How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan

Traditional marketing plans revolve around the 4Ps of marketing – product, place, price, and promotion. Digital marketing focuses on a whole new set of Ps for success – process, people, platforms, and performance.

As technology changes the way we live, work, and interact with each other, digital marketers must keep up with the pace, using modern digital marketing tools and techniques to ensure success. Let's get into detail about the 4 Ps required to create a compelling digital marketing plan.

1. Process

The digital marketing planning process starts with planning and ends with reviewing the marketing project or campaign. The process is a series of steps that allow digital marketers to identify customer needs, analyze market opportunities, and create marketing campaigns to reach their target audience.

2. People

To create engaging digital marketing plans, you must accurately define the customer persona in your buyer journey. You must stay open to understanding the people who buy your product. ‘People’ also includes the internal marketing team and other stakeholders. Ensure you carry everyone along in your marketing progress by sharing regular, relevant updates.

3. Platforms

Different digital marketing platforms attract different types of people. For example, you can find the Gen Z market mostly on TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube, while baby boomers are on Facebook and Linkedin. To develop an effective digital marketing plan, consider the digital platforms to invest in and build your audience.

Internal platforms like your company's project management software are also essential in creating effective digital marketing plans. These software tools help document and track every step of the digital marketing planning process and enhance collaboration between teams.

4. Performance

Gathering and analyzing the performance of your digital marketing plan and activities is crucial for long-term success. Create a schedule and system for reviewing past campaigns with your team to gain data-driven insights about your efforts. Ensure your digital marketing plan and performance metrics are aligned and relevant to your organizational goals. Use digital marketing analytics software to gather current data and stay ahead of trends.

Steps to create a digital marketing plan

Follow the digital marketing plan steps below to set your team up for success:

Step 1: Define your marketing goals and budget

Having a clear goal before creating a marketing plan will save you lots of time and mistakes. A goal helps you create a digital marketing plan outline and break it into tasks and activities.

The best way to define your goals is by using the SMART goals framework. SMART means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Undefined goals have ambiguous targets such as 'increase sales' or 'get more customers.' SMART goals are more specific, e.g., 'gain 1000 new leads in 90 days.'

The budget is another aspect of a digital marketing plan that needs clarity early on. Knowing your budget limit ensures you maximize every dollar and don't overspend on non-performing marketing campaigns. You can allocate a budget to each phase of your campaign, e.g., a budget for SEO, Facebook ads, content, and influencer marketing.

While your total budget may be a hard limit, the amount allocated to each marketing channel should be dynamic to enable testing and iterations based on performance. For example, if you notice your Facebook ad campaigns produce higher ROI than influencer marketing, you may choose to reallocate your influencer marketing budget to spend more on Facebook ads.

Step 2: Build buyer personas to define your ideal audience

Once you're clear about your goals and budget, creating buyer personas to segment your target market is the next major step.

A buyer persona is a fictional character a company creates through research that outlines different characteristics of potential customers. An accurate buyer persona will help you create highly-targeted marketing campaigns.

Depending on the defining attributes of your buyer persona, you may group them by demographics, interests, goals, or other relevant characteristics.

Step 3: Analyze your competitors and market position

Conducting industry and competitor analysis before developing your digital marketing plan is beneficial. It helps you identify your biggest competitors, their market share and position, and the strategies they use in their digital marketing campaigns.

Carry out a SWOT analysis of your product and your competitors' offering to discover what your company's strengths and weaknesses are. Analyzing your market position within your industry helps inform what product benefits or features to highlight in your marketing language and what your content should focus on.

Step 4: Choose which digital marketing channels to focus on

The digital marketing channels you choose should depend on your marketing goals and your target market's online behavior. You may decide to focus on building owned and earned marketing channels, lean towards paid ads for wider reach, or try a hybrid of both.

Many companies operate an omnichannel digital marketing strategy, taking potential customers on a buyer's journey through several platforms. For example, using short-form videos on TikTok to get customers' attention and then leading them to your Instagram page, where you have testimonials and reviews from previous buyers, showing social proof. With a clear and consistent call-to-action in your Instagram bio and post captions, you direct potential buyers to your website, where they finally decide to purchase your product.

Choosing the right digital marketing channels allows you to meet your customers where they are and engage with them on their terms before selling them your product.

Step 5: Set defined metrics to review and improve performance

A digital marketing plan is only as good as the results it produces. Establish relevant metrics to monitor performance and track the progress of your digital marketing campaigns once you begin. Data-driven marketing campaigns are the most practical way to get the best results from digital marketing efforts.

Tie in metrics to tasks assigned to your team. During the project, gather essential data such as revenue, new leads, new subscribers, click-through rates, and other vital data relevant to your business.

Remember, data insights are only fruitful when you test and use them to improve your initial digital marketing plan.

Step 6: Get stakeholder buy-in

Armed with information about your goals, customers, market, competition, marketing channels, and metrics, you're almost ready to translate your marketing strategies and ideas into a well-laid-out plan.

The quickest way to do this is to use digital marketing plan templates to sketch all your marketing plan and project requirements. Share this draft with key stakeholders and decision-makers to gain buy-in before making the plan more concrete.

Share the rationale behind your digital marketing planning process decisions. Get feedback from your team and stakeholders, and then improve your initial digital marketing plan draft.

Step 7: Break marketing projects into actionable tasks

Now you're ready to develop your digital marketing plan with due dates and tasks assigned to specific team members or external collaborators. Remember that drawing up a marketing plan is not a one-and-done deal. Observe your marketing environment and make changes to the plan as needed.

Now you have a digital marketing plan, you're ready to get to work implementing it. Allow some wiggle room for trying new ideas and switching from tactics that aren’t working. Using marketing project management tools like Wrike provides a bird-eye view of your marketing campaigns and projects.

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Digital Marketing Plan