Who cares for a digital marketing plan…right? Particularly when you are already on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more… Maybe you also have a content marketing calendar and a regular fresh content to go.
Not just that a paid traffic budget and campaigns running on leading ad networks.
All this without a digital marketing plan…
Yes, you see where I am getting at? Most of the businesses are knee deep into “social media marketing” but have no clue why they got into it… or even what they want from it.
They say planning is essential for success and there is no difference when it comes to digital marketing. The biggest loss of not having a plan is that you can’t really go back and prove your progress… other than showing an increase in likes and shares or increase in indexed pages.
All these measures are good to have but don’t really make a lot of business sense. Why? because these measures do not have a direct impact on the health of your business. The lifeblood of your business is leads and sales, not likes, shares or loves.
In short, without a digital marketing plan you lack a sound digital strategy and most likely your spend is going down the sinkhole.
So what exactly is a digital marketing plan and do you need one if you are already all over the social networks?
Simply put digital marketing plan lets you address 4 fundamental aspects to have higher success in generating leads and sales.
- Tells you where you are right now. (Particularly helpful to “jump the gun” fans.
- Helps you set your goals (business objectives), reinstate your purpose and decide on vehicles you want to use in your digital marketing.
- Helps you assess your capabilities and resources, identify opportunity areas and set clear expectations, goals, and benchmarks.
- Helps you set the target for ROI and lets you fine-tune your approach over time increasing your chances of success. (Profits and business growth)
Believe it or not, digital marketing has to be driven by numbers and the ones that really count (Leads and sales) and once this is clearly understood and implemented results can be far-reaching.
A clearly charted digital marketing plan addresses the “whys” and “hows” thereby addressing the strategic part of achieving the business goals. Not just that it also helps better understand the target market, competitors, tactics, channels/vehicles and measurement of performance.
One of the most important aspect that any business needs to have the pulse of is “Cost per lead” and “Cost per sale”. The best part is if you have a well planned digital marketing strategy you can easily track costs and returns from your efforts.
This gives more clarity on how much you might be willing to spend in cold outreach or branding and awareness level campaigns.
Further, if you want to really utilize all the superpowers of digital marketing its time you started using direct response marketing widely across your marketing channels.
After-all the biggest score of online marketing is its real-time reach with immediate feedback and then why not reach the right people, engage them, qualify and sell them when they are ready.
Studies suggest a properly qualified lead is more likely to buy, results in the faster sales cycle and increases the rate of conversion. The best part it lets you automate the whole lead gen, nurturing and conversion cycle. (Now imagine how it impacts your scalability)
In short Digital marketing, planning will let you tie together all the loose ends and get result oriented. The more you delay farther you are from the truth and making right moves on your digital marketing spend.
Start with your digital marketing planning today! Ask me HOW.