ABE LEVEL 3 AWARD IN DIGITAL MARKETING ESSENTIALS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
Element 5 – Creating a digital marketing plan for a small business
Learning outcome 8 – Develop a creative digital marketing plan for a small business
THE DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN
Learning Outcomes:
8. Developadigitalmarketingplanfor asmallbusiness(Weighting35%)
8.1 Summarise the background and analytical steps to developing a digital marketing plan
• Setting effective objectives and consider acquisition, customer retention and customer loyalty
• Provide the market context for the digital marketing plan i.e. an outline of the market in which the business operates
• Understanding the target market and their behaviour online
• Setting the budget
8.2 Recommend messaging, digital tools and scheduling within a digital marketing plan
• Designing an appropriate message
• Developing an appropriate mix of digital and online tools capable of achieving the objectives
• Develop a schedule of activities for implementation
8.3 Recommend methods of measuring the effectiveness of the digital marketing plan
• Monitoring performance
• Methods of measuring success
• Use of analytics
Background and analysis
If you don’t record what you want to do before you start, how are you able to know what works, what’s a good use of your time and what will make your business a success?
A plan will help you make sure:
• Everything is in place from the start
• Time is not wasted in repetition or doing the things that don’t contribute to your goals
• Predictions are realistic, objectives are set and methodology established
Setting your objectives
What are your aims in terms of digital marketing?
An effective objective will be:
• Clear
• Focused
• Quantified
Defining your objectives
Reach Engagement
Acquisition Conversion Sales
People seeing your social content, blogs, videos, digital PR
People clicking on or interacting with your online activity
People following you on social media
People responding to a call to action such as signing up to a mailing list or newsletter
Repeat customers
Defining your market
To give your digital marketing plan focus, you need to define the market in which your business sits
This can be as simple as one sentence that covers:
• what you sell or what service you offer
• to who
• in which space
Tips for defining your market
• Be specific: having too broad of a market means you cannot be focused
• Look at how your competitors describe themselves on their website and on social media for inspiration
• Think of this as your elevator pitch: the one liner you use to tell people what your business is about
Who are your target customers?
Types of jobstheydo
Age,gender, marital status, location
Interests, likes and affiliations
Social platforms they use
Content they consume: TV, newspapers, websites
Shopping, booking and spending habits
Factors to consider Politicsand
beliefs
Assigning a budget
Assigning a budget for your plan allows you to allocate money and plan your spending.
Some online activities are free, e.g. PR and blogs, whilst others will have to be paid for
What do you need to pay for?
• Manpower – your time, and anyone else you need to pay for.
• Advertising – social media adverts, banner adverts, search adverts.
• Design – buying photos, hiring a photographer and designer to create on-demand images.
• Tools and platforms membership – depending on which tools you choose.
Defining your budget
Your budget should fall between these two metrics:
How much money you have
How much money is reasonable to achieve your objectives
Designing appropriate messaging
Digital marketing messaging is how you talk about your business online
Messaging informs all the communications in your digital marketing – whether that’s written, in images, or in video and audio content.
Your messaging must do three things simultaneously:
• represent you, your business and your brand
• appeal to your target customers
• connect to your marketing objectives
Creating your message
The key components of messaging are the:
• digital marketing tone of voice: the words and language used
• central marketing message: the message that links directly to digital marketing objectives.
Establishing a digital marketing tone of voice
Your digital tone of voice will inform:
• how you phrase your social media posts in words and images
• how you write your emails
• your longer-form content: written, audio, video
• the written content on your website
• the words you use on digital sales platforms
Think about your tone of voice
Do you use emojis, or popular acronyms like ‘lol’?
Do you use exclamation marks?
Do you use adverbs orother descriptions?
Do you refer to the business as ‘I’ or ‘we’ or ‘it’?
Do you use complicated words?
Do you quote statistics and numbers or phrases?
Establishing your central marketing message
A central marketing message describes what you offer, to who, and what makes you special.
A central marketing message is used:
• in an ‘about me’ section on social media or digital sales platforms
• in cover photos on social media
• in long-form content, to give a hook to the audience
• as part of a call-to-action, which drives sales
• in email messaging to remind subscribers what the business does
• prominently on a website
What makes a strong central marketing message?
Simple and clear
Represents the brand uniquely
Helps meet business objectives
Online attention is limited, so make the most of it
Message must help people easily understand what you are selling
Message must represent what you offer specifically It should align with your digital marketing tone of voice
There must be a clear relationship between your central marketing message and the goals your business hopes to achieve
Steps to creating a strong marketing message
Implementing a digital marketing plan
Implementing a digital marking plan is likely to involve a combination of online and digital tools. The tools you choose need to be appropriate for your niche or your local area.
Tool
Example
Audiovisual content YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, iTunes
Blogs/website/online store Wordpress, Tumblr, Squarespace, Wix
Online sales platform eBay, Etsy, Amazon, PayPal
Social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn
Email Mailchimp, YouSentIt, Gmail (or a combination)
The online sales funnel
1
Creating a schedule
A schedule helps you manage the activities of an online business.
It is broken down into monthly, weekly and daily tasks depending on your objectives, the market your business is in, and your target market’s online behaviour.
Scheduling your digital marketing activities means:
• you can plan your time efficiently
• you have ready-made to-do lists to help you stay organised
A content plan
A content plan helps you schedule all the content you need to create and publish, so that it is created on time and sufficient to meet your objectives.
Measuring effectiveness
Once you’ve set your objectives and created a plan, you need to keep track of how close you’re getting to your goals.
Tracking progress from the start enables you to monitor the effectiveness of your digital marketing attempts, and focus more time and attention on those which are bringing you closer to your objectives.
Monitoring performance
Test Learn Adapt
The key principle of monitoring digital marketing
A simple spreadsheet in Google Sheet or Excel can be used to record monthly progress towards meeting your digital marketing objectives. For example: If your objectives relate to follower growth, include a column to record the monthly increase in followers on each social media platform.
Use of analytics
Some digital tools have built-in analytics.
It is important to check whether:
• you need to set up tracking of specific goals in advance such as in GoogleAnalytics
• you look retrospectively like on most social platforms
• the analytic tool measures the exact metrics you are looking for in relation to your objectives
Measuring success
Benchmarks may be available online, but they may not match your unique situation such as your market, skills, budget and local area. Tracking progress from the beginning of your digital marketing journey enables you to benchmark against your own success.
Measuringsuccessfor thefirstsixmonths:
• Are you improving month-on-month in each metric you are measuring?
• Are you learning new things each month that help you adapt your plan?
Measuringsuccessaftersixmonths:
• Based on the numbers you recorded each month from the start, what reasonable targets can you look to reach in 6 months’ time?
Key performance indicators (KPIs)
KPIs are a numerical measure that shows your success in a specific area
They should be attainable but challenging and therefore should:
• Be based on your changing performance over time so far
• Drive you to achieve the maximum rather than staying static.
For example: Grow 50 followers per week
