Without question the one thing right now that’s emerging as critical in the success of your business its going to be your online or digital marketing efforts. Not only that, but your lack of knowledge about exactly where to start or what to do can hinder any success you have .The whole process can be very confusing and many feel overwhelmed. So its usually best that you think think things through prior to any kind of formalised strategy – which is usually done by putting in place an easy to follow digital marketing action plan.
So why create an action plan?
Many small businesses will rush in all ‘gun-ho’ when it comes to starting out online or doing digital marketing without thinking things through and careful thought about what they’re doing or their objectives. These days getting a website up along with Facebook page can be quick and easy and many will think you just need to sit back, relax and wait for the customers to starting calling or emailing.
The reality is this won’t happen unless you’ve got it all mapped out what you’re realistically wanting to achieve from all your digital marketing tasks before you even start. If you put together a basic easy to follow strategy, you’ll empower yourself to take daily focused action and in turn you’ll maximise to get successful results.
Step 1: Do your market research
The first phase in any form of marketing is to collect as much data or info on your target audience base as possible. Things like what exactly motivates them? who are they? But the most important one: where are they hanging out online – such as forum or Facebook groups or websites?
Step 2: Set your overall objective/goals
The very next step is to make a decision on precisely what you want to achieve from all your digital marketing campaign.
So an overall goal or object might be:
“Generate 50 new leads each month and convert at least 20 of those leads into new customers.”
Step 3: Choose your channels
Based on the information you now have, you then decide on what digital/online marketing channels you will use in getting to your goals.
Typically you would use:
- Online social media – Facebook groups or pages, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat etc…
- Websites and/or Forums
- Email marketing
- Content marketing (such lead gen opt-in pages with free report giveaways)
You should then set a specific objective key performance indicator for each of the chosen channel/campaigns.
For example:
- “Increase the business website traffic by 35% before the end of January 2018”
- “Add 1000 new subscribers to our email newsletter monthly subscriptions and have conversion rate of a least 10% into paying customers
- “Generate 400 new leads from Facebook ads within the next 60 days”
Step 4. Plan your actions
This is where it gets more precise and detailed about you propose to do. You break down your overall objectives into tasks for each day, week and month. Ensure that your task actions are realistic and you can manage them ok without it hindering your other day-to-day business operations and you become overwhelmed.
Step 5. Closely monitor results
It’s vital that you always measure your progress and results carefully. This is so you can adjust or tweak anything that is not working right. To do this so you need to choose the best in online tracking tools. So tracking your website traffic volumes you use Google Analytics, or email marketing results could be measured (such as open or click rates) via your auto-responder platform (e.g. Aweber).