What is a Digital Marketing Plan
There are so many components to a Digital Marketing Plan… and they all keep changing! Keeping all the moving parts organized and focused is a particular challenge for today’s online managers. Managing the messaging so that communication themes are consistent across multiple channels is a chore! Many organizations simply don’t have the resources to do this effectively. However, by defining scope and investing the time in strategy development and content planning, these tasks are made much more manageable.
Digital Marketing Scope
When first undertaking a digital marketing effort, many organizations are either too ambitious or too limited in scope. Either of these cases usually results in the effort being abandoned. Creating a digital marketing plan that will be successful in the long term usually requires a couple iterations and some hard work up front in defining the scope of the effort so that appropriate resource assignments may be made.
Balance and Coordination
These terms usually describe capabilities required for walking. Once we are used to managing these skills and processes, the act of walking becomes much easier. And so it is with digital marketing. Once a plan is developed and proper people and resources assigned and managed, over time, the effort will become – if not effortless – at least effective. A Digital Master Plan – in almost every case -makes ongoing management of the entire process much easier and relieves a great deal of pressure.
Managing the Channels
Social media in particular provides multiple channels, different methodologies and restrictions to what and how much content may be distributed. In the early stages, many companies select the essential social platforms.
Managing the Processes
Coordinating messages and outreach with SEO is essential. After all, you don’t want to generate a huge volume of traffic to a page that has little value or is optimized in such a way that value will not be earned. Social media and email outreach are extremely effective at promoting content and introducing new readers to the company brand. The Digital Master Plan coordinates these activities into a centrally managed plan that can be deployed and run by multiple players.
Managing the Managers
Once a Digital Master Plan is created, it should go through a few rounds of review, just to ensure that all parts of the team are able to understand and handle their particular parts. Unfortunately, this requires what is know as “a meeting.” The term “meeting” has acquired rather vulgar implications as it implies a general waste of time. It is incumbent on the senior level managers to set the agenda, and if possible, manage the discussion using agile methodologies or something close to it. Regular, periodic contact with other members of the communications team is essential to provide the consistency that readers will pay attention to.
The Content Plans
A senior management team should determine the general thrust of the communications messaging. The execution teams are responsible for composition and deployment – and also for meeting deadlines. A content plan is required for each channel, from social media to blogging and email. These are usually best managed by contributors throughout the company.
Coordination – Bringing it all Together
The process requires time and practice to make it efficient over the long term. Meetings to discuss messaging and deployment are needed to ensure that all team members have an understanding of what they are to communicate. Meetings are also required to review the previous week’s efforts. Statistics and analytics will tell the story. Bringing everyone into the statistical discussion will help spur additional creativity and assist in problem solving.
Of course a Digital Marketing Plan is a fairly complex undertaking. There are the usual forms and meetings and coordination. But with practice and repetition, enacting the Digital Marketing Plan can be a highly engaging and enjoyable task. Each organization has many people – some that possess outstanding communication skills. Finding someone with Twitter or Facebook skills is also not a huge challenge as social platforms are used by people in all lines of work.
Getting organized is the key to success in digital marketing and in making an integrated digital marketing plan work for you.
What does a Digital Master Plan look like? In simple terms, it is a content schedule that coordinates all channels, outreach efforts (such as email), blog creation and deployment and web development. Need more information? Contact Denver SEO Consultants today and we will schedule a free consultation!
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