How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan in 5 Steps

It’s time to adapt your business in the new digital area. Here a powerful Guide how to create a Digital Marketing Plan in 5 Steps. 

What is a Digital Marketing Plan ?

A Digital Marketing Plan is a well elaborated document that specifies the company goals, the strategies and tactics using online marketing. The ultimate aim is  to reach the desired target market and new potential customers. This plan should be worked out very precisely and studied well. One of the most common mistakes companies make is to plan the strategies not well enough.

The dimensions of a Digital Marketing Plan are not depending on the size of the business. In fact, a Digital Marketing Plan can be applied to a multinational company as well as to SME.

How to create a powerful Digital Marketing Plan in 5 steps?

Before beginning to elaborate the plan, the business should ask itself to whom am I marketing? It should be always crystal clear who my target market is.

1. Digital Market Research 

This first step is a very important one that need a lot of time. The Market Research for a Digital Marketing Plan includes the identification of potential customers, desires, identification of new market trends and structures as well as identification of competitors. In this phase the business should verify it’s actual Social Media situation that include for example double check the website (onlinestore), check if its compatible with a smartphone, check Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blog presence. For each Platform it is recommendable to elaborate a SWOT Analysis. 

 SWOT Analysis Practical Example

2. Defining your Digital Marketing Objectives

After having identified the strength & weaknesses of our Social Media Platforms, it is time to define our Marketing Objectives in order to progress our Digital Marketing Plan. The Marketing Objectives should be reasonable, specified and reasonable. For a Digital Marketing Plan some very important objectives can be a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO), high Branding, Sales Funnel improvement, E-Mail Marketing Strategies (MailChimp), Google Adwords Campaigns, Social Media Ad’s Campaign.

Here a practical extract to convert theory easier into reality.

 

 

In my opinion of all the above stated Marketing Goals I recommend to built a Website or Blog with the highest SEO possible. Why? It’s the best way to reach new customers while paying nothing! When your website is ranked in the first results in google you have a very high competitive advantage that was for free, maybe cost your business time, but that is all.

 

3. Target Market and Competition

To elaborate Step 3 of the Digital Marketing Plan we need to know what types of clients the business has. In fact, it should be studied how big the target market is as well the number of potential customers and the capacity. 

To know the target market it is recommended to create a profile: 

• Age
• Sex
• Income
• Location
• Lifestyle
• Goals
• Interests

An other aspect to take in consideration is the competition your business faces. It is useful to study the competitors strengths and weaknesses. More about Target Market here.

4. Digital Marketing Plan Tools 

Here a list of very useful Tools, you may not have heard, to elaborate your Digital Marketing Plan and execute it.

5. Digital Marketing Calendar

In the last step of your Digital Marketing Plan for your business you should prepare a calendar where you plan your posts on all Social Media Platforms. I prepared a very useful example of how such a Digital Marketing Calendar should look like.

 

Followed all the steps your Digital Marketing Plan is made. 

Useful links: 

Best Digital Marketing Agencies in Europe here

Best Digital Marketing Agencies in the United States here

Find a template here

Find here more about Digital Marketing Campaign.

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LinkedIn Algorithm – How does it work for posts ?

Author: Thomas Eccel

LinkedIn is the B2B Social Network Platform for companies. But how does the LinkedIn Algorithm work for posts? How can I improve my posts ? How can my post reach more people ?

LinkedIn’s Algorithm is similar to Edgerank (Facebook). An Algorithm in a Social Network filters relevant posts and articles and creates order in the Platform. It would be impossible for users to see every post and reaction. That would be annoying.

The Algorithm consists of four main parts. The post is going to be valued, this process is not linear. In fact, your post will go through the Algorithm again and again.

Phase #1 – Filter

When posting your content (Link, Image, Gif, Article, Video…) LinkedIn automatically classifies your post as one of the three categories.

• “Spam”
• “Low – Quality”
• “Clear”

Obviously your posts should be in the 3rd category. I am not sure which keywords the LinkedIn Algorithm filters when classifying a post as “Spam” or “Low – Quality”, but I guess if you are using words like “Discount”, “Special Offer” and “Tag your…”.

 

Phase #2 – Engagement Test in your Feed

Once your post has been classified by LinkedIn robots it enters in a Engagement Test Phase. The post will be uploaded in your Feed and sent to a small amount of your audience in order to check how interested it is. Note: It won’t be visible for all your contacts ! Interactions like Comments, Shares and Recomendations  by your audience impact your post positively. The more interactions at the beginning, the more friends it will reach eventually. When your friends are ignoring or blocking your content it impacts negatively your posts and the Algorithm can declassify it.

It’s so important to ask yourself at the beginning the following questions:

• Is my post annoying my audience?
• Do I create high value content for my contacts ?
• Is my post relevant for the Network?
• Is my posts interesting ?
• Do I post to much ?

 

Phase #3 – Scoring 

In this Phase the Algorithm checks the quality of your post. A “Like” gives your post 10 points, a comment (more effort) gives your post 20 points and a share indicates that your post must be very interesting and gives you therefore 30 points (my explanation).  More popular contacts are weighted higher as normal users. If your post doesn’t receive reputation it will be ranked in the lower part of the Feed but doesn’t disappear. In fact, your post is not death, LinkedIn is a friendly network and gives your post a second and third and fourth chance to go viral. More viral posts will enter the Phase #4.

 

Phase #4 – Real People Involvement

When your post reaches Phase #4, real people will read your post and decide whether to keep it in the Feed, reach more audience and get more interactions, or whether to end the life of your post. When your post is doing very well, these editors can also sent it to people outside of your network, appearing in “trending topic” etc.  LinkedIn believes in quality, engagement and reliability.

How to improve your LinkedIn Posts – Algorithm

As mentioned before, your LinkedIn Posts should be interesting and creating a high value for you audience.

Relevant Topics

Write your title of your post with action words like

• “How to ___”
• “3 Ways to ____”
• “Why you can____”

With these simple keywords you can reach a higher viewership, but don’t abuse them.

Add Medias

A post should include media content, not only text, text is boring sometimes. These visual tricks will raise the attention of your audience and result in  higher interactions.

Your post should include next to a title and description at least one the following medias

• Images
• Videos
• Graphs
• Link Previews

 

Understandable for a 12-year old child

There is no need on LinkedIn for PhD articles, you audience is interested in new, high value content. When drafting your post be aware that your post should be readable for a 12-year old child. Human beings don’t like information that is written too complicated. We are lazy and appreciate short and useful information that is not encoded.

 

Summary LinkedIn Algorithm 

LinkedIn as many other Social Networks uses a Intelligent Algorithm to filter relevant content. The time of posting off topic content is long past and we should adapt. Companies and individuals on LinkedIn should know at least parts of how the algorithm works and how to create a high value content in order to gain more interaction and visibility.

Other interesting Articles:

https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-the-linkedin-algorithm-works-hacks/

https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2017/03/strategies-for-keeping-the-linkedin-feed-relevant 

 

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