Research has it that 46% of brands don’t have a defined digital marketing strategy while 16% of those who have one don’t integrate it into their marketing activity. It’s noteworthy to say if you don’t have a plan in place you can’t expect to grow and innovate in digital marketing. So how do you avoid the pitfalls of failing to nail down a digital marketing strategy? Start by crafting a plan that packs a powerful punch.

Here are the 5 most important steps you can take to ensure your digital marketing efforts create a real impact online.
Step 1: Set your Objectives
• Define your business’ overall mission/objective. Make your digital marketing mission fit into your grand plan. What’s the overriding objective you want your digital marketing efforts to achieve (for example do you want to position your company as the go-to online provider for computer parts)? This is your mission. To achieve this goal, set and measure your KPIs. Get specific with your KPIs by identifying the figures you will be held accountable for achieving. And keep them (your KPIs) realistic by analyzing your previous digital marketing efforts. This will ensure you aim for a positive increase on your current results while helping you to avoid setting your expectations too high.

Step 2: Learn From Your Mistakes
Don’t go into the planning period in the dark. Analyze your digital marketing strategy’s past success and failures so as to help you focus on setting the best KPIs for your business. Decide on whether you are going to analyze the previous year, quarter or month and get to work. To analyze, determine the time period you would like to analyze and set your calendar to match this timeframe. Don’t forget to analyze your competitors’ strategy.

Step 3: Speak Their Language
Don’t let the planning take away from the people you’re trying to reach. Don’t get carried away with KPI setting, budget fretting, and channel selection, only for you to forget about your audience. Start with the basics and note down all the demographic information you know about your target consumer – like age, gender, and location. Identify the problems you can help your target persona solve, and find means to meet them.

Step 4: Stick to Your Budget
Three things are important for identifying your means:
• Your budget
• Your digital channels and
• Your team (or people).
It’s important to take stock of all of your resources before deciding on what else you might need for the next period. Define your overall digital marketing budget, decide if you’ll use paid promotion or not, allocate a specific portion of the budget to your digital channels and run along with it. If you’re using paid promotion and it isn’t bringing you the results you desire, revisit and invest the allocated budget figure into the channels bringing you the best results.

Also, identify whether you need to hire more people and whether you have the means to do so. Decide if all of your digital marketing activity will take place in-house or if you’ll outsource to a third party agency. Get your team to review their digital marketing activity and brainstorm a few ideas for future strategy.

Don’t forget to review your current digital marketing channels and decide which channels to keep and whether you’d like to invest in any new ones (depending on where your customers are and the time you have available). Clearly, articulate what each digital channel is trying to achieve to optimize whatever channels you’re using.

Step 5: Make the Plan but be flexible
Your plan won’t be perfect from the outset, that’s not a problem. Not every assumption you make is going to be correct and you can’t predict exactly how your customers will behave. It’s, therefore, essential to continuously measure and monitor your strategy’s performance and to change elements where needed.

Highlight the key campaigns you’ll create and promote, allocate a timeframe for each and document the digital channels needed to ensure the success of each campaign. Don’t forget to create a monitoring plan to check the success of each strategy at continuous intervals so as to change things when there’s a need to.

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