6 components of a digital marketing plan

There are many theories that you can rely on to create your plan to market your brand on the Internet.. This is true.. but I see that the Sostac model presented by PR Smith is one of the best models that was able to understand most aspects of the strategy, create it, then follow up on its goals and implement them.

Understanding and applying this model will definitely help you draw up your plan in a more organized way. The SOSTAC model is a model originally developed for the science of planning and management in the nineties to assist experts and managers in the process of developing planning and marketing strategies.

It consists of: Situation: Where are we now?

Objectives: Where do we want to be? Strategy: How do we get there?

Means - Tactics: What are the tools?

Actions: What exactly are we going to do? Control: Are we there? We will use SOSTAC as a thinking approach rather than an application to organize our marketing strategy and apply it to the basic aspects of digital marketing to create a model that you can easily use and apply.

Components: Contents of the topic Toggle Situation: Where are we now? First: Customer analysis Second: Competition analysis Third: Partners and intermediaries Fourth: Competency analysis Fifth: Market trends (opportunities and threats) Objectives: Where do we want to be? Mission Vision KPI’s Strategy: How do we get there?

Section One: Target Market Section Two: Positioning - Value Proposition Means - Tactics: What are the tools? Actions: What exactly are we going to do?

Control: Are we there?

Situation: Where are we now? First: Customer Analysis Not knowing your company’s target customers based on the nature of its work and the products and services it offers is like “walking blindfolded”.. Believe me, knowing your ideal customer enables you to find new customers in a much easier way..

Now you need to determine who your ideal Buyer Persona is by asking yourself the three most important questions. from?

Why?

And how? from? Who is your ideal customer who will benefit most from your products or services?

Who are your visitors and what stage of the purchasing process are they in? Who are your followers on social media? Who are the influential customers or non-customers in your industry and their followers?

Who else is talking about your products, services, and company (and what are they saying)? Who is attending the same conference or event (and what are they saying)?

Why?

“Why?” It is always the most difficult question.. For example, why do football fans support football?

Why buy from Apple or choose Mercedes over Toyota?

Why you? What is your current competitive value that distinguishes you from others?

Why your target customer buys what they buy and how it was

Their online journey that led them to buy? how? How does your target customer purchase and what was their online journey like?

What channels do your current and targeted customers use to reach the landing pages on your site? What are the most used channels and which do you find have the highest conversion rates? Second: Competition analysis: You must know your competitors.

Who are they by names, locations, products, and size of their online presence! What are their strengths and weaknesses. And what are they competing against you?

Do they sell the same products, provide the same content, and be located in the same places?? And so on.. What are the hacks (weak points) that enable you to overcome this competition?

Do you focus on your strengths?? Part of your competitor analysis is exploring your organization's strengths and weaknesses (in comparison to your competitors). In addition to external analysis, it includes opportunities and threats (direct and indirect) in the external market, such as competitor trends, strategies and tactics..

You can say it is Swot Analysis... but with an online flavour. Third: Partners and intermediaries. Analysis of your situation also includes an analysis of your partners to find out the best among them, whether they are intermediaries (such as retailers or brokers) or they are another strategic alliance such as providers of services that you sell, prepare for your market, program, and so on..

Which opens new ways for you to market. Your partners also need care, and care requires resources, and resources require allocating time, effort, and money. Therefore, you must determine which channels will spend your resources correctly and provide you with better results.

Fourth: Analyzing competencies: Analyzing your performance or results shows many of your strengths and weaknesses in what you do. Therefore, it is good to know this before you start spending your budget and waiting for results that may impress you and you do not know why, or that may frustrate you and you do not know why either. Fifth: Market trends (opportunities and threats) Every market has its own trends that affect it, whether economic, political, or behavioral.

Marketers must be aware of all these variables when entering a new market or when applying an external strategy in a specific market, especially if we are talking about Growth Hacking. The need to monitor all these changes stems from the importance of identifying trends that could affect your business, either as an opportunity or a threat. Objectives: Where do we want to be? Although some see the most important goals as simply increasing: revenue, profit margin, customer satisfaction, or brand value..

We take a slightly different point of view and start with the ultimate goals that decorate your website. J.. They are the Mission and the Vision, and translating them into typical key performance indicators (KPI’s) that explain these goals in more practical detail.

A mission is the reason you are on this planet. Your mission should include how to make the world a better place – how you ultimately help customers and stakeholders live in a better place with your products and solutions. It should also include some CSR (corporate social responsibility) and the company's role towards the planet.

Take, for example, the declared mission of the IKEA Furniture Company, which was: “At IKEA, we take it upon ourselves to provide a more comfortable life for all people, and we believe that the idea of ​​the IKEA project greatly supports this approach by providing innovative furniture that suits all tastes, budgets, and spaces.” Vision The vision explains what is stated in the mission, but it targets the organization itself more than focusing on the customer and his life, which will be improved through our products, and so on. The vision is what the organization sees itself in 5 or 10 years. KPI’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) can be broken down in more detail down to the contribution of each online channel or tool you use to achieving your goals, such as measuring the cost per visit/question/lead/and the distribution of sales and profits by each channel.

Strategy: How do we get there? Situation analysis tells us “Where are we now?” ..The goals explain “Where do we want to go?” The strategy summarizes “How will we get there?” ..

Developing a strategy requires the ability to see the big picture of what is happening, so I am a proponent of slowing down in implementing this step when we do not have complete awareness of the market we are entering, or the tools we are using. Let's be honest...the strategy is actually the smallest part of the e-marketing plan, but it is the most difficult.

There are nine main elements that need to be considered very carefully, which we will mention in a minute. But for a strong and correct start, you must divide the strategy into two main parts: The first section: the target market, that is, dividing the markets into sectors and choosing the correct sectors very carefully to target them and focusing your resources on them, and they are the customers who want your products or services badly because it fulfills a need that they already have, and there is already a demand. Section Two: Positioning: The target mental image: or the Brand or the GoodWill, or more precisely, determining how you want people to view you and positioning your brand in a certain way in the minds of your target market.

Value Proposition Online - Value Proposition The value proposition that you offer online is closely linked to your brand positioning, which must answer questions such as: Who are we? What do we offer? Which markets do we serve?

What makes us different? The most important question for a potential customer: “What is the value behind this for me?” Whoever needs an answer must provide it within seconds of landing on any of your websites. Nine elements of a digital marketing strategy that you should not neglect!

Here are the 9 key elements to consider when building your digital marketing strategy. Through our experience in this field, you will rarely find that a company uses all nine components. In fact, the focus is on other things and things that other departments work on, for example, and sometimes they are less important in other companies, and so on.

Just use what serves your purpose. 1 - Target markets (necessary) 2 - Objectives (it is useful to summarize what objectives the strategy must achieve) 3 - Positioning (essential) 4 - Procedures (the strategy is updated over time) 5 - Partnership (strategic alliances are supposed to facilitate the marketing process) 6 - Sequence (any strategy is built in a sequence to ensure its achievement) 7 - Data integration 8 - Tactical tools or electronic marketing channels 9 - Participation and interaction with customers Means - Tactics: What are tools? Clarity of your vision and goals regarding your positioning in a specific market makes choosing the appropriate means much easier.

As well as your clear vision of your target markets. In this part, we list the means and tools that go into the details of the strategy: Advertisements Interactive ads, pay-per-click, display, social channel ads,... Used in: Awareness (credibility) Public relations Press releases, newsletters, discussion panels, and Viral Marketing of all kinds Used in: Awareness (credibility / reputation) Sponsorship Sponsorship of online events / sites Used in: Awareness (credibility and marketing sampling) Sales / agents / telemarketing Selling on Internet, chatting with customers, link building Used for: Sales (building relationships and gathering information) Exhibitions, events and conferences Virtual exhibitions, virtual events, webinars Used for: Sales (building relationships and gathering information) Direct mail Email marketing and newsletters Used for: Sales (building relationships and gathering information) SEO and marketing automation Used for: Building relationships and databases, identifying target customers and responding to inquiries, sales and customer relationship management The Power of the Word – Word of Mouth Collecting recommendations, criticisms, feedback, and platforms Social media and forums Used for: Awareness, credibility and conversions Marketing content promotion, incentives and rewards, online customer loyalty programs, and contests Used for: Conversion (inquiries/leads/news releases/opportunities, after-sales relationships) Marketing and packaging QR codes, virtual reality Used for: Conversion and relationship building Actions: What exactly are we going to do?

The section on procedures ensures the use of the above-mentioned methods and achieving the maximum benefit. You can consider it a thinking methodology to help you achieve the best result from any tool you use. It includes five steps: The systems that you will follow, whether administrative or technical systems. The processes that will be implemented using these systems. The instructions that we will follow during implementation. The Checklist that will help you not forget anything. Then Internal Marketing, which is all the internal communications that the company carries out to ensure Make sure everyone understands what the nature and purpose of the marketing activities you do every day is?

That everyone knows what his role is in these activities and how this overlap achieves the company’s goals? Believe me, in some large companies that have a presence in more than one country, internal marketing is a very, very important thing. Sometimes its importance exceeds regular marketing.

Control: Are we there? Any plan in life needs a good system to control it that enables you to know whether you are on the path to achieving the goals that you set in the first stage or not. You definitely do not want to wait until the end of the year to change the tools and methods that you use to implement your strategy, when you can do so now.

The control department is your early warning system that enables you to follow the KPI’s that you have identified for each marketing method, tool, or channel. We will talk about it shortly. You will find it integrated into the goals.

Sostac Model Website by PR Smith #ElectronicMarketing #DigitalMarketing