Digital Marketing Strategies: Ultimate Guide to make a Digital Marketing Plan

Digital marketing has become the heart of the marketing departments of organizations. The reason is simple, more reach, improved conversion rates and higher revenues. This shows that Digital marketing has become so crucial in today’s world of marketing. However, this power is useless when it is not properly optimized or strategized. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, you need a digital marketing strategy to build up your revenue. Before discussing the formulation of a digital marketing plan for a business, let us understand what digital marketing strategy is.

Also Read: Importance of digital marketing for businesses in 2021

Digital Marketing strategy can be understood as a plan to achieve the goals of Digital Marketing. It is a plan of action developed in order to achieve the set goals. When Digital Marketing strategies are set right, they help attract more traffic, generate more leads and therefore, the business grows.  

Why are Digital Marketing Strategies Important?

Having a strategy to achieve a goal is very crucial. It helps optimise the workflows and review data analytics, which leads to continuous improvement in digital marketing plans. 

• Provides Direction: The companies that do not have a digital strategy do not have any clear goals. Digital marketing strategies provide a clear direction to the companies to achieve their long-term goals. 
• Cost-effective: Digital Marketing is cost-effective as it brings yields, better ROI on the investments made. Promoting through traditional marketing channels like televisions is very expensive.
• Ease in Measuring Results: It is very easy to track digital marketing efforts. By using digital marketing analytic tools, it can easily be measured how people engage with the promotions done by the company. The data is collected even when a click is made, which helps reach the target market with much ease.
• Builds up a reputation: Digital marketing creates a positive image of the brand. It creates an opportunity to generate more leads and convert more potential customers. 
• Guarantee the brand’s survival: Initiating a business is challenging but maintaining it and running it in the market is even more challenging. Digital marketing ensures that the business runs and reaches maximum customers. People are very active on the Internet, making it easier for the customers to reach a vast number of people. As per Omnicore, there are more than 500 million daily active users on Instagram.  In addition, people spend one in every 6 minutes on online platforms. 

How to make a Digital Marketing Plan?

A Digital Marketing plan is a document that shares the details about all the company’s digital marketing campaigns. These details include business goals, strategies to achieve business goals, digital channels, action plan, and budgets set for the campaigns.

Here are the steps which are required to create your digital marketing plan:

1. Brand definition

To commence, a brand definition is to be set, which displays the Unique Selling Points and background of the brand so that it can be pitched to the target audience. That establishes the image of the brand, which let the customers choose you over competitors.

2.  Build Buyer Personas

Buyer personas can be understood as a description of your target audience — a kind of fictional group that carries the potential customers’ characteristics. For creating buyer personas, you need to have information like Location, Age, Income, Interests, goals and more about the customers.  This information will assist in forming the ideal buyer persona. 

Once, a buyer persona is formed, you can easily identify your target audience in order to run the campaign. For example, if you own a cosmetic store, you will have an individual buyer persona for men and women. Buyer persona would help you create the campaign to display the most relevant marketing messages to the target audience. 

3. Setting goals and Objectives

Before starting the campaign, a goal should be set to ensure the performance tracking of the campaign. The goal can be to increase the conversion percentage or gain more leads or visitors to your website. The goals should be measurable and attainable at a specific time. For example, instead of saying, “We will generate 1000 leads”, say instead, “We will aim to generate 1000 leads in the next six months”. This will help you to attain the goals faster.

4. Plan for Content

You need to generate an idea for the kind of content you are going to use through your campaigns. A content calendar can be made, and the content can be planned accordingly. The content should be specifically focused on the buyer persona. Relevant and highly searched keywords should also be planned. You can consider taking up a Digital Marketing Course to understand everything in detail.

5. Selection of the Digital Marketing Channels

After setting up your goals, you need to select the channels through which you want to reach your target customers. The channels of digital marketing are the platforms that are used to reach the target audience for marketing the brands’ products and services. There are different digital marketing channels, which can be used:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Search Engine Marketing 
• Email marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing

The most appropriate method can be used to reach your target audience.

Also Read: How to use Social Media Strategy to grow your business?

6. Budget setting

Budget is the estimation of a business’ revenue and expenses for a specific period. This will let you know how much you can spend on your campaign. The total amount to be spent should be assessed, and then it should be allocated between different channels. For example, if you have a budget amount of ₹ 50,000. It would be best if you thought of running your digital marketing plan within this amount. Usually, the companies spend 7-11% of their total revenue on their marketing.

7. Measuring Results of the campaign

Setting and running a digital marketing campaign is not enough. It is crucial to measure the results of the campaign to determine its success or failure. One can use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like social media mentions, website performance, conversion rate, organic traffic, Return on Investment and more to see whether the goals are met.

This provides an opportunity to alter the campaign if the goals are not met. The strategies can be changed in order to get better results. 

Today, a digital presence is a must for any business. This would bring the customers to the offline or online store and increase the reach of the business. For an online business, it is the only way of getting visitors to your website. It might be challenging to develop a digital marketing plan. However, clear goals and realistic plans will help you create a good Digital marketing Plan. 

Top digital marketing strategies for the festival season

Introduction 

If a year is like a novel, the festive season is the final chapter!

It is officially the festive season now. And shoppers have geared up to fill their virtual shopping baskets with fantastic deals. On the other hand, companies have begun working on various marketing strategies to attract more customers.

According to a recent report by Admitad, the festive season sale is expected to reach Rs 7.9 billion, a threefold increase over the previous year.

Naturally, any business would want to promote their goods and services during this season.

Cadbury is one of the finest examples to back up this claim; the brand has never failed to connect with its audience during festival seasons. As a result, we can’t fathom festivals like Diwali, Halloween, or Christmas without the deliciousness of Cadbury Chocolates. 

Will Festive Shopping be any different this year?

Forbes states that internet usage has increased by 50-70% during the pandemic.

As mentioned, the pandemic has changed customer behavior significantly. Hence, it makes more sense to opt for digital marketing strategies to acquire more users. Companies can leverage brand marketing and advertising tactics to stand out from the rest. It has proven successful in attracting the target audience.

What does this mean?

With so many festivals lined up one after the other, a surge of discounts boosts the sales in various industries.

While customers benefit from discounts and offers, marketers work hard to capture their attention even before the season begins. But how do they do that?

Let us have a look at top digital marketing strategies that brands incorporate:

1. Social Media

Social media is the most powerful tool nowadays. Therefore, it is necessary to choose the most appropriate social media channel for your product to achieve the best results. Brands devote extra time and resources to their marketing strategies to engage their customers through user-generated content. 

For example, Zomato’s Twitter account is a treat for many. They keep Twitterati entertained with funny tweets and food gags. A simple and interesting question: ‘What is the most creative restaurant name you have ever come across?‘ prompted a flurry of responses, comments, and tweets.

Social media platforms are incredibly influential, with hundreds of active users eager to share their opinions and experiences. Therefore, social media strategy is at the top of the priorities list of brands to reach their potential customer base.

2. Video Campaigns

Videos are more than just a medium of entertainment. They play an essential role in influencing people to make shopping decisions. According to an article released by Google in 2017 and written by Shalini Pillai Banerjee, Chetan Gupta, videos play a driver in the purchasing journey, especially when they buy a car (90%), mobile phone (36%), and travel packages (20%).

Further adding to is another Ipsos study commissioned by Google, saying two-thirds of mothers in India say they purchased a product by seeing an advertisement on YouTube.

Not just the buying decisions, there’s a spark in viewership for tutorial videos as people look up helpful makeup and cooking tutorials, ideas for home decor, festive looks and styles, and their favorite movies.

3. Google/Facebook Ad Campaign

Ad campaigns are a fantastic way to convert several users into buyers quickly. Google and Facebook have a large audience base. Hence, they offer great potential for brand awareness, lead creation, and user conversion because they are visible on Google search pages and Facebook pages.

By building advertisements around festive themes and using the right keywords, companies can increase their shoppers daily. Extra festive discounts or last-minute deals have the most beneficial impact on shoppers, prompting them to buy.

4. Interactive Campaigns

Interactive campaigns attract more visitors to the website or online store. A quiz or a poll with relatable content lets the shoppers connect more deeply with the brand. A few examples of such campaigns are:

1. Quizzes – Making it about the holidays or festivals.
2. Polls or surveys – Creating a poll or survey on social media regarding the gifts they can buy.
3. Contests – Creating competition with prizes for specific activities such as liking or sharing a post.

These interactive activities are usually a fantastic way to grab public attention.

5. E-mail/SMS Marketing

E-mail and SMS have a broad reach and are always a convenient way to reach your intended audience.

It is also one of the most cost-effective methods for informing people about the products and services. An e-mail with a festive theme might draw attention to promotions, offers, or seasonal product lines. Another method is to attract users with an intriguing subject line that makes it impossible for them to delete the e-mail without reading it. Additionally, texting leads can enhance engagement by providing quick and direct communication, ensuring timely delivery of personalized offers and updates.

6. Push Notifications

In the marketing world, push notifications are proving to be pretty effective. According to research, push alerts are five times more likely to be opened than emails.

Brands can send personalized deals and discounts to shoppers’ smartphone screens. It is the easiest and quickest way to communicate with customers. They work best with mobile apps since they can lead shoppers directly to the product page within the app, where they can complete the purchase and checkout. 

7. Search Engine Optimization

The competition for online stores has flared up. No matter how exceptional your store is or how large of a discount you are offering, if customers don’t know about it or can’t find it readily on the web, it won’t be of any help. And, all this necessitates content and image optimization of the website.

The proper study of specific festival-related keywords can help in understanding customer needs. For example, during the festival season, shoppers search for terms like “best online deals” or “Diwali sale“, and if these terms are there in the marketing plan, it will result in more visitors and conversions. It will significantly improve the ranking of the website, thus increasing sales.

Wrapping up

An effective digital marketing strategy with careful planning and implementation will help you generate more sales in the festive season. Numerous tactics can be employed to attract customers to your online store. The goal is to understand how you can market your brand and products throughout this season.

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