Strategic Planning for Digital Marketing

Many marketers live in the moment instead of plan ahead for their digital marketing strategy. But is that really the best approach? The best digital strategist think it isn’t. A more strategic planning approach to marketing and digital marketing improves a brand’s likelihood of success in the future. Not that you can’t get results from an ad hoc strategy, but you can get far more from a strategic approach. Digital marketing techniques need to be prioritized for your business.

However, planning is a different process. Planning horizons for strategic marketing plans require intense focus. For larger businesses, long-term planning means at least an annual plan or even longer. Longer term campaigns isolate where you want to go and the steps you’ll take to get there, which puts your business on the pathway to success.

Now you might be wondering why you should do long-term planning. The answer is it enables you to have both consistent strategies that work at your disposal and also gives you a resource allocation that follows your company’s goals. One important factor, though, is the flexibility of a long-term marketing strategy. Anticipate market changes and go with them for the best results.

While a long-term plan will keep you from being able to adjust quickly to changes in media, it will give you a road map if something were to come up. If you have no directions, you will miss out. A good idea is to create a variety of plans and checklists that are designed for your business. Think of these plans in terms of the RACE Planning Customer Lifecycle which includes:

Reach — Increasing your budget for SEO and Google AdWords Visibility regardless of costs.

Act — Use a strategic approach to content marketing to create high quality and shareable content that supports your goals throughout the year.

Convert — Set an investment to conversion rate optimization goal that address various parts of user experience.

Engage — You’ll also want to create a Marketing Automation or CRM project that is relevant to your customers and enables you to send event-triggered emails wherever your customer’s lifecycle is at.

Long-term marketing plans are a good idea regardless of where your business is today.