The ABC’s of a Digital Marketing Plan

Where Do You Start?

One of the most frequent questions I get is how to start doing digital marketing. Where do you begin concentrating your efforts in.

What they usually want is some sort of blueprint, or a checklist. So here goes:

Audit Everything

Before even making a single decision, you absolutely have to run an audit of the current state of your marketing.

• What’s working and what isn’t? You can see that with Google Analytics’ Goal reporting, for instance.
• What are your competitors doing? SemRush is a great tool for that!
• What are your (potential) clients talking about? Sprout Social has a great tool for social listening.
• Where do they express themselves regarding your business?
• What are they craving for and what isn’t your competition giving them?

The first element of the ABC’s of a digital marketing plan is Auditing. Everything. The whole shabang. You, them and the others.

That basically means market research, which is something you should’ve already done for your business anyway. So checking up on social media where people talk and what are they saying about your product, is a given.

It’s not illegal to spy on your competition, sign up for their newsletter and follow their social media accounts.

But most importantly, if you’re already doing marketing (or better yet, have a customer service channel), make sure you’re all over it. Know what’s being done, how it’s working and whether or not it’s being monitored for optimization reasons.

Build Your Strategies

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your digital marketing plan.

• Decide how, and how often, will audits be done.
• Come up with a method for reporting and analyzing these audit results so that smart conclusions will be easy to achieve.
• Divide and Conquer: No one man can do everything perfectly. Split tasks amongst team mates who are better and different things. Use Trello for easier communication about tasks.
• Create shared assets, like research results databases, editorial calendars and media repositories, so that the entire team will always have everything in arms reach. Use Google Drive for a quick solution for cloud-based shared documents.

It’s extremely important to plan ahead. Spitballing with your money (or worse, with a client’s marketing budget) is a quick and easy way to have none. So if your wallet is too heavy for ya, go right ahead and jump to the next section.

So one of the elements of the ABC’s of a digital marketing plan is Building your strategies.

Your team needs to know what’s coming up, how things are done and what to do in case of an emergency.

Working on shared files and directories will help you make sure everybody’s up to date and the best part is that version control will be a thing of the past.

Remember to use UTM links to better monitor campaigns so that you can optimize your images, copywriting and landing pages.

Campaign In Series

So the last element of the ABC’s of a digital marketing plan is Campaigns that are in series. Not just throwing CTA‘s at people, which will probably create confusion and eventually end with them leaving your website.

• Work your prospects by leading them slowly into your honey trap.
• Create brand awareness with introductory ads and media posts.
• Promote lead generation by bringing your ad clickers to well written and visually impressive landing pages.
• Aim for conversions by using remarketing smartly, segmenting leads and showing them the correct ad in the correct moment by spreading your ads in sensible increments of urgency and importance.

No one likes pushy sellers. Understanding your client, knowing what he’s going through during his customer journey will help you decide when to show him certain ads.

Plan these remarketing campaigns accordingly and let automation help you display ads, send emails and offer promoted search snippets on autopilot.