It is essential that you know how to answer the why. Why did you initiate this project? You don’t need to be accountable to anyone, only to yourself. Take a few seconds to respond.
If it is clear to you that you have embarked on this adventure because you are enthusiastic about it, because you are the king of the sector and because you are going to leave us all speechless, keep reading!
Analyze your company’s situation and answer: What is my objective?
Okay, it’s clear to us that you’re going to succeed. Now we need to know how to use the digital marketing plan to achieve this. What goal do you have in mind? Have you analyzed the situation of your SME?
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Take a few minutes to do a SWOT analysis of your company. Here is a link with a practical guide on how to do it. This way you will have a very clear vision of your company’s strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities.
After performing the SWOT, you will surely know a little more about your company and you will know which points you can take advantage of to enhance them and which elements threaten you and you should position yourself to combat them.
So, now that you know yourself a little better, what do you want to achieve with your investment of time and money in digital marketing? More sales? Make yourself known internationally? Increase your sales on the web? It is essential that you are clear about this.
Of course, your objectives will change over time. Don’t worry. And with them, your marketing plan and budget will also change. But the important thing is to get started.
Analyze your competition. Then, move away from it.
Have you stopped to carefully study who your competition is, what they do and at what prices they sell? Well, this should be your second step in this adventure. It’s called creating a benchmark.
Open an Excel sheet in which you will add those elements that you think are most important for your sector: web design, social media presence, product quality, video marketing…
Do a search of your main competitors (online and offline) and add them to your benchmark. Now analyze each competitor according to the values you have chosen in the previous step and mark which ones follow good strategies and which ones have not so good practices.
You can classify them by color (green for best practices, orange for passable and red if they do not work or perform poorly). This way you will see in a very visual way where your competition is weak and where you have more chances of success.
Then differentiate yourself.
It is very important that you know what makes your company different: Do you have a more direct relationship with the customer? Are you the only ones selling online? Are your products customized?
Communicate your differences
Your differentiation must be your letter of introduction. If you create a customized product, sell it as such. Don’t leave the “tailored” attribute for later. Your differentiation should be the first thing your customers see. On your website, on your business cards, on your entrance mat at home.
Your first digital marketing plan
Now comes the part that made you most lazy: putting it all down on paper.
It will actually be a liberation for your mind. Write down all the ideas that have been arising and take off that weight off your shoulders. Creating your own Marketing Plan is easier than you think. Use this template. It is a good way to start and you will be able to organize all your brilliant ideas.
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Do you know what you want? Set a goal for your website
A website can be so different depending on what your objective is, that setting your online goals should be your next priority.
Your website as a showcase
Do you have spectacular photos of your products? Then you may want to use your website as a showcase. In this case, choose a flat and very simple web template that enhances the image above all. Minimizes the text.
Users appreciate and, in fact, look for the fact that when they mouse over a photo or click on it, it increases in size. This is a feature you must take into account if you want to increase conversions.
Your website as an online store: Ecommerce
If your business model is based on online sales or you want to explore this new sales channel, what you need is to create an Ecommerce. There are plugins that allow you to incorporate a shopping cart in your website created with WordPress, for example.
But be careful, online sales already involve working with credit card data and your website must be prepared for this type of information and have a reliable payment gateway.
If you are sure you want to use your web platform to sell your products online but you are not sure how to do it, ask an expert for all the necessary specifications.
A blog? Yes, please
Just as a web page is dedicated to the company’s corporate information , the blog is a tool for communicating with the user on a one-to-one basis. And it is an important part of the digital marketing plan.
You must allow them to interact with you. Always activate the comments option (there are tools to control spam and inappropriate messages ). In addition, this way you can get the user’s contact and increase qualitatively your database.
Don’t forget to offer the option to share your content on social networks. Never include the icons of share at the end of the post. The user does not have to read the whole text, he/she may want to share it first.
The ideal is to anchor the social network icons so that they are visible at all times, even if the user scrolls.
There are many tools dedicated to improving the flow of share. Think about which social networks are the most interesting for your SME and do your research.
We recover this post in case you are ready to know some of the best digital marketing tools.
