Digital Marketing Planning – essential not optional

We understand that you may feel you’re too busy doing digital activity rather than planning. Often, business plans are written purely to gain funding and are then confined to the bottom draw. At Right Direction, we can bring your digital marketing planning to life to ensure you’re doing the right things.

“It is not about building a web site but building a web business ..”

David Siegel, Futurise Your Enterprise

We’ll work with you to build a unique Six Point Plan which helps you prioritise your digital activities. Here’s a summary of the main points included in a plan:

What your personal Six Point Digital Marketing Plan covers

1. Current situation

Not simply a marketing audit (SWOT) but also an objective look at key issues affecting your business, including your pricing and competitors. We can also help you understand your online customer; we won’t use weird-sounding persona titles such as time-conscious mature cheesecake-eating materialist but will get you to understand your customer needs and how to attract more of them

2. Digital Objectives

You probably already have a broad goal for your web site such as “I want to achieve sales of £50,000” or “I’d like 75,000 site visits per annum”. We can help ensure your objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) and then work out with you how we can achieve them.

3. Digital Strategy

With access to the internet increasingly easy and new competitors being created almost daily, one of the most important areas in your digital strategy is to define your point of differentiation. What makes you different online defines what makes customers come to you in the first place. For example, Right Direction could (and sometimes does) attract clients from all over the UK but we have chosen to focus on being a Lancashire-based consultancy, focussed on helping businesses in Lancashire and the North West.

“There is no point rowing harder if you are rowing in the wrong direction”

Kenichi Ohmate. Tokyo

4. Digital Tactics

This is the area that often new businesses jump into first, whether it’s running a Facebook promotion or a banner ad campaign. Whilst it’s commendable to test different things, the tactics must always be driven by the strategy and not the other way round. A cheap last-minute online opportunity with Saga Magazine would be a complete waste of money if your customers are 15-21 year olds.

We’ll help set up your campaigns such as emailing your existing customers or enquirers.

5. Action Plan

A digital Action Plan is really the end result of all the above – it’s what you’ll probably pin to the wall in front of you to make sure all activities are completed and on time. We can help you build a budget so you can track the effectiveness of your marketing spend.

6. Control

The final piece of the jigsaw that is often overlooked. Ensure you carefully measure all your activities and if they’re not working, be prepared to change them.

Get in touch to find out how Right Direction Marketing can help you plan your digital marketing activities better.

Credit: Based on the SOSTAC digital planning framework, Chaffey and Smith (2008)