Creating and maintaining an online presence can be a challenge, especially when you consider that Google processes more than 8.5 billion searches every day. Trying to rank high enough to outpace your competitors and place your website in front of your target audience requires a solid digital marketing plan. 

The best digital marketing plans consider the target audience, company goals, and much more. Here are five factors you must consider when coming up with a strategy. 

1. An Understanding of Your Target Market

You can’t effectively advertise unless you know who you’re trying to reach and how to reach them. 

Avoid listing your target audience as “everyone.” This is a common mistake that can cost you. Casting the net too wide means you often waste marketing dollars trying to reach someone that has no interest in your products. 

Discover your target demographics through market research, surveys, and observations. Afterward, you can create a buyer persona

2. Your Business Goals

You need a way to measure the success of your digital marketing plan. You also want to ensure you stay on track to keep within the budget. 

Therefore, one of the first steps in your digital marketing strategy should be to outline your goals. For instance, a marketing goal could be to increase leads by a certain percentage, to rank for a specific keyword, or to raise brand awareness. 

Goals should be SMART—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. 

3. Utilize SEO and SEM 

Don’t neglect the power of SEO and SEM. One of our biggest tips for a digital marketing strategy is to learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing. 

You can learn more about SEM, including effective and proven strategies for marketing, in this blog

One of your goals for improving your website’s ranking could be to come up with a content marketing plan, for instance. 

4. Setting a Budget

Once you have a better idea of your goals, you can set a realistic budget. All digital marketing plans should have a budget, but the amount you need can vary drastically depending on the size of your business and your current goals. 

If you’re a small company with a handful of employees, you might not have a huge budget for marketing. The good news is that you can make effective and actionable changes even on a small budget. Bringing in organic traffic, for instance, might only cost you the time it takes to create and promote content. 

PPC or paid advertising is another tactic that can quickly increase targeted traffic on your website, but it can get costly. You’ll need to monitor and optimize your campaign to make the most of it. 

5. Tracking Your Results

You’ll need to track your results to make sure that your digital marketing strategy is working. An analytics tool can tell you more about your results. For example, you can see which pages get the most clicks, dwell time, how often content gets shared, where visitors come from, and much more. 

You can find plenty of tracking tools, but one of the best ones is Google Analytics. 

Make the Most of Your Digital Marketing Plan

Ensure you consider these five factors when devising a digital marketing plan. If you do, you’ll make the most of your campaign and bring in better results. 

Of course, these tips are only the beginning. To find more marketing advice, be sure to check out some of our other posts. 

Read Also: 3 Ways Digital Marketing Can Improve Your Business