Thinking about the future of your business can be scary. Thankfully, digital strategist Barry Alt offered up some tips for developing a digital marketing plan in the March issue of THE SHOP Magazine, which can help make the next few days, months, even years, a little less scary.
What’s a Digital Marketing Plan?
A digital marketing plan, Alt says, is a plan of action to help your company achieve its online goals. These plans should include carefully selected marketing channels and will help to increase your company’s exposure online.
Analyze Your Online Presence
Before developing your plan, Alt advises carrying out an internal and external SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis for your business, its online presence, your competitors and the industry as a whole. Asking yourself the proper questions will help clarify your online strengths
Know What You Want
A key to developing a digital marketing plan, Alt says, is establishing and defining your company’s overall objective, which should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.
Choose Your Methods
There are four things every business owner must remember when developing their marketing plan:
- Your Budget
- Your Audience
- Your Digital Channels
- Your Team
Be Flexible
Your plan is never going to be perfect, so it’s important to roll with the punches. Because of this, it’s necessary to continuously measure and monitor the performance of your business’s digital marketing efforts.
Key Steps to Success
- Create a measurement and monitoring plan
- Check the success of individual elements of your plan
- Take note of what is and isn’t working for your business
- Revisit previous analysis and budget allocations and try something new
Read the full story on how to develop a digital marketing plan in THE SHOP’s Digital Version.
