Businesses are spending over 70 percent of their overall marketing budgets on digital channels. It’s not difficult to see why. As internet usage increases across the globe, more people are going online to shop or start their search for a local business.
A general rule of thumb in business is to be where your customers are. So, in today’s digital age, you have no choice but to build a strong digital presence for your business. To do this, you need an elaborate digital marketing plan that suits your business.
As a small business owner, you likely aren’t a digital marketing expert. You need help putting together a strategy that works. Continue reading to learn how to do it the right way.
Establish Your Digital Marketing Goals
When you create a plan, it’s certainly because you have a specific goal you want to achieve. This plan is the blueprint that gets you there. The same applies when you’re designing an online marketing plan. You need to have specific goals.
Although increasing sales is the goal of every business owner who’s doing digital marketing, that goal is too broad. It’s advisable to break down your goals because they’ll all ultimately lead to increased sales.
For example, your goal could be to increase organic traffic to your website. Once this happens, you’ll be in a better position to convert some of the visitors into customers.
Or perhaps you want your business to get more online reviews. Considering that the vast majority of online shoppers read online reviews before making a decision to buy something, you can see how having lots of (positive) reviews will lead to more sales.
Ideally, you want to have multiple goals. An effective digital marketing strategy is one that’s able to kill multiple birds with one swing of the sling. Assess your current operations and find areas where it’s lacking and build your goals around those deficiencies.
Know Your Target Customer
It’s almost impossible to run an effective Internet marketing campaign when you don’t know who your target audience is. It’s like going fishing and casting a net without knowing the exact spots to find the fish.
You should be able to identify your ideal customer by age, gender, location, income, marital status, profession, and even spending habits. This way, you can build a plan that specifically targets and reaches your ideal customers.
For example, let’s say your company sells golf equipment. Anyone who’s interested in the game of golf could be your customer, but such a generalization won’t help your digital marketing efforts.
Visit any golf course and you’ll mostly find that most players are male and middle-aged. Investigate further and you’ll find that they have a household income of over $100,000.
With this information, you’ll be able to make the right marketing decisions. For example, you’ll know the right digital channels to use for your campaigns since you just need to establish where these customers love spending their online hours.
You might have been planning your campaign around TikTok, but now that you know your target customer, you’ll realize that the social network isn’t the right channel. You need to focus on channels that are popular with millennials and Gen Xers, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Draw a Digital Marketing Budget
You don’t just decide one morning to run a digital marketing campaign just because it’s cheaper than traditional marketing on billboards and television. It’s important to know how much money is available to spend. Drawing a budget also enables you to allocate funds to various channels, such as social media, search engines, and email.
So, how much money should you set aside for the execution of your digital marketing plan?
You already know that most businesses are spending about a third of their entire marketing budgets on digital marketing, so that’s a good place to start. However, the nature of your business and industry can also influence your budget.
If you’re an eCommerce company in a very competitive niche, for instance, you might need to spend more money on digital marketing than a business that’s in a less competitive niche. That’s because you’ll rely on more aggressive digital marketing methods, such as pay-per-click advertising.
Define Performance Metrics
A major digital marketing advantage is it’s easy to measure the performance of a campaign. You’ll know how many people landed on your website as a result of a PPC ad, or how many people engaged with your marketing posts on social media.
Here’s the thing, though. Digital marketing metrics aren’t created equal. Getting more website traffic doesn’t necessarily mean your sales will increase at a similar rate. Neither does going viral on social media guarantee positive exposure.
This is why it’s crucial to define the metrics by which you’ll measure the performance of your campaigns. Often, these metrics will be tied to your goals. For example, if your goal is to double organic traffic to your website, you simply need to look at traffic analytics on your website’s dashboard.
If the goal is to increase your lead conversion rate by a certain percentage, you need to monitor the number of conversions during a specified time period and divide it by the total number of daily conversions.
Be Ready to Adjust
You can build an absolute monster of a digital marketing plan on the first try, but that doesn’t mean it will work forever. Digital marketing is constantly changing, which means your strategy needs to evolve when needed.
Don’t stick to a plan simply because it’s been working for you. If you look at the metrics and the numbers aren’t impressive, be ready to ring the changes.
To make the right changes, you need to be aware of what’s happening in the digital marketing field. Keep tabs on the top digital marketing blogs and you won’t miss a thing.
Build a Digital Marketing Plan That Works
A digital marketing plan is a must-have for any business that wants to succeed in today’s environment. But it’s not just any plan that will work. You need a plan that’s customized to the needs of your business.
With this guide, you now know how to supercharge your small business marketing. Explore our blog for more marketing tips.
