" Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat . " - Sun Tzu
As you probably already know, digital marketing is undoubtedly the main form of marketing used by businesses. If you haven't yet begun your journey into digitalization, I recommend that you first read my previous articles so you can prepare your digital marketing plan.
Social media and the internet are part of our sales, distribution, and promotion channels in the marketing plan, but they are not the entire plan.
The first part of your marketing plan should include these five types of analysis:
- Situation analysis: You should conduct an analysis of everything you worked on (and didn't work on) in the previous year. This may include an audit of your social media, website, online store, email marketing, advertising, branding, etc.
- Product/Service Analysis: Analyze which products/services were most in demand, which ones you didn't sell, and which ones people asked for most. Analyze what you should keep, improve, or add.
- Competitive analysis: While it's important not to constantly monitor what your competition is doing, it's also necessary to analyze what they are doing. Focus on what they aren't doing and what you can do better (e.g., provide better service).
- Financial analysis: Although many people don't like working with numbers, monitoring your finances is extremely important. Some basic aspects include: income, expenses, investments, and losses.
- SWOT Analysis.
It is important that the digital marketing plan be a hybrid with a traditional marketing plan, because this type of analysis allows us to have a better visualization and helps us to create much more solid strategies.
Have you ever heard of the TWOS Matrix ?
The TOWS matrix is derived from the SWOT analysis model, which represents the internal strengths and weaknesses, and the external opportunities and threats that a company or business faces.
This powerful model, developed by the American professor of international business, Heinz Weirich, aims to create strategic options from an external-internal analysis and is a practical tool that we should include in our marketing plan.
The Marketing Mix
The concept of the marketing mix was introduced in the 1950s by Neil H. Borden, a professor at Harvard University. The original classification of marketing mix elements included four factors (product, price, place, and promotion), which were called the four Ps. With the advent of the internet, additional concepts have been added to adapt it to the digital world.
I've heard many people say that this marketing analysis is obsolete with the advent of digital marketing. Nothing could be further from the truth. The essence of marketing remains the same. Although consumer preferences, behavior, and promotional channels may change, the concept of marketing itself remains the same. Many companies fail before they even begin because they skip these steps.
When you go to the doctor, do you ask for medication without being examined first? So why do we think it's effective to design marketing tactics without strategies? If you haven't seen it, in this video I explain why it's important to include these strategies in your digital marketing plan.
If you don't know the difference between tactics and strategy, here's a simple example:
Strategy: What do I want to achieve?
Example: I want to increase my subscriber list by 20% in the first three months of the year.
Tactics : How am I going to achieve it?
Example: I'm going to develop three sales funnels: one for giving away an e-book, one for giving away a class, and one for offering a free consultation. I'll connect the funnel to Facebook to run advertising campaigns with segmented audiences to get qualified leads to leave their email addresses.
EFI/EFE Matrix
The Internal Factor Evaluation (IFE ) Matrix is a way to strategically analyze internal factors, summarizing strengths and weaknesses.
The External Factor Evaluation Matrix (EFE Matrix) allows you to summarize and evaluate information comprised of threats that may affect your company or brand, and the opportunities that may arise and be taken advantage of for your exponential growth.
These powerful tools will allow you to classify each variable, giving it a number known as a weighted value, to know which ones we should work on more urgently.
Ansoff Matrix
The Ansoff Matrix is a strategic planning tool that provides a framework to help marketers design strategies for future growth. It is named after Russian-American Igor Ansoff, an applied mathematician and business manager, who created the concept.
Goals
With all the information gathered in the previous steps, you can define your goals. These should be measurable, achievable, and sustainable.
Make sure these include both short-term and long-term goals. Be specific about what you want to achieve, as refining key areas is the way to ensure optimal success. Also, consider goals that span the entire sales funnel . Establish measurable KPIs to track these goals.
You can also apply SMART goals
Budget
Should I invest in advertising? The short answer is yes. Investing in advertising is essential to boost your brand's visibility and give it the boost it needs, as well as to generate sales. The number one mistake most entrepreneurs make is not having or allocating a budget for advertising. This is especially true these days, with promises of organic growth on Instagram being everywhere. To put it simply: anyone who tells you that you don't need to invest in advertising doesn't know anything about business. Planning your marketing budget is not a step you should skip.
Content
Once you know what you want to achieve and what resources you have available to do so, you can plan your content. At this stage, you should consider your online marketing channels, as well as trending formats, topics of interest to your audience, and so on. When developing your content, keep in mind the possibility of repurposing it for various channels. This planning should be mapped out on a content calendar, making sure to allow for some flexibility, especially if your industry or niche is constantly evolving.
Management and monitoring plan
If you want to thrive in the digital age, you need to invest in automation and artificial intelligence programs. Using CRM tools to automate repetitive tasks can significantly help you save over 10 hours of work per week.
Recommendations for 2024
When you're starting out, you might not even know where to begin. These are the best platforms to have as part of your marketing mix for a complete and effective strategy:
- Email marketing : Email marketing remains highly effective. So, work on growing your email list and sharing valuable content with them.
- Content marketing, with an emphasis on video formats : It is a form of marketing that provides added value to your audience; but, to be effective, you must plan it strategically.
- Conversational & Interactive Websites: Now, it's not just important that your website is mobile-friendly, it's also important that it's interactive and conversational. You can make your website interactive by using tools that allow you to create quizzes, surveys, calculators, and more. You can make your website conversational by installing the option to message via Messenger or WhatsApp and by having a chatbot configured.
- Voice search optimization : With the arrival of tools like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, it's important to integrate SEO keyword positioning into your strategies, not only in the caption but also by using options like ALT-TEXT in your photos and posts.
- Artificial Intelligence: Integrate tools like ManyChat to generate leads and offer 24/7 customer service. You can also use tools like Keap to automate processes and ChatGPT to help you be more productive. Remember that artificial intelligence is just one tool , and we must be careful in how we use it.
- User-generated content (UGC): The key to social media success in 2024 will be authenticity. This is one of the predictions in Semrush's 'Social Media Trends Report 2024,' which anticipates that authentic user-generated content (UGC) will allow businesses to thrive by connecting meaningfully with audiences.
Do you need help with your digital marketing strategies? Email me at hola@biensocialmedia.com and let me know how I can help you.