Marketing

Digital Marketing Plan: How to Create One and the Mistakes to Avoid

Team Pepper
Posted on 27/12/215 min read
Digital Marketing Plan: How to Create One and the Mistakes to Avoid

Digital marketing has become a necessity for brands in today’s times. It can be referred to as advertising through several online channels such as social media platforms, emails, search engine optimization, websites, mobile apps, and many more. Initially, it was just about creating a website, but it has evolved into something more complex and meaningful. 

Businesses now allocate substantial resources and either have a dedicated marketing team or hire professional digital marketers to develop a digital marketing plan for them. They aim to use digital marketing content plans as a promotional tool and make their campaign a valued service for their target consumers.

Creating a digital marketing plan

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Today, creating a digital marketing plan is about impacting the consumers and having meaningful interactions with them based on the data you collect over time.

You build brand awareness, create a distinct space for yourself as an industry thought leader, and place your brand at the forefront when the consumer is ready to purchase with the help of a digital marketing campaign plan. This way, the consumers also feel valued.

Digital marketing

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How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan

Create a digital marketing plan

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Let us discuss some tips for creating a digital marketing strategy plan. These digital marketing strategy tips can help you achieve your marketing objectives on time and well within your budget.

Define your marketing goals and objectives

Be very precise and clear in setting objectives. They should be realistic and measurable. Incorporate specific numbers and timeframes to serve as benchmarks for your progress.

Define your target audience

To be successful, you should know who you’re targeting. Once you know your target audience, segment them and build buyer personas for each segment of customers. This will give you a fair idea about what type of digital marketing will be most effective.

Conduct competitor and market analysis

A digital marketing plan will not be effective unless you know about your competitors and the market space you’re competing in.

Competitive analysis helps you determine your market share and the marketing strategies employed by your competitors. This information can enable you to get ahead of your competitors and benefit from the current market trends.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is a must for any kind of planning. It helps you understand your standing in the industry and identify what isn’t working for you.

The market is a dynamic space that can present opportunities in any form. You need to be ready for it. Thus, a SWOT analysis can help you create a holistic digital marketing content plan.

SWOT

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5 Digital Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

After listing the tips to create a digital marketing plan, let’s discuss the most common mistakes which marketers make while developing a digital marketing strategy:

Digital marketing strategy

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1. Focusing only on lead generation

A common mistake brands make is focusing on generating new leads and forgetting about their current customers. According to a renowned study, investing in retaining old customers is more profitable than generating new ones. This is because it is easier to sell to an old customer aware of the brand quality.

Thus, while making a digital marketing plan, keep in mind that lead generation is just one aspect of marketing, and you have to plan for the entire life cycle of a customer.

2. Not making your website mobile-friendly

More than half of all website traffic is mobile these days. So, it’s important to see how your marketing content reaches mobile users. Everything your brand does should be accessible to mobile users; otherwise, you risk losing a considerable segment of your target audience. 

Thus, making your website mobile-friendly and providing a good user experience can reap huge dividends for your digital marketing strategy. 

3. Not paying attention to your data

When creating a digital marketing plan for your company, remember that it is not set in stone. You have to be flexible and adjust to the changing market dynamics and customer metrics in real-time. Regularly monitor your campaign and pay attention to data collected to give you a complete picture of your performance.

4. Spamming instead of informing users

You should learn to respect the customer’s space. Still, some marketers tend to spam the users through various means. This is highly unprofessional.

You have to be careful in deciding where to draw the line between spamming and failing to give enough information to users. Your digital marketing strategy plan has to provide significant value to your customers and make them want to invest in your brand. 

5. Missing the right audience

Speaking to the wrong audience will never give any results, irrespective of how great your campaign is. So, before building a digital marketing action plan, research your audience inside out. Only then can you advertise in a way that resonates with your audience.

Steps to creating an online marketing plan

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Making It Big With a Well-Devised Digital Marketing Plan

Digital marketing is on its way to replacing traditional marketing. Creating a digital marketing plan and using social advertising to promote products is more valuable for brands.

A digital marketing strategy is adaptable. You can reach your target audience anytime on the internet, irrespective of geographical constraints. You can target specific demographics to promote your services.A digital marketing plan requires fewer investments and gives higher returns. As you embrace the possibilities of digital marketing, you will realize that your company has boundless growth potential. Simply avoid the digital marketing mistakes mentioned above, and you are on your way to creating something big.

FAQs

1. What is a digital marketing plan?

A digital marketing content plan includes marketing goals, strategies to meet those goals, timelines, digital channels to manipulate, and so on. Brands can keep track of their goals and measure their ROI with a digital marketing strategy. The seven Ps of a digital marketing strategy is Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People, Process, and Physical Evidence. Once the company creates a digital marketing plan keeping these elements in mind, it will generate amazing results. 

2. What is the use of a digital marketing plan?

It helps the brand determine the most effective strategies to implement to achieve the set objectives. Without a digital marketing content plan, you’ll end up wasting your resources and not making the desired impact. The four Cs of marketing are very important in creating a digital marketing content strategy- Clarity, Credibility, Consistency, and Competitiveness (Jobber and Fahy in 2009).

3. How to create a digital marketing plan?

To create a digital marketing plan, define clear objectives that can be measured. Then, go for customer research to form strategies according to them—conduct competitor and SWOT analysis to work on your strengths and weaknesses and get ahead of your competitors. Always take lessons from the feedback. To create an effective digital marketing content plan, you must always remember who are you creating content for your target audience. Create buyer personas to give more focus to your digital marketing strategy. 

4. What are the components of digital marketing?

Some components of a digital marketing strategy are as follows:
Advertising
Content marketing
Email marketing
Mobile marketing
Paid search
Programmatic advertising
Reputation marketing
Search engine optimization