnel is a combination of marketing tactics used to create traffic to your business website and nurture it so that it becomes loyal customers who advocate for your company.
How does a sales funnel function?
Consider the basic use of a funnel: you place it on a container you wish to fill with something, you pour the content into the funnel, and it fills the container.
The same idea underpins a digital advertising sales funnel. First, you create your sales funnel with a specific goal in mind: a customer buying a product or service from your company.
Then, using digital marketing tactics, you fill your sales funnel with traffic and drive that traffic from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. The bottom of the funnel is where the traffic converts into paying customers and these paying customers become advocates for your local business.
2. Content Marketing
The fundamental concept of Content Marketing is a tactical marketing approach in which you make creating and distributing high-quality, relevant, and consistent content the central focus of your company’s marketing strategy.
Another critical component of effective Content Marketing is defining your target audience. By doing so, you will be able to drive valuable customer action because you will be communicating directly with your market.
In contrast to hard selling and pitching, people respond favourably to content that is useful and relevant to them. The best way to win in digital media is to master the art of subtle selling, which involves using your content as a solution to the problems faced by your preferred prospects and current customers.
Also Read: The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing
3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the most popular term in digital marketing. And, while understanding how SEO works can be a little puzzling, it’s quite simple.
SEO is a process or strategy for optimising your content to improve your search rankings, which is critical for attracting visitors to your website and increasing conversions and sales.
Many strategies can be used to optimise content, but the most common involves researching to understand your audience better and then using specific terms and keyword phrases to attract and reach that specific audience.
You can generate more relevant content that addresses the questions your customers are asking when performing a search by using key terms in your content, allowing you to appear higher in search results.
Improving your rankings in search engines is critical not only for reaching your target audience but also for beating your competition. If multiple companies like yours offer the same products or services, using SEO to boost your rankings is among the best ways to make sure customers choose you over them.
4. Email Marketing
This entails a company sending business-related emails to a targeted audience that it believes will be interested in the products and services on offer.
Email marketing is popular for lead generation because it allows you to track who opens the email and who does not. It can be promotional, sales-driven, or simply used to raise brand awareness. This type of digital marketing has proven to be one of the most effective methods of advertising.
The most effective way to gain from email marketing is to determine your intended audience and either create an internal lead list or purchase external databases.
If done correctly, this can be a very effective way of both boosting and reinforcing current client relationships and engaging new prospects. It also encourages additional impulse purchases and acts as a fantastic platform for sharing third-party advertisements.
Also Read: The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing in 2023
5. Paid Aadvertising
Paid online advertising is of two types:
a. Paid search ads
Paid search ads, also known as PPC advertising, are essential for your multichannel digital marketing strategy. Other channels and forms of marketing content are necessary, but the results of those efforts can often be delayed.
PPC advertising, on the other hand, can be established quickly and provide results almost immediately. It entails paying a fee each time someone clicks on your advertisement.
Though some consider this method to be too costly, brands that use PPC achieve a significantly higher return on advertising expenditure than brands that use other advertising methods.
This is because PPC ads are only displayed if they are relevant to a particular customer. So, rather than paying for running an advertisement, you only pay whenever the ad targets the right customer and that customer acts by clicking on the ad.
b. Display advertising
Display advertising is one of the more multifaceted types of online marketing and involves rich media, banner ads, and pop-up ads, to name a few. It is an image-based method of advertising that employs video and audio to capture the attention of the potential customer.
6. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing (SMM) is an excellent method for increasing brand awareness. For example, if you want to increase social traffic, you can create an Instagram account and post carousels or posts about hot topics in your industry.
To be successful at SMM, you must understand your target audience and utilise the same social media platforms they use.
Social media marketing is an excellent way to get your brand name out there, and the key is to provide people with useful content. The greater your social media engagement, the greater your chances of brand recognition. With that, they’re interested enough to visit your website to discover more about you and your business.
Answering people’s questions is a great way to build brand awareness and establish yourself as an expert in your niche. This can be done through forums like Reddit or Quora.
When responding to a question, you can include a link to your website or a relevant post for further information on the subject.
It’s also critical to communicate with the individuals you follow on social media. It will boost your social standing.
When you have a strong online presence, it goes beyond simply appearing in search engine results for specific keywords. It entails having a significant number of followers, fans, and consumers.
7. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a hybrid of old and new marketing strategies. It has transformed the concept of celebrity endorsement into a contemporary content-driven marketing campaign. The campaign results in joint work between brands and influencers, which is the main differentiator in influencer marketing.
However, influencer marketing is not limited to celebrities. Instead, it focuses on influencers, most of whom would never consider themselves popular in a traditional sense.
Influencer marketing is the process by which a brand collaborates with an online influencer to endorse its products or services. Some influencer marketing partnerships are less tangible; for example, businesses may work with influencers to raise brand awareness.
Influencers, unlike celebrities, can be found anywhere. They could be anybody. Their large online and social media following make them influential.
8. Digital Marketing Analytics
Digital marketing analytics refers to the processes and technologies that enable marketers to evaluate the effectiveness and value of their digital marketing initiatives, recognise trends and patterns over time, and make data-driven decisions.
Data analytics in digital marketing enables you to determine what is working, who your customers should be, and which digital channels to concentrate your marketing resources on.
The goal of digital marketing analytics is to increase the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns by ensuring that the right audiences are targeted using relevant advertisements via the right channels.
Customers benefit from more tailored promotions, and businesses benefit from a higher return on marketing investments through enhanced brand awareness and sales conversions.
In a broad sense, digital marketing analytics tools can assist businesses in achieving three major objectives:
- Provide tailored user experiences
- Measure the performance of the campaigns
- Gather insights from marketing campaigns
Also Read: The Ultimate Guide to Web Analytics in 2023
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is the Significance of Digital Marketing?
Businesses can use digital marketing to broaden their audience, boost profits, and strengthen their relationship with existing and prospective customers. While both traditional and digital marketing campaigns share a similar goal, digital marketing allows brands to target a more precise or niche audience and allows for more accurate tracking of results.
Q2. What exactly is Local SEO?
Local SEO, as the name implies, entails optimising your website for local search. Discussing what is really happening in the community, maintaining all of your maps up to date, and getting involved with social media are all excellent ways to boost your local SEO.
Q3. Is a Website Really Necessary?
Yes! While word of mouth is powerful, the majority of customers discover and research brands online before buying something. An online presence will give your company credibility and increases brand awareness. Furthermore, websites can be used for a variety of marketing strategies such as e-commerce, online customer service, and consumer engagement.
On a Concluding Note
Every digital marketing plan is unique to a company. So, it is nearly impossible to create a one-size-fits-all digital marketing strategy.
Remember, the goal of your digital marketing strategy plan is to map out the actions you’ll take to achieve your goal over time – as long as it communicates that you’ve nailed the fundamentals of developing a digital marketing plan.
Read our knowledge base blogs if you want to create a truly effective digital marketing plan to help your business grow.
