The difference between strategy and tactics is now clear. What are the steps we need to take to arrive at a clear and practical digital marketing plan ? I assume that you have your goal ready, that you have set objectives and that you have a strategy. If you don’t already have one, check out some blog posts about digital strategy that we have written in the past or consider whether you can have us draw up your digital strategy. The very first step is… understanding your customers.

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Step 1: Understand your target audience

The intention is that we now try to get deep into the heads of our target audience. In a perfect world, you would have done this before you wrote your plan. After all, there is little point in setting up a strategy if you do not know who you are making that strategy for. To make this step easy for you, I have prepared a whole series of questions that you can use to gain more insight into your customers. To make this step even easier, we have made  a handy fill-in sheet in excel.

• Not only can you find all the questions you can ask to better understand your customers,
• you can also work out your strategic pillars in this.
• And we have also added  a handy overview of 66 marketing tactics, along with a lot of info about  ROI, time needed, effectiveness and knowledge you need.

Step 2: Choose marketing tactics that work!

By asking these questions, and thinking about answers, you now have a much better understanding of your customers. You know what matters to them, where they go to find answers to their questions, etc. So now you also know better which marketing tactics are more suitable than others. For each strategic pillar , you now formulate which techniques or tactics you want to apply. But be careful! Some tactics work better than others, some take more time, and others are simply expensive. To help you choose which tactics best suit your strategy, we have made an overview of 66 marketing tactics , each with:

• how much time do you need to achieve success ?
• Much time does it take to implement this tactic ?
• how effective is this tactic today in 2017?
• and what knowledge do you need to successfully apply this tactic?
  

  Step 3: create your digital marketing plan!

  Now that you’ve connected all your tactics to your strategy, you’re all set to start planning:

  • what exactly am I going to do?
  • when am i going to do it?
  • who’s going to do it?
  • what all do i need to do this?
  • what does it cost?

  Be sure to ask the following question: you may already have a clear view of what you want to do, but the question you still have to answer is: am I ready? Are your channels ready (website, email, mobile, advertising, SEO, content, …)? Is your organization ready? Does your story make sense to the outside world? Voilà, your digital marketing plan in 3 steps. It may be a bit of work, but it provides a lot of insights that really help you on your way. A digital marketing plan revolves around the right steps, the right use of digital channels and the right content at the right time. Content that provides answers creates a bond with your customers. Relevant content gets your customers to listen to you, engage with what you’re trying to do, and get them to take action. Relevant content is the basis of a good conversation.

  1. What are their pain points? 
  Why do they need your product?
  Why exactly is that their problem? What is the cause?
  What is the impact of that problem? Financially, emotionally, or professionally? How bad is that?
  What happens when they don’t have your product or service? What alternative products or services are there?
  Can they fix the problem themselves, or will it just get worse?

  2. What does your product or service do to minimize or reduce their pain?
  How do your products provide a solution?
  What is the effect of the solution? For how long?
  Will efficiency increase?
  Does it help to maintain or grow sales?
  What ROI does your product or service give?
  Can they do things more easily now?
  Does it help them serve their customers better and increase customer satisfaction?
  Does it ensure that your customers can achieve better customer loyalty?

  3. How can your product or service inspire and help them personally and professionally?
  Does it give hope for better?
  Do they have less work as a result?
  Does it make their day-to-day work more fun?
  Maybe it even provides a career boost?
  Will it make them live longer? OK, maybe that’s over  … or maybe not?

  4. How is your product or service positioned?
  Which category does your service or product belong to?
  Are there other competitive, alternative or do-it-yourself options?
  Why would they prefer a DIY solution? Is that a lack of money, a lack of time, or a lack of confidence in existing solutions?
  If they choose a competitor, or a do-it-yourself option, why is that?
  Where is your product or service compared to the competition? Better or worse? Why?
  How important is your product to your customers?
  Are there free variants of your kind of solution? Why do people go into that? Who?

  5. How “different” are you?
  What makes your product or service different?
  Do customers believe you are different?
  Do customers understand that you are different?
  Why should they buy from you and not someone else?
  Who is the market leader in your sector? Why?
  What competition is coming your way? Why?