You’ve invested in creating a website. You’ve designed it, sourced the right content and used the right keywords. You’ve developed a social media strategy, implemented Google Ads, and set up email campaigns to drive traffic. You’ve put in the hard work and now it’s time to see results.

To do this, it’s important to develop an online marketing plan.

What is an online marketing plan? It’s a collection of goals and objectives you’ve established to guide your digital marketing activities. It could include things like increasing website traffic, boosting social media presence, getting coverage in top tier publications or on premium TV shows.

It can help you get a clear picture of what you’re aiming for, establish key performance indicators and review your progress regularly.

Why an Online Marketing Plan Matters

Developing a clear goal-oriented plan is a crucial step in implementing a digital strategy. It can help you identify why you’re doing what you’re doing, establish key performance indicators and review your progress regularly.

Too often business owners and marketers get lost in the day-to-day minutiae of running a business and lose sight of the bigger picture. Inevitably, this leads to inefficiency and, at worst, a complete stall in the growth stage of your business. This is a waste of time and resources. It’s better to plan out exactly what you want to achieve and how you intend to go about achieving it.

An online marketing plan makes strategic thinking about digital marketing much more evident. It can help you identify the key performance indicators that will let you know if your plan is working and adjust it as you go along. If you find that certain tactics aren’t producing the results you were hoping for, it’s easy to alter your approach and try something new.

What Should Be in Your Online Marketing Plan?

In order to create a clear and cohesive plan that will drive business growth, you’re going to want to develop key performance indicators. These will let you see how you’re performing against your objectives and the plan as a whole. You should have something to work off, a clear measurement to work towards.

The perfect scenario is to have several key performance indicators that provide you with multiple lines of evidence to support your claims. This way you can double check your assumptions and confirm or deny your hypothesis. An hypothesis is a theory or proposition that you’re testing using data gathered from your analysis of the situation. In the world of hypothesis testing, a confirmed hypothesis means you’ve found proof to support your original theory, a refuted hypothesis is one that you’ve proven wrong, and a rejected hypothesis is one that you’ve been unable to prove either way, thus meaning it’s still unproven.

The development of key performance indicators is something we’re going to look at in more detail in a section below. First, let’s look at what should be in your online marketing plan.

Key Performance Indicators

Your key performance indicators should be measurable and trackable. This shouldn’t be too difficult as long as you’ve set appropriate goals and you’ve established a performance benchmark against which you can track your progress. The more specific your goals and benchmarks, the easier it will be to determine if you’re achieving them or not. Remember, you’re aiming to develop a plan that will drive business growth. This means you’re going to want to focus on the metrics that make you money rather than those that don’t. For example, if your key performance indicator is to increase web traffic to your website, you should be looking to establish metrics like monthly traffic, average time on site and bounce rate. These are all easily measurable and, if you’re doing your job correctly, should all be going in the right direction. If you’re happy with your performance so far, you can propose new goals and revisit your strategy periodically to ensure you’re staying on course and making the most of your efforts.

Objectives & Goals

Your objectives and goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely).

A SMART goal is one that is measurable, specific, realistic and timely. Specific. This means that you’ll know exactly what you’re aiming for and how you’re going to go about achieving it. Measurable. This is simply a measurement you’ll be able to put in place to determine whether or not you’ve accomplished your goal. Timeliness. This is crucial as you’ll never be able to track the progress of your plan very easily if your goals are far off in the future. Realistic. This refers to the extent to which you’ve judged your plan to be likely to succeed. You’re aiming to create a winning strategy, so you need to ensure that you’ve thought of everything possible to make this a reality. Timely. This indicates that you’ve established an iteration cycle for reviewing and adjusting your plan as you go along.

You ought to have both short-term and long-term objectives. The former should be measurable within a reasonable time frame and the latter should be measurable after some time has passed. You should review your objectives and goals at least once a month and adjust them as necessary.

Review of Key Data

You should also review your key data at least once a month. This includes;

• Analysis of the situation, looking back at where you were before you started implementing your strategy and where you are now (key performance indicators)
• Analysis of your competitors’ strategies and the effectiveness of your plan in relation to them
• Analysis of your marketing mix, i.e. your marketing strategies (including social media), the platforms you’re using and the content you’re producing
• Analysis of results, looking back at how you did before you implemented your plan and how you’re doing now (key performance indicators)
• Analysis of problems and issues you’re facing, looking for areas that may need attention and brainstorming ideas to overcome them
• Analysis of trends, looking for indications of future growth and opportunities and developing ideas for future marketing campaigns
• Analysis of your pricing structure, looking to see if it’s adequate and whether or not you need to change it
• Analysis of your promotional activity, looking at how effective your various initiatives have been and if you should continue or alter them
• Analysis of your marketing budgets, looking to see if you’re spending enough on different activities and whether or not you need to increase your spending in certain areas
• Analysis of your sales to determine if you’re achieving your objectives and if you should continue or alter your existing strategy
• Analysis of your purchasing behaviour, looking to see if your online marketing plan is driving more leads to take action and whether or not you should continue or alter your existing strategy
• Analysis of your website, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon
• Analysis of your social media, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon
• Analysis of your email marketing, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon
• Analysis of your website traffic, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon
• Analysis of your social media traffic, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon
• Analysis of your email marketing results, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon
• Analysis of your website traffic, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon
• Analysis of your social media traffic, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon
• Analysis of your email marketing results, looking to see if there are any deficiencies that need fixing or aspects that can be improved upon

In addition to this, you should also look to see if there’s anything specific you need to change about your plan, based on the feedback you get from your objective and goal review. After all, it’s a living document that’s going to be updated and changed as necessary.

Tests of Your Hypothesis

You ought to also perform tests of your hypothesis periodically. This is where you put your existing theory to the test and make adjustments as necessary. You’ve established a clear benchmark for measuring your success against your hypothesis and once you’ve done this you can easily determine if you’re on the right track or if you need to change direction.