A digital marketing plan promotes products & services online through various platforms. It implies optimizing websites, mobile applications, or social channels.
What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan of action designed to achieve specific digital marketing objectives by targeting digital channels, such as search engines and social media. These strategies focus on increasing the visibility and reach of the digital brand, driving traffic to websites, engaging customers with content, generating leads, and ultimately converting them into paying customers. Digital marketing strategies should be tailored to meet your business goals and needs while remaining cost-effective. The digital marketing strategy should incorporate tactics such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, email campaigns, content creation, and other digital methods that can help grow brand awareness, drive traffic and increase conversions. A successful digital marketing strategy consists of original research, creative ideas, and data-backed insights for maximum digital marketing impact.
A digital marketing strategy is an effective approach to help businesses reach their digital goals. It should include tactics that maximize digital brand visibility and engagement, drive traffic, generate leads, and convert them into customers. An effective digital marketing strategy should be tailored to meet specific business objectives while staying cost-effective. By utilizing original research, creative ideas, and data-backed insights, digital marketers can create an effective digital marketing plan that will help grow their business.
Building a strategy is a necessary step before implementing a digital marketing plan. The strategy must provide effective solutions to any issue recorded in the business brief.
To develop a strong digital marketing strategy, brands must:
- define reachable goals
- collect market data (competitor benchmark, target customer profiles, business opportunities, etc.)
- confirm a financial budget
From this preliminary information, businesses could craft a plan that will cover the following 6 elements:
- website development
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- content marketing
- email marketing
- social media marketing
- paid ads
SEO in Digital Marketing
SEO is one of the most important parts of digital marketing. It implies a long-term commitment, but it is the most cost-effective digital marketing strategy to follow.
It can be a powerful digital marketing strategy if done correctly. It helps improve visibility, build brand awareness, and increase website traffic. SEO also allows you to target specific customers who are looking for products or services related to your business. In addition, SEO is cost-effective and can help you achieve long-term results without spending a lot of money on digital marketing campaigns. Finally, it’s an effective way to stay ahead of the competition by keeping up with the latest trends in digital marketing strategies. All these benefits make SEO an essential part of any digital marketing strategy.
By using appropriate keywords and optimizing your content according to search engine algorithms, you can ensure that potential customers are able to find your website easily through search engine result pages. SEO also helps to improve user experience since it promotes content that is relevant and easily accessible. When customers have a positive experience on your website, they are more likely to stay longer and be converted into customers. Furthermore, SEO enables improved customer engagement as it allows for direct interaction with potential customers through digital channels such as social media posts and blogs.
Overall, SEO can help digital marketing strategies become more effective by improving visibility, building brand awareness, increasing website traffic, targeting specific audiences, and providing an improved user experience. By taking advantage of the benefits that SEO offers, digital marketers can ensure that their digital marketing campaigns are successful in achieving desired results.
People use search engines to browse the internet. SEO allows brands, products, and services to get online visibility. In other words, SEO makes things “discoverable” across the internet.
Once people find you online, you still need to convert them into paying customers. Again, SEO is the solution to reach this business goal.
Search engine algorithms are constantly progressing. Your company must follow up on the changes to stay on top of Google. Strong SEO ensures that online users engage with your website.
Digital Marketing Plan
Once the strategy is approved, it is time to implement the digital marketing plan. It includes:
- a road-mapping & clear milestones
- a list of every person in charge & stakeholders
- the current market trends
- the goals to achieve & their respective KPIs
- a competitor benchmark
- a list of client personas
- the tasks to perform (ideally ordered in a GANTT chart)
This digital marketing plan can be a long-term campaign or a simpler seasonal one (for example, a Christmas products sale).
To illustrate better, check this case study of a complete marketing strategy to promote a fitness business.
Digital Marketing Plan: In-House Vs. Outsourced
By outsourcing work to a digital marketing strategist rather than in-house, businesses rely on the partnered agency to predict trends and tackle challenges on their behalf.
For example, link-building & outreach work is not something that can be done by a small team. To maintain low costs, you must develop this business at scale.
Many companies outsource their content marketing. The most common reason is that copywriting is a time-consuming task that requires skills. Blogs, videos, images, and animations are better produced by a team of professionals, rather than seasoned marketers.
A solid digital marketing partner covers all those needs. They are the best to deliver suitable digital marketing plans to their clients.
Build a Digital Marketing Plan with an Agency
Companies outsourcing their digital marketing plans & campaign execution first need to communicate their project brief. Goals, timelines, and budgeting are the most important items to share in priority. From this information, the digital agency will be able to advise.
Before outsourcing your digital marketing plan, make sure your business actually needs this external support. There are 4 points to check out in order to make a decision:
- high internal costs
- lack of internal skills
- lack of time
- lack of digital interest
When it comes to digital marketing, outsourcing your strategy to an agency can have many benefits. Not only will you receive the benefit of expertise and knowledge, but an agency can also provide scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiencies.
By partnering with a digital marketing agency, you are tapping into their experience and resources that will help you maximize your digital presence. An experienced digital marketing team can develop a customized strategy tailored to your organization’s needs and goals. They can also suggest digital tactics and technologies that would be appropriate for your audience and budget.
An agency is well-equipped to handle the scalability associated with digital campaigns. As digital campaigns grow in complexity, it often requires multiple teams from different departments to manage the digital marketing strategy. An agency can provide the necessary resources and manpower to manage digital campaigns at any scale.
In addition, an agency brings flexibility to digital marketing strategies, allowing you to adjust your digital marketing efforts as needed. Through changes in technology and digital trends, an agency is able to stay on top of current digital practices and implement them effectively for its digital goals.
Finally, outsourcing your digital marketing strategy with an agency can result in cost efficiencies. By leveraging their existing relationships with platform providers, agencies are able to secure discounted rates that can help lower overall costs associated with digital campaigns.
If any of those points concern your company, you should consider hiring digital experts.
