How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan (for the second half of the year)

A digital marketing plan may sound like an overwhelming concept, but our digital marketing firm is here to help simplify your strategy. Having a key marketing partner to help drive your marketing plan forward is essential to achieving your marketing and overall business goal. 

What is a digital marketing plan?

A digital marketing plan is a blueprint for achieving the goals you have for your business. A sufficient digital marketing plan requires deep analysis into all levels of your business. It’s imperative to be aware of the current state of your business to understand how to approach each part of the marketing funnel. At the least, your marketing plan should include:

• Where you are today:
  • What are we offering (product/services)?
  • Current marketing efforts
  • Site health
  • Competitive landscape
• What are your (realistic) objectives?
  • Increase sales?
  • Improve ROI?
  • New user acquisition?
  • Customer retention?
  • Gain market share?
• Who is your ideal customer and what does your buyer persona look like?
  • Demographics: Age, Gender, Location, Income level, Interests
  • Online behavior
  • New vs. Returning
• How are you going to get there?
  • What kind of content are you using?
  • What keywords will you invest in?
  • What platforms will be utilized?
• How are you measuring results?
  • What are your main KPIs for success?

Power Digital is well equipped to support a robust digital marketing plan to help identify your target audience and define clear brand objectives across all marketing efforts. 

What is a marketing funnel?

A marketing funnel is the consumer journey from brand awareness to conversion. The most common steps a customer will go through include: 

• Awareness: customer’s first introduction to the brand
• Interest: customer engages with an ad or navigates to the site to learn more
• Intent: customer may conduct additional research or comparisons prior to making their decision
• Action: customer takes action, such as purchasing the product, signing up for the email list, or scheduling the appointment.

At Power Digital, we use an advanced marketing approach to tailor our messaging, creative, and strategies based on each stage of the funnel since each stage has a different goal. When generating brand awareness, our marketing goal is to attract new qualified customers to introduce them to our brand. When driving interest and intent, our goal is to provide a potential customer with the necessary information to overcome objections and increase their consideration for our product or service. Getting the customer to take the desired action is the ultimate outcome of the marketing funnel. 

Why do I need a digital marketing plan?

A cohesive omnichannel digital marketing plan is an essential tool for any business to drive sustainable growth. Planning your digital strategy allows you to analyze what marketing activity is currently working well for your business and what areas may need a little more help. If you’ve identified any opportunity gaps within your current digital marketing strategy, this further supports the need to implement a full-funnel digital marketing plan to advance your business. 

A full-funnel marketing plan allows you to set clear digital channel benchmarks and milestones so that you can see how you are pacing toward your year-end goals. This will allow you to analyze the progress of your campaign in real-time, and implement any adjustments to the marketing strategy to help keep you on track. 

What marketing tactics are most important in 2021?

As the pandemic took hold in 2020, many businesses were frantically trying to put together a digital marketing strategy and marketing tactics to navigate the new reality and impact it had on consumer behaviors. Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to create a permanent digital marketing campaign to continuously compete and evolve as consumer buyer habits change. 

1. Core Web Vitals – In June 2021, Google will release its next Page Experience Update, which measures site load time and interactivity. To ensure your overall search rankings aren’t negatively impacted, you’ll need to optimize for this update by checking the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console to see how your site is scoring and creating a plan for increasing those scores. 
2. Personalized Content – 2020 was impersonal.  After a year of very few in-person transactions, people crave personal experiences. Leverage your data to customize content marketing to your target audience and stand out in the online clutter. 
3. Retailer media networks – According to eMarketer, advertising on ecommerce platforms jumped 39% in 2020. ROI on Amazon and Walmart media platforms is extremely measurable, which is impacting the move to retailer media networks, allowing consumers to purchase from an ad on-site. 

How should the second half of the year be planned —including summer and holidays? 

When creating a full-funnel marketing plan, companies must account for seasonality in their businesses. Each season has specific events or holidays that change consumer behaviors and can propel sales.  

The second half of the year is ripe with these holidays and events.  Nearly 40% of all online sales occur in the last three months of the year. In addition to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holiday shopping season, the second half of the year also has Father’s Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Halloween. These are all events that a business owner should plan for and look to leverage for their company. 

Businesses should adjust their messaging, budgets, and approaches to leverage seasonal events.  From a budgeting standpoint, businesses should account for the rise in marketing costs that occur during these periods.  For instance, last year, at Power Digital, we saw CPC and CPM costs rise by as much as 40% in some e-commerce sectors during the holiday season.  Shoppers begin and end their holiday shopping earlier than ever, so businesses should plan their messaging and approach well in advance of each holiday and tailor their marketing strategies to fit their audiences and capitalize on holiday spending.  

I hope we succeeded in making a digital marketing plan seem less daunting and attainable! Power Digital is here to support you whether you are a seasoned brand with years of experience looking to take your brand to the next level or you are a start up trying to figure out where to begin. Either way, we’re excited to potentially partner together to reach your digital marketing goals!

Sources:

• https://www.cyberclick.net/numericalblogen/how-to-start-an-effective-digital-marketing-plan
• https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/
• https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/