When it comes to digital marketing, there are a lot of different tools and strategies available. The options are endless; from social media posts and email campaigns to chatbots and SEO, it may seem overwhelming.
With this digital marketing checklist, you will take advantage of every opportunity to execute a perfect marketing strategy. Each item on the list includes vital considerations that you should keep in mind when devising your digital marketing strategy and tips for implementing them successfully.
So whether you're looking to improve your SEO ranking or increase your outreach via email campaigns, this digital marketing checklist will help you make the most of every opportunity. After all, if you maximize and optimize your digital marketing campaigns for success, then you can ensure your marketing efforts are in the right place.
A digital marketing plan is not an exhaustive list of all that goes into a digital marketing strategy; it's more of a high-level road map. Competition is fierce in the digital space, and keeping up with technology trends is critical to staying ahead.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the process of using digital technologies to promote or market products or services. In recent years, digital marketing has become one of the most popular and effective ways to reach customers and promote businesses. It allows brands to connect with customers in a more personal and engaging way, and it provides customers with an easy way to find out more about the products or services they are interested in. Digital marketing is often more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods, making it an excellent option for businesses of all sizes.
What is a Digital Marketing Plan?
A digital marketing plan is a detailed plan that outlines the goals, strategies, and tactics that a business will use to promote its products or services online. The plan should consider all the different channels that can reach customers and include a detailed budget and timeline for implementing the various strategies and metrics to track success and measure results over time.
Digital Marketing Plan Checklist
Step 1 - Know Your Goals & Audience
To effectively promote your brand or product online, it is critical to start by defining your target audience and understanding their needs and preferences. This will help you identify the digital marketing channels that will be most effective for reaching your audience and achieving your marketing goals.
When developing a digital marketing strategy, key considerations include determining which digital platforms make the most sense for your business.
What tactics should you use on each channel?
Which types of creative assets do you need to deploy?
How can you track and measure performance across all digital channels?
Whether you are looking to improve brand awareness, drive more website traffic, or increase sales, it is essential to tailor your digital marketing strategy to meet your target audience's unique preferences and needs. With careful planning and comprehensive execution, you can successfully create a digital marketing plan that will help you stand out from the competition and achieve all of your marketing goals.
Step 2 - Perform Competitive Analysis
It is essential to keep a close eye on your competitors' digital marketing campaigns as a digital marketer. Using tools like Semrush or Google Trends can help you stay up-to-date on industry trends and changes in your competitors' strategies. Once you have analyzed their performance, you can identify any successful content marketing strategies they may use and incorporate them into your campaigns. By leveraging the most effective strategies and techniques, you can create more targeted and effective digital marketing campaigns that will help your business stand out from the competition. With careful monitoring and attention to detail, you can stay ahead of the curve and set yourself up for long-term success in this highly competitive landscape.
Step 3 - Create A Content Strategy
The internet is a fast-moving and constantly evolving platform, and so are our audiences. As a result, content marketers must consistently create high-quality, relevant content that reflects their brand and values, touch on current trends, and engages their audience.
It is essential to remember that content marketing must be more than just a series of individual pieces to be truly successful. It must also integrate into more extensive marketing campaigns designed around specific objectives and messaging. So whether you are developing social media strategies, creating targeted ads, building effective landing pages, or crafting compelling email campaigns, your content must support and align with these other aspects of your digital marketing strategy.
Today's content marketers need to think of themselves as publishers to be successful. If you have a solid understanding of SEO (search engine optimization) practices for online content, you will make a valuable addition to any digital marketing campaign. In fact, 87% of B2B buyers said they use search engines as a primary source for research, while 78% said they found blog content helpful when making purchasing decisions. To be competitive in today's digital world, you must understand how different channels (i.e., search engines and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook) impact one another. Before even considering keywords and phrases, do your homework with keyword research.
Keyword Research helps you to determine what exactly customers are searching for online. Use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to find out what people are searching for on Google related to your business. Some words or phrases may already be too popular or not relevant enough, but that doesn't mean there aren't others available; rule nothing out just yet! Also, just because someone isn't searching for an exact phrase doesn't mean they won't still click on your result or visit your website.
Link Building is a vital component of SEO. Building quality backlinks pointing back to the web page can help boost rankings, so don't forget to check out these options before moving forward with any other content-related steps.
Content Cadence takes planning. When publishing content on your site, strive to add original posts daily/weekly/monthly depending on how frequently you expect new visitors who could eventually become leads. How often you publish has much more to do with its quality, value, and usefulness than frequency alone—posts with little value will not build audience engagement, and Google will not rank the content for high SEO.
Remember: Frequency ≠ value.
Update and Repurpose Content - Update old posts periodically using tools in your website editor. Similarly, try repurposing existing written content into video content for YouTube via a tool like TubeBuddy. Consider creating infographics, checklists, and other visual content to update and repurpose the posts on social media, as well as create visuals for leads to click on or download to help them in their buyer journey.
Finally, although we talked about keyword research earlier, it bears repeating—you should use keywords and phrases within article titles and meta descriptions. Make sure the keywords make sense in the content flow and don't just "stuff" keywords in your posts, as that could count against you. You can enter meta descriptions behind the scenes in most website software systems and in pages and posts to describe what the content is about in a short sentence. In that way, search engines can easily know what your content is about. Keywords and phrases are the elements that carry more weight in overall ranking performance.
Step 4 - Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical if you want your website to succeed. SEO helps search engines like Google recognize your content and rank it higher in organic search results.
Organic Search Engine Optimization makes content easily accessible through links, descriptive URLs, and metadata (such as title tags). As a result, Google sees your website is relevant to user searches and ranks your content higher in its organic search listings.
To optimize the text for readers rather than search engines — use long-tail keywords (phrases) throughout your website. If you have information for people to click on or download, then briefly describe what a visitor will find when they click through.
Next, make sure your copy matches what users type in their browser to land on your pages.
Finally, link to other authoritative websites related to yours — like Wikipedia entries.
Follow these tips to help improve your ranking and give users a better experience.
Optimize Images With Alt Tags. Image titles tell Google what a picture is about, so you should use keywords when writing them as well. Keep your titles short and relevant, but make sure they use actual words—not click here or the word image as these don't serve any purpose from an SEO perspective.
Incorporate Social Sharing - Use social sharing buttons on your site to increase visibility and give viewers more options for how they can interact with your content.
Build Incoming Links - Links continue to be valuable for SEO, so reach out to influencers and sites related to yours who might be interested in cross-promoting or exchanging links.
Get Reviews - Getting reviews for products, services, or restaurants is valuable for user engagement, but it's also good for SEO.
Use Video - Video is one of the most popular ways to consume content online, so if you want your business to attract views, consider shooting videos and adding them in your post.
Review Analytics - After implementing SEO on your website, remember to revisit analytics periodically to check how well your digital marketing plan is working and adjust as necessary.
Step 5 - Paid Search (PPC) Ads
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is also known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads. PPC ads allow you to create a digital presence online and get you in front of potential customers.
PPC ads are pretty simple: you pay each time someone clicks on your ad, whether they actually go to your site and buy anything.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising With traditional PPC programs like AdWords, advertisers bid against each other to rent some space next to words that match their target audience's search terms.
Google Ads are a highly specialized subset of SEM, so it's a natural fit for every digital marketing checklist. Think of PPC as just search engine marketing (SEM) for people who don't have time to do extensive keyword research and learn about pay-per-click marketing tactics.
While PPC is effective, it can be expensive. Building your organic search reach or SEO might be better if you're on a tight budget or new to digital marketing.
SEO strategies often require fewer setup costs and more freedom in your strategy. The downside is that it can take longer for your site or page to show up in organic results, depending on your industry.
It all depends on the effort you want to put into SEO vs. PPC. However, no matter which method you choose, ensure that both are part of any digital marketing plan.
Step 6 - Social Media Campaigns
A lot of companies start with social media. It's easy to set up and inexpensive (or even free). And if you have a big brand name, you may already have a following that you can tap into immediately.
Still, social media is not one-size-fits-all—and some businesses do better on certain platforms than others.
You'll want to figure out which ones are best for your industry or niche before diving in too deep. It's also worth knowing what your competitors are doing to tap into relevant conversations and reach new audiences.
Once you know where your audience likes to spend time online, try setting up an ad campaign or two and see what happens. Start small. At worst, it won't work at all. At best, it can help you get a little traction while learning more about what works for your customers.
The immediate nature of social channels means engagement is constant throughout a campaign, unlike traditional print or billboard campaigns that run once with no further interaction possible.
Step 7 - Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective way to reach customers and promote your products or services. By setting up email marketing software, you can target recipients based on their demographics and interests. Email marketing allows you to reach a broad audience with manageable effort.
Email marketing can tie into special occasions like holiday shopping seasons, birthdays, etc. Software such as MailChimp or Constant Contact allows you to target recipients based on demographics and interests collected from web browsing habits and generate analytics about open rates, click-through rates, and other valuable data.
Email marketing is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, for every situation; there are several ways you can use email to increase revenue and grow your customer base:
Newsletters - A newsletter is easily one of the most comprehensive tools to drive sales and increase brand awareness. Newsletters should include links back to your website, where readers can find more information about products and promotions. Although a newsletter won't get results on its own, adding cross-promotion elements like social media icons into your newsletters will encourage click-throughs and help drive traffic.
Autoresponders - An autoresponder is an automatic response system used by businesses to drive customers back to their websites via customized emails based on how recipients interact with specific messages. For example, if a user opts in to receive frequent discount offers from your brand, you might send them an automated message two weeks later offering them 20% off a specific product. This strategy includes workflows for lifecycle events, such as welcome emails and cart abandonment recovery.
Email Automation - Automation is crucial to customer engagement and building repeat business, but setting up a good customer workflow can be tricky if you're unsure of what to do. The key is to set up an automated workflow that applies to the interests of your target audience to help leads along the buyer journey and keep your customers happy, informed, and coming back for more.
Develop Personas - Writing emails based on personas is an effective way to reach your target audience at each stage of the buyer's journey. In marketing, a persona is a fictional character created to represent a specific user in a specific demographic segment of your target market. By building a story around the character based on where they are in their buyer journey, you can more easily create content and messaging that would help to move them along their journey to buy your product or service.
Step 8 - Analyze Your Results
Data should inform any successful marketing strategy. By analyzing your website data and digital marketing campaigns, you can identify areas that need improvement. This allows you to focus your efforts on the areas that will have the most significant impact. Additionally, it is vital that you regularly review your analytics to help discover new opportunities for growth and optimization. Once you have analyzed your data, you can use your findings to tweak your strategy and tactics. You can ensure that your marketing campaigns are as effective as possible by making data-driven decisions.
With our Digital Marketing Services at Moon Mission Media, we specialize in providing tailored digital marketing solutions for businesses of all sizes, considering our clients' unique situations. There is no one-size-fits-all digital marketing solution, so we customize our offering based on each client's individual requirements.
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Article By Moon Mission Team Members: Leigh Castleberry and Brandi Bergeron