\nYour strategy should be informed by customer online behaviour and preferences. In particular, understand which intermediary sites influence purchase and how your customers switch between the channels.<\/li>\n
\nThis includes specific monthly targets for both direct (online) sales and indirect (offline) sales.<\/li>\n
\nAs with traditional marketing, targeting the right audiences or personas is key. Digital media enable you to micro-target.<\/li>\n
\nYou may still need to communicate the benefits of using digital channels to encourage switching and enhance your brand.<\/li>\n
\nThis includes differences between online channels and other channels.<\/li>\n
\nAlthough you want to emphasize the differences, that doesn\u2019t mean the channel shouldn\u2019t be integrated. Customer journeys should be seamlessly integrated.<\/li>\n
\nUnderstand their targeting and propositions, where do they excel?<\/li>\n
\nFind the key players and influencers in the value chain or ecosystem and form strategic partnerships.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Selecting the best mix of digital media to meet your goals of customer acquisition and retention is a large part of a digital marketing strategy. There are a variety of\u00a0paid, owned and earned media assets<\/a>\u00a0that fall within digital marketing, including, for example, your:<\/p>\n If you're looking for a digital transformation strategy to reach and acquire more customers, why not book a free consultation to kick off your strategic planning? Identify your problems, and discuss solutions that work for your business. Find out more about digital transformation, the RACE Framework, and integrated owned, earned, and paid digital media covered in this blog. Book in your call to get started today. <\/span> Book your free 1-2-1 consultation to develop your new strategy with the RACE Framework<\/p>Book consultation<\/a><\/div> A digital marketing plan provides a clear picture of how the combination of different media supports an organization\u2019s goals and objectives. The purpose of a digital marketing plan is to ensure that digital marketing activities are relevant and timely in the achievement of your organization\u2019s objectives, that they can be implemented with available resources and that they are capable of creating and sustaining a competitive position online.<\/p>\n In a large organization, a digital transformation plan may be part of a number of integrated marketing plans, specific to individual parts of the business.<\/p>\n Download Business Professional resource \u2013 Digital Transformation Playbook <\/strong><\/p>\n This playbook will provide you and your business with a comprehensive structure to follow, which will help you plan and prioritize transformation activities across different marketing communications in the customer lifecycle using the Smart Insights RACE planning framework.<\/p>\n Access the Digital transformation playbook<\/a><\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n Digital transformation planning is an effective way of strategically organizing your digital marketing tactics and effectively measuring their success. A digital marketing plan provides clear strategic targets for what you want to achieve from your online marketing activities. Implementation can provide numerous benefits:<\/p>\n An effective digital marketing plan will enable you to distinguish behaviour patterns and trends throughout your customer\u2019s journey, providing you with the ability to make informed decisions and improvements at every stage of this journey.<\/p>\n A digital marketing plan typically includes:<\/p>\n A useful tool for reviewing and defining your digital marketing capabilities and resources is the SOSTAC\u00ae structure which we explain in our 7 steps strategy guide.<\/p>\n To make sure your digital marketing plan has all the essential features, I recommend the SOSTAC\u00ae structure developed by PR Smith\u2014Dave Chaffey\u2019s co-author of the printed book\u00a0Digital Marketing Excellence<\/em>.<\/p>\n SOSTAC\u00ae is a great framework for structuring business, marketing or digital marketing plans since it\u2019s relatively simple and logical, so it\u2019s easy to remember and to explain to colleagues or agencies. SOSTAC\u00ae is a strategic planning process framework that gives you a clear structure to work through to create and manage your plan.<\/p>\n Our free, essential guide to digital transformation by Dave Chaffey includes a more detailed explanation of using SOSTAC\u00ae to structure a digital transformation strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n This chart from\u00a0Digital Marketing Excellence<\/em>\u00a0summarises what should be included in each part of a SOSTAC\u00ae plan.<\/p>\n Book your free 1-2-1 consultation to develop your new strategy with the RACE Framework<\/p>Book consultation<\/a><\/div> Situation<\/strong>\u00a0analysis means \u2018Where are we now?<\/em>\u2019 For digital marketing planners, questions include:<\/p>\n Objectives<\/strong>\u00a0mean \u2018Where do we want to be?<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n Strategy<\/strong>\u00a0means \u2018How do we get there?<\/em>\u2019 Strategy summarizes how to fulfill the objectives. It is the shortest part of the plan, but arguably, the most important, as it gives direction to all the subsequent tactics. It answers questions including:<\/p>\n Tactics<\/strong>\u00a0are\u00a0the details of strategy<\/em>. They highlight on a digital marketing plan exactly which tactics occur when. Your chosen tactics should support and adhere to your customer\u2019s journey. Examples of digital marketing tactics could include, for example:<\/p>\n I recommend you consider these 6 options defined in this diagram. In reality, you will specify more detail for each channel as listed in our digital media cheatsheet, <\/a>which gives a succinct summary of the main organic and paid media options on Google and in the social network.<\/p>\n Book your free 1-2-1 consultation to develop your new strategy with the RACE Framework<\/p>Book consultation<\/a><\/div> Action<\/strong>\u00a0is the detailed planning of tactics. Who does what, when and how? What processes and activities are required to make things happen?<\/p>\n Control<\/strong>\u00a0identifies what you need to measure when and what happens. The Control section of the plan ensures you know if you are succeeding or failing \u2013 and you can make adjustments\u2013 before it is too late. \u00a0How you measure the success of your digital marketing activities will be based upon the overall marketing objectives detailed in your marketing plan.<\/p>\n To help you plan your digital marketing tactics effectively, the RACE Planning system will provide you with a simple framework.<\/p>\n RACE is a practical framework to help manage and improve results from your digital marketing. Ultimately it\u2019s about using best practice across digital marketing techniques to get more commercial value from investments in digital marketing. It will help simplify your approach to reviewing the performance of your online marketing and taking actions to improve its effectiveness.<\/p>\n Although SOSTAC\u00ae provides a superb framework for structuring a plan, I recommend that a digital marketing plan combines it with the Smart Insights RACE planning framework since:<\/p>\n RACE covers the full customer lifecycle or marketing funnel from:<\/p>\n (Plan) > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage<\/strong><\/p>\n There is also an initial phase of Plan involving creating the digital transformation plan in the first place!<\/p>\n RACE consists of four steps or online marketing activities designed to help brands engage their customers throughout the customer lifecycle. This infographic shows the goals for each part of RACE and how you can measure them.<\/p>\n Our RACE Framework is a popular marketing structure framework for Startups, SMEs, and international corporations, since it can scale up or down according to your short-term and long-term digital transformation objectives. <\/span><\/p>\n Simply put, RACE guides marketers through a 5-step digital transformation process of plan, reach, act, convert, and engage, to acquire and retain more customers. Using customer insights and data to build a digital transformation strategy that wins you more customers.<\/span><\/p>\n Book your free 1-2-1 consultation call today to discuss your digital transformation challenges and opportunities in the context of the RACE Framework. Book your free 1-2-1 consultation to develop your new strategy with the RACE Framework<\/p>Book consultation<\/a><\/div> The\u00a0Smart Insights Multichannel Marketing Growth Wheel<\/a>\u00a0infographic gives a visual view of key planning activities that are needed as part of the process of producing an integrated digital marketing plan.<\/p>\n A solid digital transformation plan has:<\/p>\n A digital marketing plan can be a valuable asset to any organization. \u00a0Regardless of what you sell, a digital marketing plan will enable you to:<\/p>\n How your digital marketing plan is implemented will differ, depending on whether you are a Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C) organization, for example:<\/p>\n Online lead generation tends to be the goal of\u00a0B2B organizations<\/strong>, so the focus of your marketing plan will be attracting and converting quality leads via your website and digital channels for your sales teams.<\/p>\n Providing an enhanced customer journey tends to be the focus of\u00a0B2C organizations<\/strong>, so the focus of your marketing plan will be attracting prospective online customers and converting them, without the input of a sales team.<\/p>\n Digital marketing activities work best when integrated with traditional marketing and response channels. Organizations should, therefore, have a separate digital marketing plan, which is integrated into an overall marketing plan. As recognized in\u00a010 reasons you need a digital marketing strategy<\/a>, this ensures that digital marketing is fully aligned and becomes part of business as usual.<\/p>\n Dave Chaffey<\/a>, co-founder and Content Director of Smart Insights, notes that the creation of digital plans often occurs in two stages:<\/p>\n \u201cFirst, a separate digital marketing plan is created. This is useful to get agreement and buy-in by showing the opportunities and problems and map out a path through setting goals and specific strategies for digital including how you integrated digital marketing into other business activities.<\/em><\/p>\n Second, digital becomes integrated into marketing strategy, it\u2019s a core activity, \u201cbusiness-as-usual\u201d, but doesn\u2019t warrant separate planning, except for the tactics.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Download our free PDF download \u2013 Understanding different types of marketing plan guide <\/strong><\/p>\n This download and our other free templates is for anyone who wants to improve their knowledge of marketing planning with a few to gaining more senior roles.<\/p>\n Access the How to structure different types of marketing plans<\/a><\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
![\"Types-of-paid-owned-and-earned-media\"](\"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Types-of-paid-owned-and-earned-media-700x510.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNeed a winning marketing strategy?<\/h3>
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\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n When to use a digital transformation plan?<\/h3>\n
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What should be included? \/ How should a digital transformation plan be structured?<\/h3>\n
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Introducing SOSTAC\u00ae for digital transformation<\/h3>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nNeed a winning marketing strategy?<\/h3>
<\/div><\/span><\/p>\nSo, what does SOSTAC\u00ae stand for?<\/h3>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nNeed a winning marketing strategy?<\/h3>
<\/div><\/span><\/p>\nWhy use RACE for planning and managing digital marketing?<\/h3>\n
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What is RACE?<\/h3>\n
![\"RACE](\"https:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-05-14-at-16.08.00.png\")
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\nReach involves building awareness and visibility of your brand, products and services on other websites and in offline media in order to build traffic by driving visits to different web presences like your main site, microsites or social media pages. It involves maximizing reach over time to create multiple interactions using different paid, owned and earned media touchpoints.<\/li>\n
\nAct is short for Interact. It\u2019s a separate stage from conversion since encouraging interactions on websites and in social media. For most businesses, the main aim of Act is to generate online leads. So, it\u2019s about persuading site visitors or prospects take the next step, the next Action on their customer journey when they initially reach your site or social network presence. It may mean finding out more about a company or its products, searching to find a product or reading a blog post. You should define these actions as top-level goals of the funnel in analytics. Goals can include \u201cViewed product\u201d, \u201cAdded to Basket\u201d, \u201cRegistered as member\u201d or \u201cSigned up for an e-newsletter. Act is also about encouraging participation. This can be the sharing of content via social media or customer reviews (strictly, part of Engage).<\/li>\n
\nThis is simply conversion to sale, online or offline. It involves getting your audience to take that vital next step which turns them into paying customers whether the payment is taken through online e-commerce transaction, or offline channels.<\/li>\n
\nThis is long-term customer engagement and communications that is, developing a long-term relationship with first-time buyers to build customer loyalty as repeat purchases using communications on your site, social presence, email and direct interactions to boost customer lifetime value. It can be measured by repeat actions such as repeat sale and sharing content through social media. We also need to measure percentage of active customers (or email subscribers) and customer satisfaction and recommendation using other systems.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nNeed a winning marketing strategy?<\/h3>
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Which type of business is digital transformation suited for?<\/h3>\n
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How does digital transformation relate to other plans?<\/h3>\n
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