Attract High Quality Leads With a Grade-A Digital Marketing Plan

This digital marketing plan will help you pull in leads like a magnet.

A digital marketing plan is a must-have for every business as it details your business goals, timelines, resources, daily targets, and marketing strategies. Having one is crucial for businesses of all sizes because it serves as your blueprint, helping you manage your resources and putting your efforts into more effective ways of reaching your audience and delivering conversions.

If you want to generate more leads and better conversions, then it’s time to draft a marketing plan. The process can be time-consuming, but it is vital to realize your business goals. Moreover, you won’t feel as if you’re entering into uncharted territory as you maneuver through the digital world.

You have the option to either employ the services of a digital marketing agency to create your digital marketing plan or create one by yourself. If you prefer the latter, then this guide is for you as it will help you make a marketing plan fit for your business.

How your brand benefits from a digital marketing plan

It’s always a good idea to start things off with a plan. Because aside from being reminded of the end goal for your marketing campaign, you also get to visualize how your day-to-day is supposed to look as you work towards your goal. Setting your daily, weekly, or monthly goals for your marketing plan enables you to keep track of your progress and how effective your plans are.

Here are some other important benefits of creating a more efficient marketing plan

1. It helps you maneuver the digital space.

   There are about 5.16 billion people using the internet worldwide and you need to remember that you can’t cater to every single one of them. However,  you can select specific groups of people to convert to your business.

   A good marketing plan can help you structure your content. This not only enables search engines to pick them up faster, but it can also have massive (and long-term) pay-offs by using SEO for your content marketing. The same idea applies to social media marketing. You just need to properly allocate your resources to capitalize on social media’s power to reach more active audiences. After all, consumers find targeted ads the most effective way of finding their perfect product.

   If you didn’t plan or execute your plan properly, you’re in for a long struggle.

2. It helps keep focus.

   A marketing plan enables you to strategize the direction you want to take your business and helps you keep track of your progress. You can always readjust your goals and reallocate your resources to other marketing strategies so that they can deliver better results. There’s always room for flexibility in plans like these.

   Plans are not fool-proof and may go awry along the way but being focused helps minimize the risk of things not going in your favor.

3. You develop a culture of transparency.

   When you have a comprehensive marketing plan, all of the ways you can maximize your marketing efforts should be listed. This includes SEO, pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing, among others.

   Under the guidance of a marketing plan, you can determine which efforts need  improvements. You can even tweak or add new strategies if you’re not satisfied with the results that you’re getting. In any case, your marketing plan can help determine the changes needed to your marketing approach and provide explanations for why changes have to be done.

   Ultimately, make sure you are up-to-date with the latest marketing trends that you can use to make your marketing efforts more effective.

4. You get more consistent results.

   When you create your digital marketing plan, make sure that you will also include the important metrics that you need to monitor so you will have an idea of which ones to focus on and track on a daily basis. In doing so, you get a better idea of how your content will perform and use that insight to continue engaging with customers.

   This process creates more meaningful reports and consistent data to work with, thus driving your next marketing plan to success. Consider developing an analytics plan or partnering with an analytics service to help guide your marketing decisions.

5. It is a cost-effective way to grow revenue.

   There may be instances when some strategies are more effective at reaching audiences than others and by constantly monitoring your digital activities, you can identify which of your strategies are losing you money.

   When this occurs, you should be flexible enough to reallocate your resources to more effective strategies in order to meet your targets. That way, you can better analyze the finer details of your marketing campaign and adjust your approach accordingly.

Now that you’re done with the “why’s”, it’s time to learn how to create an effective marketing plan.

Crafting an effective digital marketing plan

You can save time in planning if you keep these five simple tips in mind, helping you to effectively generate more conversions:

1. Know who your target audience is.
2. Create a marketing funnel.
3. Define your branding.
4. Set realistic goals and meet them.
5. Plan with the user experience in mind.
6. Understand the channel you’re working with.

1. Know who your target audience is.

   This should be the first step in any marketing campaign. You have to understand who your target audience is so you’ll have an idea which types of content keep them engaged, and eventually convert.

   For example, 73% of people aged 25-40 are projected to increase their overall online spending by the end of 2023, with health and beauty products and luxury goods among the key benefactors. It may well be in your best interest to see whether this age group plays a major role in your business’ success.

   When you have identified your target audience, you can align all of your marketing objectives to give you an idea of which content drums up their interest. You can use analytics tools to gather information regarding your target customers’ demographic data, such as age, location, and preferred language. You can also check out other information such as their interests, purchasing behavior, and purchase history.

   Just remember that you have to be responsible for the use of such sensitive information. If consumers feel like you’re disregarding their privacy and security, you could lose them (and potential new customers) forever.

2. Create a marketing funnel.

   The marketing funnel is one of the most well-known marketing strategies out there. It illustrates the journey that customers take when they engage with your business. The marketing funnel usually has five levels:

   • Awareness. Possible customers encounter your business for the first time. They come across you from different mediums: targeted ads, referrals from other websites, or other means.
   • Consideration. Your brand becomes a possible means to address their problem.
   • Action. The potential customer finally converts with your business: buys a product, signs up for a service, etc.
   • Loyalty. Customers become loyal to your brand if they enjoy the experience that you’ve promised them. They’ll make sure to come back to your brand if they’re in need of similar products or services.
   • Advocacy. Some customers will also be vocal about their experience, and will persuade others to try your brand. These may be in the form of customer reviews, personal recommendations, or even their own personal blog posts.
   

   Photo courtesy of Sprout Social

   Essentially, the Marketing Funnel summarizes the customer journey for you. It helps you identify the motivators that your customers need to get to the next stage of the journey. In a sense, you’re putting yourself in the shoes of a customer who is ways away from actually converting.

   Keep in mind that customers also desire quality from products and services they’ve engaged with. If you were able to deliver on your promise, there’s a great chance that these customers will remain loyal, or even become vocal advocates for your brand.

   With the marketing funnel in mind, you have to write down how you plan on executing marketing efforts according to the different stages of the funnel.

3. Define your branding.

   Your branding is one of the most important and most recognizable features of your marketing strategy. Having consistent branding lets customers know which brand they’re dealing with. It promotes familiarity, reputation, and customer loyalty when your branded content remains consistent.

   The branding process, when done correctly, should be able to set you apart from your competitors and enhance your overall digital marketing strategy. You can use Propelrr’s three-step branding process to help you get started with setting a unique identity for your business. Here are the key points to consider: 

   • Brand research. Brand research helps you form an idea of who you are as a business, who your competitors are, and what your positioning is within the industry. Effective brand research mainly includes studying two things: your target market and your competitors. Your brand research should ultimately give you a good foundation of presenting your uniqueness to potential customers.
   • Brand core. Your brand core could be considered the heart of your brand, something that separates you from your competitors. Establishing your brand core helps your business carve out a unique identity for itself and how it connects with your customers. You can use your brand research to identify differences between you and your competitors, and whether these are opportunities for you to capitalize on.
   • Brand design. This refers to visual features of your content: logo, web design, product design, etc. More than just a simple color scheme or design elements, a brand design should also signify your brand core and create a positive distinction for your products or services.

   Developing the branding of your business is crucial from a digital marketing standpoint. You want your customers to separate you from the rest of the pack. While it’s not the only part of your digital marketing plan, it certainly is one of the more influential parts of one.

4. Set realistic goals and meet them.

   Small businesses can emulate some of the big brands’ best practices and even make these strategies their own to contribute to their growth. In setting your goals, use your existing research data and resources to determine your Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Based targets (SMART goals).

   Setting SMART targets is important to find a pathway that will deliver achievable and consistent results. Monitoring your progress with these targets helps you become more effective in generating leads and conversions. This process helps maintain a realistic workflow to follow through with your marketing plans.

5. Plan with the user experience in mind.

   When you are consistent in delivering the needs of your customers, you’re more likely to have a constant stream of them in the long run. It is therefore imperative to keep your customers happy throughout every stage of the buyer journey.

   One of the ways that you can start this off is by using these user experience (UX) principles to give your customers a memorable experience with your brand. You could also listen to their feedback and address them with an open mind. For example, if you find yourself losing your customers due to one of your webpages, consider updating your content to avoid facing the same issues in the future.

   You can improve the user experience by creating personalized content, thereby making the conversion process easier. This goes hand in hand with securing your customers’ personal data.

6. Understand the channel you’re working with.

   There are different channels to send your message out to the public. These digital channels each have their own advantages and disadvantages, but it’s still worthwhile to explore them as avenues for your content.

   Here’s a brief rundown of some available channels for you to release your content:

   • Paid search. You can pay search engines to display your content more prominently than usual on a results page. Businesses bid on keywords that they want to rank higher on, and pay for every click their website receives. However, that means your campaigns should also be optimized to give you a solid ROI.
   • Social media. Create your own social media pages to display your content online and promote your content to a broader target audience by utilizing sponsored ads. However, the competition within this medium is cutthroat since several brands battle for the attention of billions of users on social media each day.
   • Paid digital advertising. These are usually in the form of images, videos, or other graphics content displayed on different pages to entice users to click on them. Make sure to utilize this channel properly and avoid overdoing it to give a user a more pleasant browsing experience.
   • Search engine optimization. SEO is when you optimize your website to make it easy to search for. Brands that rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) tend to receive more clicks than their competitors. The competition is fierce, and the process might also take some time before you start seeing results.
   • Email marketing. Email newsletters are a good way to give your customers a chance to look at your latest updates before anyone else. Unfortunately, there are users who barely check their emails so keep yourself open to other channels.
   • Building your own website. Your website is your home and acts as the centerpiece of your online content. As such, you should consider it as your primary way of communicating with customers.. In order to make full use of this channel, consider implementing chatbots to help new and returning users maneuver through your website.

   These are just simple tips to help you craft a marketing plan that works for you. The ball is now in your court, and it’s time to do the hard work. The next section will discuss best practices to make that hard work pay off big time.

Best practices for creating your digital marketing strategy

Planning doesn’t stop as soon as you launch your business. In fact, executing your digital marketing strategy is a constant effort as you run your day-to-day operations and gather data. Doing so allows you to analyze and determine the next best steps to further optimize and work on achieving your long term goals.

You can monitor your business’ performance even after the lead generation stage through analytics tools. These tools can help you identify existing problems to better optimize your marketing strategy. Let’s dive into these simple tips to execute your digital marketing plan better.

• Testing

  Whether it’s content creation or web design and development, you need  to conduct any form of testing first to know what works for your business. For example, you might want to see whether your website runs as smoothly on mobile as it does on laptops. You could also run some tests to make sure your web pages load faster.

  Fortunately, you can make your split testing easier so you can work the kinks out more efficiently before the actual launch of your content.

• Analytics

  Digital analytics helps you create and manage your digital marketing assets to better engage your audiences as it gathers a lot of important information about your customers.. You can use this information to determine whether your marketing campaigns are effective in bringing high-quality leads to your website, or if they’re in need of an update.

  This is especially useful for businesses catering to markets in different regions, as simply changing the language in your advertising could drive more traffic to your website. That said, you could also add language options to your website if you find that you have more overseas visitors than initially anticipated.

• Using multi-channel attribution

  Use analytics to track whether your customers come from paid advertising, direct searches, email newsletters, or elsewhere. This helps you identify which channel is the most effective and efficient, allowing you to create varying converting types of content specific to a channel.

  Moreover, you can also identify which channel is least effective so you will have the option to either improve traffic from other sources or just focus your efforts on where your main source of traffic is.

  Use these best practices to drive those conversion numbers up. You can even check out these digital marketing tips to help optimize your efforts.

  Key takeaways

  Creating a digital marketing plan takes a lot of time and resources, but it’s well worth the effort in the long run. With proper planning, you can stay on top of the competition and cement yourself as a key player in your industry. To summarize this article, here are three key takeaways:

  • Set SMART targets that help you work towards your long-term goals. Setting Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reasonable, and Time-Based goals should allow you to think of the big picture while having goals that you can reach based on your current marketing setup. Think of them as baby steps that get larger and wider until you reach the next stage!
  • Create products that serve your customers better. This not only helps you improve your own conversion rates, but it also helps you better understand your role as a business in improving your customers’ quality of life.
  • Test your ideas. Being flexible and keeping an open mind to new ideas can allow you to prepare contingencies should your initial plans fall short. That said, an effective digital marketing strategy can help you identify the most effective ways to reach your customers.

  If you have any other questions, send us a message via our Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts.

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