A digital marketing plan determines the type of target audience that is driven to the website and the CTA (call to action) we want the user to do when visiting the site. The CTA might be to download a pdf relating to a service, complete the website’s form to register their interest in a particular service or purchase a product.

The following process has been adapted using an array of best practice business tools to develop a digital marketing plan that creates results-orientated campaigns;

1. Situation analysis

Situation analysis defines your current situation including the relationship with your customers and the position in the market with your competitors. This is the first stage in developing a comprehensive marketing plan because we cannot plan into the future without knowing our current position. Consequently there is a need to determine the current status of your business model to enable us to define key performance indicators (KPIs) that will empower a process that is accountable and easy to measure (SMART).

Digital marketing can be broadly divided into two categories; paid media and owned media. Paid media is where a brand pays a fee to leverage a communication channel such as paid search or display advertisements and is akin to building on rented land. Owned media is where the brand owns the communication channel such as its website or its database. Obviously owned media represents far better value for money and is much more powerful than paid media as competitors do not have access to it because you control the medium.

Many firms use mass marketing techniques whereby they are sending the same message to all their subscribers irrespective of its relevancy to each individual client. However mass marketing has lost its effectiveness due to technological advancements that have resulted in a requirement to switch to integrated multi-channel marketing and segmentation.