Top Tips for a Digital Plan

Using a digital plan to help digital transformation

Where do you start if you want to develop a digital marketing strategy? I don’t think it needs to be a huge report, a strategy can best be summarised in two or three sides of A4 in a table linking digital marketing strategies to SMART objectives. Yet despite this it seems that many organisations still don’t have a plan.

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So, the latest research suggests an improved approach to planning in this sample of marketers, with fewer than half without a digital strategy. Congratulations if you’re one of these companies!

A recommended approach for developing a digital strategy

Whether you have a strategy or not, at the heart of the Smart Insights approach to improving digital marketing is benchmarking to compare where you are now to where you need to be in the future. We have created a free digital marketing benchmarks download with a series of benchmarks covering overall digital strategy and the tactics like Search, Social media, Email marketing and site/experience design.

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Want to learn more about how you can achieve a successful Digital Plan? For more information chat with our partnering Digital Consultants.

Alternative Options

But what if you’re one of the companies that doesn’t have a digital strategy yet? Well, I think the two simple alternatives for creating a plan may suggest a way forward:

• No‐specific digital channel plan.
• Separate digital marketing plan defining transformation needed and making case for investment.
• Integrated digital plan part of marketing plan ‐ digital becomes part of business as usual.

So, what are the takeaways to behave on right here? It appears to me that:

• Using digital marketing without a strategic approach is still commonplace. I’m sure many of the companies in this category are using digital media effectively and they could certainly be getting great results from their search, email or social media marketing. But I’m equally sure that many are missing opportunities or are suffering from the other challenges I’ve listed below. Perhaps the problems below are greatest for larger organisations who most urgently need governance. There’s arguably less need for a strategy in a smaller company.
• Many, a majority of companies in this research do take a strategic approach to digital. From talking to companies, I find the creation of digital plans often occurs in two stages. First, 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. Second, digital becomes integrated into marketing strategy, it’s a core activity, “business‐as‐usual”, but doesn’t warrant separate planning, except for the tactics.

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If you don’t have a strategy, or maybe you want to review which business issues are important to include within a strategic review, we’ve set out the 10 most common problems, that in our experience arise if you don’t have a strategy.