Creating a Digital Marketing plan in the most professional way possible is a great competitive advantage for any of our projects and, at the same time, it allows us to coordinate strategies and organize our work much better in general.

The actions carried out by companies in the Digital field are crucial to improve the results of a business in a specific market niche or in an environment as massive and extremely competitive as the Internet.

For this reason, also in the network, it is important to clearly define what we want to achieve and, in turn, draw a route or plan the actions that we will implement in a defined period of time to achieve those objectives ... In short, we must make a Marketing plan Digital.

Thematic content menu

  • What is a Digital Marketing plan and what is it for?
  • The 10 basic principles of Digital Marketing today
  • Benefits of creating a Digital Marketing plan
  • Does every business need to create their Digital Marketing plan?
  • Do you want to create a Digital Marketing plan for your business or Online project?
  • How to make a Digital Marketing plan step by step?
  • Let's see all this with an example
  • Tools for a Digital Marketing plan

What is a Digital Marketing plan and what is it for?

A Digital Marketing plan is a document where the objectives that we want to achieve in our company or business in the short, medium and long term are set, but it is also where the most appropriate strategies are chosen, designed and organized to achieve these objectives on the Internet.

This document should not be very long and should reflect the current situation of the market and the company, the objectives you want to achieve in a certain future and the planning of the actions that you will take to achieve them.

It is advisable to do it at the beginning of any project, but it must be flexible enough so that, once you put your company into operation, you can review the document and make the necessary changes according to the chosen strategy and the results obtained.

It should be flexible, for example, in the following situations:

  • Launch of a new product or service.
  • Innovation or renewal in the company.
  • Change of philosophy.
  • Reputation.
  • Business growth.
  • Entry of new clients or projects.
  • Adaptation to changes in the sector.

As you can see, there are many occasions when you will have to redo or modify your initial Digital Marketing plan. And knowing which are the most important principles in Marketing will help you create a more effective one that generates more income.

Therefore, before listing the benefits of creating a plan for your company, I want you to be even more clear about what Marketing is and what its principles are today.

Definition of Marketing

According to Philip Kotler , an economist and one of the fathers of Marketing in the modern era, his definition is:

It is a social and administrative process through which groups and individuals obtain what they need and want through generating, offering and exchanging valuable products with their peers.

Another definition of Marketing that I like very much and I find it very revealing is the following: it is knowing how to detect the needs of consumers and to be able to satisfy them.

And I really like this definition because it means discovering those needs together to your satisfaction, something that can be perfectly achieved with a good Digital Marketing plan.

There are, according to Kotler , 10 basic principles and below I am going to list them adapted 100% to Online, to serve as a guide before starting to create your Digital Marketing plan:

The 10 basic principles of Digital Marketing today

  1. Never forget that the user or consumer has the power.
  2. You have to address a segmented Target audience.
  3. Offer a clear value proposition about your products or services.
  4. A good distribution of content matters (and a lot).
  5. You have to know how to adapt and incorporate new media and digital channels.
  6. Always keep track of the metrics and ROI .
  7. Focus more on loyalty and not just profit.
  8. Marketing must be understood as a whole, internally and externally.
  9. Strong (relational) synergies must be created.
  10. It is important to have the best technological support.

Benefits of creating a Digital Marketing plan

  1. You get a complete vision of the needs of the market, your competition and your current situation.
  2. It allows you to identify who you are addressing and why you are doing it, but also to see how to help your potential customers.
  3. It is a roadmap so as not to deviate from the path.
  4. Thanks to it you can start generating income thanks to the exhaustive research of your target audience. Know your needs and create services and products based on the information you have.
  5. It allows you to measure and verify what works - and what does not - within your Digital Marketing strategy.
Important: we can create both a Digital Marketing plan at the global level of the company or one about a business sector, a product or a specific service.

Be that as it may, the fundamental thing is that the indestructible base of the actions and strategies that you determine in your plan are focused on the needs of your potential clients or target audience.

And watch out! If you only base your planning on your products and services or on the needs of your company, the chances are that your plan will fail.

Why? Very simple, because you are not focusing on what really matters: customers and users .

Never forget that the product is a consequence. The essential thing is to know your target audience perfectly and create products and services based on their needs.

My advice is, therefore, that you propose a marketing strategy or plan well focused on those needs so that it is really effective and brings you closer to achieving your goals.

Now that you know what a Digital Marketing plan is, how to approach it and the importance it has for your business, let's get a little more into the matter and begin to draw up our plan.

It may be easier said than done, but if you do all of this in a structured way and step by step, it is much easier than you think. In addition, the degree of difficulty is much lower than the benefits of carrying it out.

Does every business need to create their Digital Marketing plan?

Without a doubt, the answer is yes.

Regardless of the size of your project, you will always need to set goals and strategies. Without them, you will not be able to establish and define what actions to carry out, or worse, you may carry them out, but without any order and meaning.

So, seeking to make things a little easier for you and help you plan better, in this guide I have the collaboration of Aroa Collazo to discuss this exciting topic in more depth and detail.

She has written us a great and extensive tutorial with which she explains in depth and in great detail, everything that goes into making a Digital Marketing plan step by step.

Do you want to create a Digital Marketing plan for your business or Online project?

Now, well ... Nothing better than a reflection to start talking about a topic. And better yet, if it is asked as a question.

The question, in this case, is:

Do you know the difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses?

The answer is much simpler than you think. And this is:

The former have a plan, the latter don't.

I firmly believe that you deserve to be in the group of those who succeed and that is why, in this post on how to make a Digital Marketing plan , I am going to give you all the keys to create a very complete one.

And it is that when you want to achieve your goals, you must draw a roadmap, so as not to get lost and reach your final goal.

In the layout of this route you will have, first of all, to define your target audience and their needs, and then create the action plan to publicize your project, product or service.

My goal in this tutorial is not only to help you create your action plan, but also to help you focus on the key points of a successful strategy .

Now that you know all this, you have 2 options:

  1. Implement everything that you are going to learn in this post.
  2. Passing by and not giving it the importance it deserves.

If you have chosen to stay, grab a pen and paper to start outlining the step-by-step plan that will help you achieve the success you want with your digital project.

How to make a Digital Marketing plan step by step?

1) Analyze the current market situation

Well. The first thing we are going to do is analyze both the current market situation, our competition and where you are (see: how to do a market study? ).

And here is something to keep in mind: the mistake that many entrepreneurs or businessmen make is that they open their business to offer products and services that in many cases people do not need.

Thus, even if your product is good, it inevitably fails because it does not meet the needs of your target customers .

That is why you must analyze what you know how to do and how you can adapt it to the current market situation to help as many people as possible.

The key, then, is to help .

Engrave this word to yourself, since in the process of creating your Marketing plan everything has to revolve around helping your ideal client . Later we will focus on the sale, which is the ultimate or ultimate goal of all planning.

► How to analyze the market?

Nothing better to develop this point than to do it with an example.

Let's say that you are a personal development coach, which is so fashionable now, and that you are creating your Digital Marketing plan to sell your consultation sessions and your courses through the internet .

Your goal, naturally, is to find out how you can help as many people as possible with your knowledge, skills and the resources you have, that is, what problem you can solve for your ideal client.

How are you going to do it? Well, doing (like Sherlock Holmes) an investigative work.

To do this, you must answer these questions:

  • What social networks are they on?
  • What content do they share?
  • What are the most frequent searches that your target audience does on Google?
  • To what extent do they demand your product or service?
  • What is your economic, demographic, cultural or social situation?

To be able to solve all these questions (and some more), you can use tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, Metricool or Buzzsumo .

Since the tools play a very important role in the research and creation of the Digital Marketing plan, at the end I have created a specific section with the necessary tools, where I explain what their functions are and where in your plan you should use them .

Thanks to them you will be able to obtain relevant and valuable information about the searches or search intentions of your target audience, to which I will dedicate an entire section to explain how to create the profile of your ideal client.

Without a doubt, the most complete tool from which to get data on your competition and your target audience is SEMrush .

In SEMrush you will be able to obtain relevant and valuable information about the searches or search intentions of your target audience, analyze the positioning of your competition, know which keywords obtain the best results, thoroughly analyze their websites and publications, etc.

2) How to analyze the competition to make a Digital Marketing plan?

Once we have analyzed what the market needs and its situation, we will give way to other tools to thoroughly analyze our competition.

But beware! With all this we do not want to copy anyone, but simply to see their positioning in the market, their weaknesses, their brand reputation, etc.

In short, we seek to know everything necessary to try to position ourselves above the competition.

Let's see what data you can know about your skills for free:

  • SEO positioning.
  • Number of followers in current social networks and their evolution.
  • Average of engagement in social networks: likes, rts, favorites, comments, etc. (Buzzsumo tool).
  • Media engagement on your website or blog: social share and comments (Sharedcount tool).
  • Content Marketing and typology of those shared content.
  • Ranking Alexa, Ahrefs or SEMrush.

Continuing with the previous example, we will see what the competition does in terms of personal development courses or what are the related topics that have the highest rate of shares in RRSS.

In the following screenshot I show you a search for those same terms in the Buzzsumo tool.

For this I will show you examples of how to analyze your competition thanks to SEMrush and Ahrefs. And how can you measure (thanks to Alexa) the popularity and authority index of a domain.

I also want to show you in the following video how to analyze a website with Ahrefs.

Your mission, as you can see, is to find out all the information you have at your fingertips.

My recommendation is that you dump all this data in an excel, and then sort and filter them quickly and easily.

3) How to analyze your current situation in the market?

Most likely, you are considering creating your Digital Marketing plan after verifying that things are not working as you want. But let me tell you that you can do much more before that ...

Ideally, you should start creating it at the beginning of your project, when you may not even have data with which to make actual measurements.

The good thing about this situation is that we do have data to measure and improve, and that all is not lost.

To do this, let's see everything related to the presence of your website on the internet.

► Metrics to measure the current status of your online project

  • Ranking Alexa, SEMrush or Ahrefs.
  • SEO ranking.
  • Backlinks.
  • Monthly visits.
  • Viewed pages.
  • Traffic sources: organic-referred.
  • Search results.
  • Search engine keyword positioning.
  • Presence in social networks.
  • Heat maps and content analysis with the sumo tool.

It is also good to check very carefully which online media have communicated information related to your company:

  • Media that have published it: positive-negative.
  • Mention in RRSS with recommendations.
  • Reviews on special pages.

My main objective with this post is to make things as easy as possible for you. For this, I also leave you a list with the metrics to take into account in social networks and blog (this is useful both to analyze the current situation of your online project and of your competition).

► Presence in social networks

  • Community metrics: number of followers in social networks.
  • Contents - Shared content type and content type usually works best.
  • Engagement metrics: number of likes, shares and comments.
  • Frequency: number of times you publish in the different channels, publication times and other actions by users (share).
  • Conversion metrics: number of clicks on links, sales by content promotion.
  • Customer service: how are you managing customer service; average response time, positive or negative feeling that fans of the brand have.

One of the best management and analysis tools for social networks most used , in my opinion, is Metricool .

Once you have all these data uploaded and ordered in an excel, you will have your famous "SWOT", and with it everything you need to know about the market, the competition and your current situation to define your Weaknesses, Strengths, Threats and Opportunities.

4) How to do a SWOT analysis?

Continuing with the example I gave, if you are a personal development coach and you have to create your SWOT , it could be something like this:

  • Weaknesses: limited capital, lack of presence in your market,
  • Strengths: training, fresh vision of the business, good contacts, personalized service (coach for entrepreneurs)
  • Threats: high competition
  • Opportunities: high demand due to the growing number of entrepreneurs

Always being clear about your weaknesses and strengths is essential for your Digital Marketing plan to be realistic and adapted to what you can contribute.

5) How to define your target customer or buyer persona?

This is one of the most important points (for me) in creating a Marketing plan, and it is a point that most people tend to take lightly.

► Defining our target customer or buyer persona

Typically, we have several profiles of ideal clients or " persona buyers ".

One of my favorite series is Criminal Minds. The first thing they do in all cases is to analyze the crime scene, that is, to start investigating with the data they have to find the profile of the offender.

His investigation is guided by this profile to achieve his objective: to capture the culprit of the crime.

As they do in "Criminal Minds", you have already analyzed the crime scene (current market situation, competition, etc.) and then you must create the profile of your ideal client .

It is, without more, to create a fictitious portrait that helps us define our type of clients to get to know them better and design actions that report results based on it.

► Factors to take into account to define your ideal client

  • Behavior: how it interacts with your brand and through which channels it does so.
  • Interests: what you like and what you do with your life.
  • Demographic data: age, sex and work.
  • Ambitions: what you aspire to and what you really want.
  • Contents: what format do you prefer.
  • Searches: with which keywords it searches for you and associates you.
  • Shopping: what you usually buy and where you do it.
  • Needs: what your audience needs from your brand.
  • Obstacles: what prevents them from taking the actions you want, such as a certain purchase.

Once you have analyzed all this, I recommend that you create a personalized template with names, surnames, history, objectives and challenges; with a professional environment and the current situation of your buyer persona.

And I will take one more step:

Give it a name and a face! Why? Because putting a face on it will help you even more to identify with your client and achieve total personalization.

Now: when creating your buyer persona, you should not forget about the buyer journey.

► What is the buyer journey?

The buyer journey is the creation of a model that will allow you to monitor the behavior, needs and problems of the target audience during the purchase process.

Having very well defined within your plan who is your buyer person and what is the buyer journey, it will be very useful in future actions when carrying out your strategies.

6) How to establish the budget of your Digital Marketing plan?

Before starting with the objectives, we have to analyze the budget, since it is essential to know what budget we have to meet these objectives or not.

Here you have to be very realistic and always pull up, since unexpected expenses will always arise .

► Factors to take into account to create your Digital Marketing budget

  • The budget for tools and material in general.
  • Budget for specific professionals in a specific area (SEO, copywriter , community manager, programmer, graphic designer, etc.).
  • Budgets for advertising: Facebook ads , Google Ads , etc.
  • General expenses for the achievement of the objectives.
  • Budget for administrative procedures.

By creating a realistic budget, you will be able to form realistic and economically achievable objectives .

7) How to create your Digital Marketing proposal step by step?

Now let's get down to business.

You already have all the information you need to determine your goals and the strategy you are going to carry out to achieve them.

Now is the time to define your goals.

► Definition of objectives

To set your goals, you must adhere to the SMART rule. Your goals must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-specific.

Now you have to define the strategies and tactics to carry out these objectives. Among these strategies you must define:

  • The objectives of your business (what you need).
  • The objectives of Marketing (how to get what you need).
  • The strategies to achieve them.
  • The tactics to carry out the objectives.

The ideal is to design a plan with the objectives set for more than 6 months , to obtain sufficient data to measure.

Once we review the objectives, they will vary over time, depending on whether they are met or not.

► Example of quantitative Marketing objectives:

  • Increase the community of followers on social networks.
  • Increase sales through the internet.
  • Make a new customer acquisition through the internet.
  • Increase the number of registered users in the company.

► Example of qualitative Marketing objectives:

  • Increase the positioning and notoriety of the company.
  • Increase the geographical penetration of the company.
  • Improve customer service through the internet.
  • Develop new products focused on current customer needs.

What we are dealing with with these objectives is to improve our positioning in the following areas:

  • Branding or brand creation: to achieve recognition and notoriety.
  • SEO positioning: necessary to receive web traffic.
  • Capture of followers and leads to create a database to which we can sell our products or services.
  • Sales: achieving sales to increase income.
  • Customer service: taking care of customer service to retain and care for our current customers.

We are now going to further define our objectives and make them more specific . For this I leave you some examples so that you get an idea and define your own.

► Real example of objectives of the Digital Marketing plan

All these actions are aimed at obtaining more traffic on your website and getting quality leads that become end customers of your personal development courses.

Among these objectives we could consider:

  • Increase web traffic by 20%
  • Get 1000 followers on Instagram in 6 months (starting to create community)
  • Reduce the bounce rate on your website to less than 30%
  • Increase the average time spent on your website to more than one minute
  • Lead acquisition: 500-600 subscribers in 6 months
  • Increase the current open rate of emails to subscribers by 20%
  • Increase sales through the web and social networks by 15%

The goal is to achieve the achievement of all the objectives that we have set ourselves and for this it is necessary to take into account these variables:

  • Scope: reaching the public
  • Attraction: motivate the public to visit us.
  • Conversion: get the audience to take the desired action (subscribe, buy, sign up for a webinar )
  • Profit: achieve a real profit
  • Fall in love : if you make your client fall in love, he will surely repeat with you, and that is what you want: to sell and build loyalty.

► How to make the strategy in your Digital Marketing plan?

Now that you have all your general and specific objectives in writing, we are going to create the strategy and tactics to achieve them.

The strategy that we are going to define will lead us to achieve our objectives. It is also a parameter that we are going to vary depending on whether we achieve some results or others.

For this, again I will take several examples so that you can see it more clearly and you only have to substitute your objectives for mine.

If your goal is to increase your community of followers on social networks, here are examples of actions to take to achieve your goals :

Aim:

  • Increase the community of followers on social networks (1000 followers on Facebook and Instagram).

Strategies:

  1. Create Facebook and Instagram giveaways for free coaching sessions with you.
  2. Generate interesting and viral content on topics related to personal development.
  3. Offer special discounts for your courses to followers.
  4. Create advertising campaigns to get followers (investment according to budget).

Tactics:

  1. Advertise it through Facebook.
  2. Generate informative and entertaining content that can go viral.
  3. Offers and discounts only for followers on Social Networks.
  4. Create campaigns to attract new Facebook Ads fans.

As you can see, what it is about is to determine an objective, define some actions and see how we are going to do to achieve those results.

Remember that I am basing all the examples on a business oriented to the sale of personal development courses.

According to each sector, some strategies may work better than others, it is a matter of testing and measuring.

Aim:

  • Increase the recruitment of Leads through the Internet (20%).

Strategies:

  1. Create advertising campaigns.
  2. Generate agreements with influential people in your sector.
  3. Free trials of your products or services.
  4. Creation of SEO content strategy aimed at your target audience.

Tactics:

  1. Campaign on different social networks: Facebook Ads, Linkedin Ads, Twitter Ads. etc.
  2. Request guest posts, round posts, interviews, collaborations, etc.
  3. Sending to more active followers and influencers in the sector free products or tests of the service.
  4. Creation of strategic posts to position keywords and include lead magnet in those contents.

As I mentioned previously, these objectives will vary during the evolution of your project. But, if you are clear about how to define them, the path will be much easier.

But beware! When you are outlining the strategy to achieve these goals, keep in mind that you can then carry it out and measure its results.

So leave the shame aside and go out there to get to know you and your project.

► Networking

At this point I want to give you some advice:

Use networking as a strategy to make yourself known, your brand and what you offer. I am writing this post thanks to attending Miguel Florido's event , the DSM Valencia, where I met José.

Make it your goal to attend all the events you can related to your sector, in order to meet potential clients, influencers, sponsors, etc.

Personal development conferences, talks by other professionals, webinars and the presentation of books related to the sector always come in handy, for example.

And it is that networking has existed since the market exists. Already in medieval times, merchants went from town to town, attending fairs related to their profession.

And do not forget that if networking is so old and continues to be practiced, it is because it works.

In this life it is essential to surround yourself with valuable people who are aligned with your values. Therefore, my biggest advice is to jump into introducing yourself. Little by little you will reap the fruits of this networking.

8) Promotion phase within the Marketing plan

Now you have to draw up the strategy to promote your products or services.

You must bear in mind that not all promotion channels work the same, so you have to decide which channels you are going to be on and which promotion works best in each of them.

The content promotion phase is one of the most important within the digital strategy and in which we must put great effort.

My recommendation: never make a "copy and paste" of content. Act smart and, once again, analyze what can work best for you on each channel.

An important factor to define is the frequency of publications that you are going to make on the blog and on different social networks, in order to say what investment in advertising you will make in each of them.

My recommendations are as follows:

  • Blog: 1 or 2 posts a week.
  • Facebook: 2 content a week.
  • Twitter: 6 tweets a day.
  • Instagram: 2 photos or videos a week and 4 or 5 Stories a day.
  • Linkedin: 3 contents a week.

Once the frequency is defined, it will be necessary to deal with the variety of the contents.

This should be +/- of:

  • 40% third party content.
  • 30% brand content.
  • 20% offers / promotions.
  • 10% brand contests.

Then it will be necessary to decide whether to invest in the paid promotion (or not).

9) Analytical phase within the Digital Marketing plan

We now enter the last phase of the Marketing plan, the analytics.

This is a fundamental part and one that many leave far behind, thus committing a serious mistake.

Well thought out, if we cannot measure the impact of our actions, we will not know what is working for us within the Digital Marketing strategy and what is not.

Therefore, in order to implement improvements in the execution of the plan, you have to know how to measure and what KPIs to measure for your actions.

If you do not carry out this step rigorously, all your previous work may be in vain or not of the desired results.

Ideally, you should be writing down the data weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.

► Website and blog

  • Percentage of visits.
  • Viewed pages.
  • Bounce Rate.
  • Abandonment rate.
  • Average duration of the session.
  • Most viewed pages on your website.
  • Public: age, sex, population.
  • Actions taken: purchase or subscription.
  • Number of subscribers.
  • Number of sales.

► Social networks

  • Engagement of your publications: shared, favorites, likes.
  • Medium range of organic publication.
  • Average paid publication reach.
  • Increase in the number of fans.
  • Time and day with the best publication data.
  • Clicks on the call to action.

► Web positioning

  • General position of your website in the sherps.
  • Number of keywords positioned.
  • Backlinks.
  • Domain authority.

► Branding

  • Social mentions.
  • Recognition by other professionals.

By measuring all these metrics you will be able to keep an absolute control of all your actions .

My recommendation is that, even if you see that the results are disastrous after three months (for example), give a certain margin to the strategies so that they work and do not make too many sudden changes.

At the SEO level, for example, if you have just launched your project you need more than 6 months to see some results , so be patient and do not despair.

Tools for a Digital Marketing plan

In this last section I would like to tell you about the tools necessary to carry out your strategy.

I have already been naming some of them throughout the post, although others are new.

Here is a brief description of what each one is for when creating your Marketing plan.

  • Excel : it will be essential to collect and organize data
  • Keyword Tool.io - Ideal for keyword and long tail searches
  • SEMrush : perfect for keyword research and competition monitoring.
  • Alexa: it is a tool that measures the visibility of a web page, along with its popularity.
  • Answer The Public : gives clues about long-tail searches that users do (data extracted from Google)
  • Buzzsumo offers you data to know which are the most shared posts on social networks (related to a specific topic).
  • Ahrefs : helps to search for the most relevant content by keywords.
  • Similar Web : analyze both the web traffic and the web applications of your competition.
  • Sistrix : offers you the visibility index of your competition and the most relevant SEO data.
  • Moz: it is perfect to know the authority of a domain.
  • DinoRANK or Screaming Frog : for SEO On-Page themes.
  • Rivaliq: ideal for generating social media audits, analyzing behavioral, influence and reach data.
  • Metricool : is a free tool for the management, planning and measurement of social networks and blogs.
  • Google analytics : it is one of the best tools to analyze the data of your website: the number of visits, the page views, the unique users, the average time of stay on your website, what type of user visits you by age, gender , country, etc., as well as the traffic acquisition channels.
  • Twitter Analytics - Perfect for getting Twitter behavior and traffic data.
  • Facebook Analytics : Ideal for obtaining traffic and behavior data from Facebook.
  • SiteAlerts: allows you to monitor your competition, what their conversions are, where their traffic comes from and where it goes and what tools they use.
  • Amazon : offers you information written by the users themselves regarding different products; With it you can get many ideas about the needs, objections and likes that your audience has.

Conclusions to be closing

What do you think of all the steps to follow?

So that you have them a little clearer, and as a summary, I share with you the following infographic.