As with all strategies, having a well-thought-out plan is the best way to be truly effective.

There are 3 things to consider when creating your digital marketing plan:

1. Overall Goal
2. Cohesion
3. Consistency

We discuss each of these points below:

1. Overall goal

Having a key goal – something specific you want to achieve – when creating your digital marketing strategy is a very useful starting point. It means all your efforts will be focused on achieving that goal rather than being spread around in different directions. Your digital marketing goal may, or may not be, the same as your overall marketing goal.

Here are some examples for consideration. Is your goal to:

• Get more traffic to your website?
• Create more authority in your sector?
• Increase your number of prospects?
• Increase general awareness of your brand?
• Create more conversions (and therefore more sales)?
• Improve your Know, Like and Trust factor?
• Etc.

2. Cohesion

Now that you have a goal, your website, social media accounts, and email marketing should work together to achieve it.  Each digital marketing platform should not be viewed as a standalone piece; they should all be integrated into an overall plan so that they work together. For example, if your goal is to get more traffic to your website, then including links to your website in your social media posts or emails would be a good approach. The link would become a standard inclusion for the duration of your plan. Alternatively, if you wish to promote a specific campaign (a summer sale, perhaps) you may want to create a series of posts that speak to specifically to that campaign. Couple this with sending out an informative email about the sale, and setting up a unique page on your website to direct people too. This combination of activities would only exist as long as you are working on the campaign.

There is an additional tip sheet for creating a cohesive digital marketing strategy for download at the bottom of this activity.

3. Consistency

Humans are creatures of habit, and find security in consistency. For digital marketing there are three things to consider to satisfy that desire for your clients: schedule, tone and quality.

Schedule

What sort of schedule can you commit to and maintain? What resources/time do you have available? Create a schedule for posting to each of your social media platforms and your email marketing efforts – then stick to it.

Tone

Being consistent in the tone your adopt (regardless of platform) helps your audience understand more about your business’s style – is it very formal or quite casual? Do you focus just on a small segment of the market in detail or do you take a wider view? Are you willing to promote other businesses or just promote your own offerings? All this helps your followers, clients and prospects gain familiarity with your brand.

Quality

Consistently providing good quality posts, information and images really cements your professionalism. Maintaining that quality over all platforms and over time, sends a strong message to your audience about the quality of your business products and services also.