Digital Marketing Planning
It’s that time of year again. The time when we reflect on the past and plan for the future.
And while you’re likely already doing some digital marketing, it’s always a good idea to take some time to evaluate what you’re doing and how it can be improved in the coming year.
Here are some tips to help get you started with your new year digital marketing campaign.
Consider Your Target Market
One of the most important things to consider when planning your marketing is who you’re targeting. Who are you trying to reach with your message?
It’s important to have a clear idea of your target market and design your marketing around them. This means understanding your audience’s needs and what appeals to them.
You can use demographics, such as age and location to inform your marketing decisions. For example, do they have a certain amount of disposable income? Where do they spend their time online or offline?
For example, if you run an e-commerce site that sells baby clothes, your target market might be women in the 25 to 45 age range who live within the U.S., are married with two children, and make $75,000 or more in household income.
By understanding your target market, you can tailor your marketing to the most likely to be interested in what you have to offer or buy from you.
Identify Your Goals
Next, you need to identify your marketing goals.
While there are many reasons why business owners might choose digital marketing (such as brand awareness and lead generation), it’s important to define what exactly you’re hoping to achieve with your marketing efforts.
For example, do you want more people to visit your website? Do you want them to call you? Fill out a form? Sign up for your newsletter? Do you want to increase sales and conversions on your site? Or, do you simply want more people aware of who you are and what you offer.
By identifying exactly why you’re doing digital marketing in the first place will help ensure that all of your efforts support those goals. This means evaluating where traffic is coming from, what channels are most effective, and how you can improve your results.
Create a Marketing Plan
Once you’ve defined your goals and identified who your target market is, it’s time to create a marketing plan.
Your marketing plan should include all of the strategies used to accomplish those goals with timelines for launch dates along with who will be on your marketing team. It also should identify all the digital marketing channels you plan to use for your business including your social media strategy. Basically, this plan needs to include all aspects of your online marketing as well as other marketing strategies.
It doesn’t have to be super formal – there are tons of free resources out there with templates for creating marketing plans – but it should include information about how you plan to accomplish your goals.
If you want to increase website traffic by 50% within three months, then that goal should be specifically included in the marketing plan.
Also, include an explanation of why it’s important and what steps will be taken towards reaching that goal. You need to identify exactly what you are doing (or hiring people to do!) to get to that goal.
Consider Your Marketing Vehicles
When it comes to digital marketing, there are many different ways to reach your target market. You can use everything from blog posts and social media to paid advertising.
But before you start spending money on ads, be sure that you have a plan in place!
It’s important to think about where your target market spends its time online.
For example, if you’re targeting millennials, you’ll want to focus on social media platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, or Instagram.
On the other hand, if your target market is more senior citizens, Facebook might be a better option. Facebook ads are great because you can target them based on location, age, interests, marital status – the list goes on.
You can also use offline marketing vehicles to reach your target market. That could include direct mail, print ads, or even billboards. These days, people seem to forget the power of networking. There is still a lot of money to be made in certain networking groups- depending on what you do.
Some of the elements to consider utilizing include:
· Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
· Blogging
· Social Media Posting
· Email Marketing
The important thing is that your marketing plan should include a strategy for each of these vehicles and how they’ll be used to accomplish those goals.
Be sure to use a good website design company to create a website that will effectively market your products or services.
Create a Content Creation Plan
One of the best ways to improve your digital marketing is by creating high-quality content. This content can be in blog posts, videos, infographics, or even eBooks.
But before you can start creating this content, you need to have a plan.
What topics do you want to cover? What are your target keywords? What formats work best for your audience?
Determine how you can create SEO-optimized content that will help you rank higher in search engine results pages.
Create Content That Appeals to Your Target Market
Your content should be relevant and helpful for your target market. Again, you can use research or data from past campaigns (or even surveys) to help you with this process of understanding what resonates with them.
Reports indicate that people don’t want to be sold. They want to be educated. So give them the information they need and help them make decisions. This will create trust and loyalty with your brand.
When creating content, think about the different ways you can reach your target market. This might include blog posts, social media posts, infographics, videos, or even podcasts.
You can also use paid advertising to help get your message in front of more people who may be interested in what you have to offer. But before doing any type of paid advertising, be sure to do your research and set a realistic budget.
Consider Your Budget and Timeline
You’ll also need to think about your budget and timeline. How much money do you want to spend? When would be the best time for marketing efforts so that they reach your target market during peak hours?
It can help set some goals around these factors before diving into paid advertising or content creation.
For example, you might decide that spending $1000 a month on paid advertising will be best and focus your efforts around January through March.
Or perhaps you want to create two blog posts per week over six months. Once you have this information figured out, it’s time to plan.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry! This is where a digital marketing agency can help. They have the experience and knowledge to help you create a plan that will reach your target market and achieve your desired results. Many digital marketing firms will give you a free initial consultation.
Evaluate Past Campaigns
It’s important to take the time to evaluate your past campaigns before planning for the future. What worked well? What didn’t work so well? What can you improve on?
This information will help you design better campaigns in the future and avoid making any costly mistakes.
To do this, you’ll need to keep track of what’s been effective in your campaigns as well as what hasn’t. You’d be amazed at how many companies don’t even install any analytics on their site to see how the site is doing. That’s like having an employee and never paying attention to whether they are hurting or helping your business.
You can use a free tool like Google Analytics or another analytics program that keeps track of things such as clicks on links within blog posts, traffic from social media sites, and even email marketing metrics.
This data will help you understand what content is resonating with your audience and how they’re finding out about your brand. It can also help you determine where you should focus your efforts when it comes to future campaigns.
Audit and Plan Your Owned Media Campaigns
Start by auditing your owned media campaigns. This includes your website, blog, email marketing efforts, and social media accounts.
Take a look at what’s been working well and what hasn’t been as effective. Identify any areas that need improvement and make a plan to address them. It’s important here to look at whether you managed that marketing element yourself or you had a digital marketing agency do it. The point here is that you don’t know what you don’t know. We see many people try to manage things themselves and they make the same mistakes over and over because they simply don’t know what they’re doing wrong.
For example, many people try to run Google Adwords campaigns themselves. We get it. But, many of these business owners run their ads straight to their home page which negatively impacts their quality score. This means they pay more for their campaigns and often get worse results. Based on that, they think Google Ads don’t “work”.
Once you are auditing your digital marketing, you’ll see many different ways to make adjustments. If you notice that your website traffic is low, you might create more blog posts or update your website design. Or, if you notice that open email rates are low, you might want to test out a new subject line for your next campaign.
This is where you may want to ask for help from a digital marketing expert to help you make proper adjustments. Getting a website assessment is one way to go about getting the feedback you need for your business.
The goal is to make sure that all of your owned media platforms are working together and helping you reach your target market.
It’s also important to keep in mind that you don’t have all the time in the world to achieve your goals, so be realistic about what you can accomplish within a certain timeframe and budget.
Don’t Forget Your Paid Media Campaigns
Paid media campaigns come with their own set of challenges and benefits. While they can be expensive, they can also quickly reach a large audience.
When planning your paid media campaigns, it’s important to think about what you want to achieve. For example, do you want more website traffic? More leads? A higher conversion rate?
Once you know what you’re aiming for, it will be easier to create targeted ads and create a plan to measure success.
Like with your owned media campaigns, all of your paid efforts must work together and complement each other rather than compete for attention.
This is where an experienced digital marketing agency will help you create the most effective plan possible.
They’ll work closely with you to make sure they understand what you’re trying to achieve and develop a strategy that will help you reach your goals.
Which Digital Marketing Tools Will You Need?
Now that you understand your target market and what type of content will appeal to them, it’s time to start thinking about the different tools you’ll need.
This could include a website, blog, email marketing tool, or even a CRM system (content management system).
If you don’t have any of these tools in place, now is the time to start thinking about how you can get them.
Your website should be your top priority. This is where your target market will go to learn more about you and what you have to offer. It’s also a place where they can buy your products or services.
A blog is a great way to share your expertise with your target market and help them make decisions. And don’t forget about email marketing! You can use your blog posts as content for your email marketing campaigns.
It’s a great way to stay in touch with your audience and keep them updated on new products, services, or blog posts.
If you’re not sure where to start, reach out to a digital marketing agency like Make It Loud for help. They can recommend the best tools for your business and help you get them set up.
Social media marketing is also important and can be used to complement your other marketing efforts. Make sure you’re sharing the right type of content on social media sites, though. If it’s not relevant, it won’t do much good.
Should You Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?
As you can see, digital marketing is a lot of work. But, unfortunately, it’s also something that can be difficult to get good training on. So, it leaves many business owners scratching their heads when dealing with it.
That’s why hiring an experienced and knowledgeable digital marketing agency, such as Make It Loud, makes sense for most businesses. Not only will they help you grow and manage your online presence, but they’ll also save you time.
If your business is located in the Atlanta area or nearby, we’d love to talk with you about how we can help improve your digital marketing strategies! Get in touch today for a free initial consultation.
Digital marketing can be overwhelming, but you can create a plan that works for your business and helps you reach your target market by following these tips. Contact us today if you need help putting together your digital marketing plan for the new year!
Make It Loud is a digital marketing firm that’s located in the Atlanta area. We’ve been helping businesses all around the country establish and improve their online presence for more than 17 years. We don’t consider ourselves successful until you are. It’s as simple as that.
