Digital Marketing for Online Business: 7 Steps to a Successful Marketing Plan

We Answer the Question, “How to Promote Business Through Digital Marketing?”

Your business is online. You may sell coaching courses, retail products, or other types of products and services. But you sell nationally to an online audience. Now you want to grow, and marketing effectively will be key to hitting your growth targets.

You may already know the power of a national SEO campaign. If not, here are a few key stats to whet your appetite:

• 68% of online experiences start with a search engine
• SEO drives 1,000%+ more traffic than organic social media
• There are an estimated 3.5 billion searches on Google every day
• Nearly 4 in 10 buyers are influenced by a relevant search
• 60% of marketers say inbound marketing (SEO, content, etc.) produces the best-quality leads

How do you tap into this search volume? How do you obtain the traffic and conversions that you need to drive your business growth?

The answer is through successful marketing. You cannot simply post to your blog, cross your fingers, and hope for the best. What you must do is develop and execute an effective digital marketing strategy for your online business.

7 Steps to the best marketing plan for online business

A marketing plan is a systematic and coherent way of planning for and achieving success in marketing your business. It helps to develop a long-term view of your company’s efforts to gain business, enables you to measure results, and gives you a solid foundation on which to iterate and improve.

The best marketing plan for online business will include detailing your goals, creating content that engages your target audience, publishing that content where your audience is hanging out, and moving leads and customers down your sales funnel.

Here are the seven steps we recommend you follow.

Step #1: Outline the specific goals of your marketing plan and what you’re expecting from it

What is it that you wish to achieve from your digital marketing plan? There are several reasons for marketing to an online audience. Your strategy should deliver more sales, though this does not have to be your primary goal. For example, you may wish to: 

• Increase brand awareness
• Increase customer retention rates
• Create a reputation for quality products and services
• Generate leads for future sales

Step #2: Define your target audience

Defining your target audience is one of the most important steps in creating a marketing campaign. If you don’t know who you are targeting, then you won’t be able to create a successful marketing campaign ─ because you won’t know where they hang out or the content you need to publish.

Step #3: Select the best marketing channels to reach your audience

Marketing channels are not one-size-fits-all. Take time to figure out which channels will work best for your business. You can use marketing channels in combination, or they can be used separately. Know that you have the freedom to experiment with different marketing channels to find the best fit for your business, including your website, blog, social media accounts, email, etc.

Step#4: Choose the best online marketing tools to promote on your channels

With so many choices of online marketing tools available, it can be overwhelming for small business owners to know which ones are the best. However, it is important to choose the tools that are right for your business and your needs, and not just what you think is popular or recommended by someone else. The tools you choose depend on your marketing activities and can include free online tools as well as paid-for services (and yes, you do get what you pay for!).

Step #5: Choose the best digital marketing strategies to engage your ideal audience

Choosing the best digital marketing strategy to engage your ideal audience is not easy. There are various strategies that you can adopt, but determining which strategy will work for your company is difficult. You also need to understand how these strategies work and what they will offer to your company. These strategies include:

• Social media marketing
• Pay-per-click advertising
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• SEO

This isn’t a definitive list, but you’ll find these are the most likely to give you the highest return on your investment. You should also note that most successful digital marketing campaigns never rely on a single strategy focus.

Step 6: Develop a content calendar, and create engaging content to share with your audience

A content calendar is a tool that helps you to manage the flow of content for your company. It allows you to organize and plan the topics and messages for different channels, and then to create engaging content for your audience.

The calendar should include your company’s social media posts, blog posts, podcasts, videos, webinars, and other forms of content, and set out the content themes and ideas that will help to support your business throughout the year. It should also ensure that you publish content regularly ─ a key to success in content marketing.

Step #7: Develop a conversion funnel and checkpoints to track progress towards goals

A conversion funnel is a general term for a marketing funnel. It is a process a customer goes through to convert from one stage of the funnel to the next. You should add checkpoints at key points to show how successful your marketing plan is to convert traffic into customers:

• At the top of the funnel, there’s lead generation ─ you’re gathering data through your website, social media, or email campaigns.
• Next up, there’s lead nurturing ─ this is where you build an ongoing relationship with your prospects by sending them simple updates about what you sell or how it could potentially solve their problems.
• The next checkpoint is called lead qualification ─ this is when you start narrowing down prospects to those who are most likely to convert into sales leads.
• Then there are conversions.

Digital Marketing for Online Businesses: Next Steps

These seven steps form the basis of effective digital marketing for companies that are ripe for the next stage of growth. However, not all companies are built the same. They have different audiences, offer different products and services, and have unique business goals. Therefore, it is crucial to speak with a digital marketing company with the experience and expertise to help you create and deliver a bespoke digital marketing plan to achieve your business objectives.

At BlabberJax, we specialize in developing B2B digital marketing strategies from the ground up, helping our clients to develop their digital presence and take advantage of it within their marketing budgets.

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