There’s no denying the benefits of digital marketing nowadays. Heck, the average American adult’s set to spend 44 years staring at screens throughout their life nowadays.
Clearly, if you’re going to spend money marketing your products or services, it makes sense to do it digitally.
The tricky part’s creating a marketing strategy that delivers the ROI you need! Want some expert help with this crucial task? You’re in the right place.
Check out our 3 top tips on building an online marketing plan for small businesses.
1. Understand Your Brand
What does your business stand for? What separates it from the competition? What are its core values, principles, and reasons for being?
Likewise, who is it for? Who’s your target customer? What do they need and/or desire?
Answering these questions is a key first step to helping you a) learn more about your business and b) create an effective online marketing plan thereafter. Without a solid understanding of your brand, you’ll drift around with no North Star to guide business decision-making. You’ll struggle to attract a loyal following of clamoring customers and promote your products/services to the best effect as a result!
2. Define Your Goals
For similar reasons, it’s important to define what you’re trying to achieve with your upcoming marketing endeavors. Write down specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-limited goals that match your overall business intentions.
Try to avoid generalities. Everybody wants more traffic and leads, but how many do you want, and what date do you need them by? A good goal might look something like this:
- “Increase revenue by 10% for 6 months in a row”, or
- “Generate 100 new subscribers to our email list by the end of the month”.
3. Decide the Process
Having goals is great. But they’re pointless without action, right?! That’s why the next step to building an online marketing plan is to figure out how you’ll achieve them.
From social media and email to content marketing and SEO, there are myriad digital marketing strategies at your disposal here. It’s up to you to decide the methods that’ll deliver the best bang for your buck. Expect this process to involve plenty of trial and error as you fine-tune your tactics though!
Why? Because you have to dabble in different areas before you can identify the most effective ones for your business. For a headstart, always consider your target customer, buyer persona, and unique brand.
Remember These Online Marketing Plan Tips
Digital marketing represents an almighty opportunity for business owners and marketers. However, creating a high-quality online marketing plan is an important first step to exploiting the potential on the table! Without one, you’re shooting in the dark and from the hip with your digital campaigns, wasting money as you go.
Know the struggle? Well, we hope the tips on creating a strategy for marketing businesses online will make a difference. Take action on the advice and it won’t be long before you starting seeing the ROI you’re after.
Want to step your email, content, and social media marketing pedigree up another notch? Search ‘marketing’ on the website now.
