A strategic digital marketing plan is a strategic document or framework outlining how a business will leverage digital channels and tactics to achieve its marketing objectives. It serves as a roadmap for businesses to effectively connect with their target audience online, increase brand awareness, generate leads, and drive sales. Colorlib reports that marketing professionals who create plans are 331% more likely to achieve success compared to those who don’t. No wonder then that 63% of them do it always or usually, while only 10% plan their activities rarely or never.
In this post, we’ll show you what are the key elements of a digital marketing plan, why it’s so important to have one, and how to build it step by step. I’ll also present real examples of such plans and provide links to ready-to-use templates to facilitate your work and shorten your path to digital marketing success.
Let’s get started!
Key takeaways:
- A digital marketing plan provides a strategic roadmap to help businesses leverage digital channels and achieve specific marketing goals, such as increasing brand awareness and driving conversions.
- The plan is more detailed than a digital marketing strategy, breaking down high-level objectives into specific tactics and performance metrics.
- Key elements of a digital marketing plan include setting clear goals, identifying the target audience, conducting competitive analysis, and choosing appropriate marketing channels.
- A well-crafted digital marketing plan maximizes ROI by aligning marketing tactics with business goals and efficiently allocating resources.
- Online marketing plan implementation includes market research, scheduling marketing activities, and execution.
What is Digital Marketing Plan?
A digital marketing plan is a comprehensive marketing roadmap that outlines how a business will use digital channels to promote its products or services. It involves identifying target audiences, setting specific goals, and selecting the most effective digital marketing tactics to achieve those goals. It’s a way of structuring the overall company’s digital marketing efforts.
The term is sometimes confused with “digital marketing strategy”, but, in fact, the latter phrase focuses more on high-level objectives and positioning, whereas the plan is a detailed schedule for execution. A digital marketing strategy is about aligning business goals with digital channels, while the plan breaks down exactly how those channels will be leveraged on a tactical level. The strategy sets the stage, and the plan details the performance metrics and campaigns.
Digital marketing plans are often formalized in a document to make them shareable with teammates or experts from external agencies.
What is the Importance of Digital Marketing Plan?
A digital marketing plan is important because of its ability to guide businesses in the effective and strategic use of digital channels to achieve their specific marketing goals. It helps companies stay organized, focused, and results-driven while adapting to the fast-paced and constantly changing digital environment. Let’s scrutinize the crucial benefits of framing business and marketing strategy into a precise marketing plan.
Providing Clear Direction
A well-defined digital marketing plan outlines specific goals and objectives, giving your team a clear roadmap. Without a plan, marketing efforts can become scattered, leading to wasted time and resources. A strategy ensures everyone is aligned and working towards common business goals.
Helping Identify and Understand Target Audience
A digital marketing plan requires you to define your target audience – understanding their needs, preferences, online behavior, and pain points. This focus allows for more personalized and relevant messaging, which increases the chances of engaging the right people and converting them into customers.
Maximizing ROI
By outlining where to allocate resources and marketing budgets, a digital marketing plan ensures that every dollar spent is put to the best use. It helps identify which channels and tactics are delivering the best return on investment (ROI), allowing businesses to focus on the most effective strategies.
Aligning Marketing and Business Goals
A well-crafted plan ensures that digital marketing efforts are in line with broader business goals. Whether your objective is to increase sales, boost brand awareness, or expand into new markets, your digital marketing plan ties those ambitions directly to your marketing strategies.
Improving Decision-Making Process
With a digital marketing plan in place, decisions become easier. You have data, clear objectives, and performance benchmarks to guide your choices. Whether it’s choosing between platforms or deciding on creative approaches, having a plan reduces guesswork and leads to more informed decisions.
Enabling Measurement and Performance Tracking
A good digital marketing plan includes key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow you to track progress and measure success. These metrics help assess whether marketing campaigns are effective and where adjustments are needed. Continuous measurement and analysis help improve strategies over time.
Increasing Brand Consistency
By outlining your brand’s voice, messaging, and identity, a digital marketing plan ensures consistency across all digital channels. Consistent messaging helps build trust with your audience and strengthens your brand presence.
Refining Resource Efficiency
With a clear strategy, you’re able to prioritize high-impact activities and allocate resources (time, money, personnel) more efficiently. You can focus efforts on the strategies that will yield the greatest benefits, avoiding wasteful activities or missteps.
Supporting Long-Term Growth
A digital marketing plan is a crucial tool for businesses looking to scale and grow sustainably. By continuously refining your approach, optimizing campaigns, and capitalizing on new opportunities, you position your business for long-term success in the digital space.
What is Included in a Digital Marketing Plan?
A successful digital marketing plan typically includes clearly defined goals and audience for planned marketing campaigns, in-depth target market and competitor analysis, digital marketing strategies and channels, budget and toolset, implementation schedule, risk management roadmap, and KPIs described in very detail. Let’s discuss these points to give you more practical insights along with a few important nuances.
1. Objectives, and Target Audience
At the heart of any digital marketing plan are its goals and objectives, which should be specific, measurable, and aligned with broader business targets. Any digital marketing strategy can be planned using the SMART method, which makes the process simple to understand. What does it actually mean?
This word is derived from the first letters of the following words, which are simultaneously names of the requirements in determining goals and defining the audience. Here are their meanings and hints on how to follow them:
- Specific – Clearly define what you want to achieve (e.g., increase website traffic by 20% within 3 months).
- Measurable – Quantify the goal so you can track progress (e.g., gain 500 new social media followers).
- Achievable – Ensure the goal is realistic and attainable with available resources (e.g., doubling the email list in a month may be too ambitious unless the proper tactics are in place).
- Relevant – Align the goal with broader business objectives and the needs of your target audience (e.g., driving more leads for your sales team).
- Time-bound – Set a clear deadline for achieving the goal (e.g., increasing conversions by 10% in 6 months).
By applying the SMART method, businesses can create actionable, time-sensitive objectives that are easier to monitor, adjust, and optimize as campaigns progress.
The plan also defines the target audience through detailed buyer personas, capturing
- demographics,
- interests,
- values,
- behaviors,
- problems.
to ensure campaigns resonate with the intended audience.
2. Competitive Analysis and Market Positioning
The plan involves a thorough analysis of competitors to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Understanding the market landscape helps position the brand effectively and uncover unique selling points that differentiate it from competitors. There are several methods used for competitor analysis, each offering unique insights into a competitor’s performance and market position.
One common approach is SWOT analysis, which helps identify a competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This method provides a comprehensive view of both internal factors, like product quality and resources, and external factors, such as market trends and competition.
Another popular method is benchmarking, where you compare key performance metrics, such as website traffic, conversion rates, and customer engagement, against your competitors or industry standards. This helps highlight areas where your business may be falling behind or excelling.
Lastly, customer review analysis involves examining customer feedback on platforms like review sites and social media to gain a deeper understanding of competitors’ customer satisfaction, common issues, and unmet market needs. This method uncovers valuable insights that can inform product development or marketing strategies.
3. Marketing Channels and Strategies
A digital marketing plan outlines the key platforms and strategies to reach the audience, including:
- search engine optimization (SEO),
- social media,
- email marketing,
- content marketing,
- and paid advertising.
These channels are selected based on where the target audience spends their time and what aligns with the campaign’s goals.
Content is usually a crucial component of the plan, as its essence is communication. Without content, you cannot speak to potential customers and persuade them. Thus, carefully consider the types of content you aim to choose. Think over types like blog posts, copy for landing pages and websites, social media content, videos, and infographics, along with their themes and formats. Use a content calendar to organize the publishing schedule and ensure consistency with overall marketing efforts.
4. Budget, Tools, and Resources
To manage resources effectively, the plan should include a budget breakdown, allocating funds for specific campaigns, tools, and other expenses. You can choose from the following budgeting methods popular for planning and structuring an online marketing strategy:
- Percentage-of-revenue method that stands for the allocation of a percentage of projected revenue (commonly 5-10%) to digital marketing efforts, balancing investment with expected business growth.
- The objective-and-task method suggests starting with defined marketing goals, then estimating the costs to achieve them, and, in the final stage, allocating the budget accordingly. This method ensures resources are directly tied to strategic outcomes.
- The competitive parity method bases the budget on competitors’ spending, as it presumes that similar fund streams and allocations allow you to remain competitive in the market while matching expenditures to your unique goals.
- Historical data method use past marketing performance and spending data to estimate future budgets, adjusting for market changes or potential new objectives.
- Zero-based budgeting starts from zero for each campaign, justifying every expenditure based on its expected contribution to marketing goals.
Regardless of the model you’ll bet on, your budget should include (among others):
- the technologies and platforms needed, such as analytics software (like Google Analytics), marketing automation tools (like Zoho), CRM systems (like HubSpot), etc.,
- advertising costs (spending on paid campaigns across platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads, including A/B testing, retargeting, and ad creatives),
- content creation and design, e.g., budget for developing high-quality content, including copywriting, video production, graphic design, and hiring freelance creators or agencies when needed,
- training and development, encompassing funds set aside for upskilling your team, whether through courses, certifications, or attending relevant conferences and workshops to stay updated on marketing trends and tools.
5. Implementation Timeline and Risk Management
A clear timeline lays out the steps for executing campaigns, including:
- start and end dates for each campaign, content release, or major marketing initiative to create a sense of urgency and keep the team on track,
- milestones (such as campaign launches, content publications, or product promotions) serving as clear checkpoints to assess progress and adjust strategies over time,
- deliverables, namely, expected outputs for each phase of the campaign, whether that’s a blog post, a new ad creative, a social media post, or a report
The plan also addresses potential risks, offering strategies to mitigate challenges and ensure smooth execution.
6. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Optimization
To measure success, the effective digital marketing plan defines KPIs like:
- conversion rates (CR is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a resource),
- click-through rates (CTR is the percentage of people who click on a link, ad, or call-to-action after seeing it – it’s a perfect gauge of the effectiveness of your headlines, ad creatives, and overall engagement with your audience),
- customer acquisition cost (CAC is the total cost to acquire a new customer, including marketing, advertising, and sales expenses – this KPI is ideal for evaluating the efficiency of your marketing spend),
- return on investment (ROI measures the profitability of your digital marketing efforts, comparing the revenue generated against the costs of the campaign),
- lead generation metrics (the number of qualified leads generated through your digital marketing efforts – tracking lead quantity and quality helps you understand if your marketing is attracting the right audience),
- customer lifetime value (CLV evaluates the total revenue a customer is expected to generate during their lifetime, which is good for assessing the long-term impact of your marketing campaigns and customer retention strategies),
- social media engagement (metrics like likes, shares, comments, and overall engagement rate on social media platforms are indicators that help you confirm whether the applied social media marketing strategy is well-targeted, well-organized, and includes the appropriate content),
- email open and click rates (it’s the percentage of recipients who open your emails and the percentage who click on links within them – it reflects how well your email campaigns resonate with the audience),
- churn rate (a metric related to the percentage of customers who stop using your product or service within a given time frame – a high churn rate can indicate issues with customer satisfaction or product-market fit),
- engagement rate (the level of interaction users have with your content, including comments, shares, likes, or any form of active participation – this is a strong indicator of how compelling and relevant your content is).
Regular performance analysis helps identify what’s working and where improvements are needed, ensuring the strategy evolves with data-driven insights for continuous optimization.
10 Steps to Creating Digital Marketing Plan
Creating a digital marketing plan includes a mix of strategic steps designed to align your business goals with the specific market requirements – from setting clear objectives, through understanding your audience and analyzing competition to selecting the right channels and determining timeframes. Here is the detailed step-by-step roadmap on how to make it professionally and without missing any essential stage:
- Firstly, set clear goals and objectives. Define what you want to achieve with your digital marketing efforts, such as increasing website traffic, boosting brand awareness, or driving conversions.
- Secondly, identify your target audience. Understand who your ideal customers are. Create buyer personas based on demographics, behavior, interests, and needs to ensure your strategy is matched to the right people.
- Thirdly, conduct a SWOT analysis. Evaluate your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the digital marketing landscape. This helps you understand where you stand compared to competitors and identify areas for improvement.
- Fourthly, analyze your competition. Research your competitors’ digital marketing strategies to find opportunities and gaps. This can help you differentiate your brand and gain a competitive edge.
- Fifthly, choose your digital marketing channels. Select the most relevant channels for reaching your target audience. Consider options such as social media, SEO, email marketing, PPC, and content marketing, based on where your audience spends time online.
- Sixthly, develop your content strategy. Plan the type of content you’ll create (blogs, videos, infographics, etc.) and how it aligns with your audience’s interests and the stages of their buying journey.
- Seventhly, set a budget and allocate resources. Determine how much you’re willing to spend on each channel and adjust your plan accordingly. This ensures you have the means to execute your strategies effectively.
- Eightly, create a timeframe and action plan. Establish a timeline for each marketing activity. Set clear deadlines for campaign launches, content production, and other key deliverables to stay on track.
- Finally, measure and track performance to optimize your plan. Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as website traffic, conversion rates, social engagement, and ROI. Regularly monitor these metrics, learn from mistakes and make continuous, data-driven improvements.
3 Examples of Successful Digital Marketing Plans
It’s high time to see the digital marketing plan in action. Let’s delve into three real digital marketing campaigns and find out how they are organized as well as why they turned out to be extremely effective.
1. Ahrefs: A Content-Driven Digital Marketing Plan
Ahrefs, a leading SEO toolset provider, showcases how a well-executed digital marketing plan can drive significant traffic and brand visibility. Their strategy revolves around content marketing and data-backed education. What are the key elements of their marketing strategy that have proven successful?
High-Quality Educational Content
First of all, content! Ahrefs runs a popular blog and YouTube channel packed with SEO tutorials, case studies, and actionable tips. Their content educates users about solving real-world SEO challenges while demonstrating the value of Ahrefs’ tools. They eagerly publish content in very popular forms like:
- examples of >SUBJECT<,
- >SUBJECT/COMPANY<‘ case study,
- actionable tips on how to >PROBLEM TO SOLVE<,
- ultimate guide on >SUBJECT<,
- etc.
SEO Mastery
As an SEO company, Ahrefs just practices what they preach. They optimize their content for high-volume keywords, as they have enough domain power and authority to outperform their competitors in the SEO tools industry.
Instead of publishing tons of posts or blog articles every month, they focus on providing less content but of far better quality and with many advanced SEO insights. They provide real value to users through their analyses, stats and guides on how to rank high in search networks.
Many users regularly visit their blog, which increases the chance of converting them into clients. How? By showing Ahrefs outstanding features in their content, strategically placed CTA, limited-time offers, etc.
Freemium Model with a Value Punch
Ahrefs also provides free tools like the Backlink Checker and Keyword Generator to attract users. These tools offer a glimpse of Ahrefs’ capabilities, encouraging them to explore paid plans. If users find what they are looking for, they are likely to sign up and at least try the paid version.
Customer-Centric Approach
Finally, Ahrefs addresses real problems faced by marketers, creating a relatable and valuable experience. Their strategy is to educate first, sell second – building loyalty and reducing resistance to their services.
Key lessons to learn from this plan:
- make content a focal point of your digital marketing strategy,
- regularly publishing is the key (rather than producing tons of useless content),
- be credible and prove skills in what you offer (as Ahrefs in SEO did),
- let potential customers try your products to turn them into… real customers,
- focus your brand narrative around your customers’ real needs and the problems they face,
2. Spotify: A Personalized Digital Marketing Plan
Spotify, the global music streaming giant, has crafted a highly personalized digital marketing strategy that resonates with users worldwide. Their success lies in leveraging data-driven personalization and innovative campaigns. Let’s take a look at the pillars of their plan.
Data-Driven Personalization
Spotify uses its vast troves of user data (collected simultaneously via their platform and marketing channels) to offer tailored playlists like “Discover Weekly” and “Daily Mix”. It creates a unique experience for each user, providing the kind of music and content, which fits best to specific cultural needs and preferences. It surely fosters engagement and loyalty.
Viral Campaigns like Spotify Wrapped
One of Spotify’s most iconic campaigns, Spotify Wrapped, turns user data into a shareable annual review of their listening habits. It not only delights users but also generates massive social media buzz, organically promoting the platform.
Shared playlists also act as a kind of user-generated content, which is one of the best engagement boosters. The additional value is that it’s created and distributed by your audience, not by your marketing team. This way Spotify saves lots of marketers’ time.
Cross-Channel Marketing Excellence
Spotify engages users through diverse channels, including in-app notifications, email marketing, and social media, ensuring their message reaches users wherever they are. Their tone is informal, relatable, and often humorous, which resonates with their audience.
Creative Collaborations
Spotify partners with artists and brands to create exclusive content, such as artist-curated playlists and branded hubs. These collaborations keep users engaged while positioning Spotify as a leader in the music ecosystem.
They also put high hopes in TikTok, where they post short videos featuring music and showbiz stars, updates about new resources, and humorous content.
Free Resources with Clear Upsell
Spotify’s freemium model entices users with a free, ad-supported version, while frequent reminders highlight the benefits of upgrading to Premium. This balance ensures wide user acquisition and steady revenue growth.
Localized Campaigns
Recognizing that music is culturally diverse, Spotify tailors its campaigns to specific regions, creating playlists and promotions that resonate with local tastes and trends.
Key lessons to learn from this plan::
- personalize your messaging to the audience you aim to conquer,
- collect data through apps, platforms, and newsletters to get a better understanding of your potential clients (particularly, their buyer personas along with their problems and needs),
- involve your audience in interactions with your brand (e.g. through UGC),
- collaborate with stars and influencers to use their power for your purposes,
- don’t hesitate to use (relatively) new channels and media like TikTok.
3. Starbucks: A Community-Focused Digital Marketing Plan
Starbucks has mastered the art of blending brand storytelling, personalization, and community engagement in its digital marketing plan and strategy. Their approach focuses on building strong customer relationships while reinforcing their brand’s core values of quality, inclusivity, and social responsibility. Let’s dive deeper into it.
Loyalty Program and Personalization
Starbucks’ “Starbucks Rewards” program is a cornerstone of their digital strategy. By offering personalized deals, rewards, and birthday surprises, the company fosters customer loyalty while using data to enhance user experience and further improve their marketing activities.
The core of this program is the app able to display recommendations based on purchase history and demographics, making them more targeted and, hence, relevant.
Engagement through Social Media
Starbucks uses platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to create a two-way conversation with customers. Their social media presence is visually cohesive, focusing on lifestyle branding. They emphasize moments of joy, community, and connection.
They also use interactive content, polls, and user-generated posts to keep their audience engaged.
Storytelling and Purpose-Driven Marketing
The third element is integrating storytelling into campaigns. Starbucks often focuses on sustainability, ethical sourcing, and community projects. Their marketing is purpose-driven, with a strong emphasis on their commitments to the environment and social causes, such as supporting local farmers or promoting diversity.
Mobile App Integration
As mentioned before, Starbucks has developed an app that acts as the digital heart of their business. It isn’t just for ordering coffee – it’s a platform that integrates loyalty, payments, and personalized experiences. Customers can earn rewards, place orders ahead, get individual offers or vote on menu changes. This is why they can feel members of a global Starbucks family.
Seasonal and Limited-Time Campaigns
Starbucks, at last, keeps its offerings fresh and exciting through seasonal promotions, such as the Pumpkin Spice Latte in the fall or limited-edition merchandise. These campaigns often generate a sense of urgency and exclusivity, encouraging repeat visits and creating hype on social media.
Key lessons to learn from this plan:
- while acquiring new clients is crucial, try also to retain current ones through loyalty programs and community building,
- speak to your audience, but at the same time, let them speak to you (e.g. via SoMe channels),
- use multiple channels, as each one fits other groups and other campaign types,
- expand your contacts database to gather the data necessary for crafting personalized digital strategies,
- include CSR activities (and communicate about it!) related to ethics, sustainability, and work-life balance to go beyond the product and selling services.
How to Implement a Digital Marketing Plan?
Begin with thorough market research to understand trends and customer needs, then develop a content calendar and promotional schedule. Next, execute the plan across selected channels while maintaining a flexible approach. Continuously evaluate engagement metrics to adjust messaging and tactics.
What are the Components of a Digital Marketing Plan?
The key components of a digital marketing plan comprise email marketing, content creation, social media activities, paid and organic search marketing, affiliate marketing, collaboration with influencers, video content and referrals. Here is the full list along with a brief explanation of each item:
- Email Marketing (using emails to engage with leads and customers, build relationships, and drive conversions through newsletters, promotions, and automated campaigns),
- Content Marketing (creating and sharing valuable, relevant content like blog posts, videos, and infographics to attract and/or retain a target audience),
- Social Media Marketing (using social media platforms to promote content, engage with followers, and drive traffic to websites or landing pages),
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (optimizing content and website structure to improve visibility in search engine results and attract organic traffic),
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) (paid ads on platforms like Google or social media to drive targeted traffic to your website or landing pages),
- Affiliate Marketing (partnering with affiliates who promote your products or services in exchange for commissions based on sales or leads generated),
- Influencer Marketing (collaborating with influencers or bloggers to promote your products to their audience for increased brand visibility),
- Video Marketing (using video content on platforms like YouTube or social media to engage, inform, and promote products or services),
- Referral Marketing (encouraging your customers to refer new customers by offering incentives or rewards for successful referrals).
Where to Find Digital Marketing Plan Template?
You can find the basic digital marketing plan template on HubSpot and sites like TeamGantt or Smartsheet. If you’re also looking for a digital marketing strategy template or other marketing sheets (for creating customer journeys, budgeting plans, etc.), I recommend the last two pages especially, as they are abundant in such resources. Additionally, they go hand with a plethora of great learning materials.
Once you choose your template, you can try to adjust it using tools like Asana or Smart Insights, which currently offer free plans (a great way to get some practice).
What is the Role of Landing Pages in Digital Marketing Plan?
Landing pages are powerful, high-converting tools that play a central role in guiding visitors through a clear path to conversion. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, capturing leads, or driving sales, landing pages are a critical piece of the puzzle in almost every digital marketing plan.
First of all, they are created with a single purpose in mind, which may be collecting leads, encouraging sign-ups, or promoting a specific offer. All of these allow marketers to guide page visitors toward a specific action (conversion). Unlike a homepage, which provides general information about a brand, landing pages are laser-focused on one goal, ensuring visitors are not distracted by unrelated content or links.
Secondly, landing pages serve as powerful tools to nurture leads and drive sales. By aligning the content, design, and messaging with specific campaigns, they provide experiences targeted at a specific group, making this group more likely to convert.
Thirdly, today, it’s hard to even imagine paid advertising campaigns (e.g. in Google and Bing, but also in social media channels like Instagram, Tik-Tok, etc.), which are not connected to landing pages. While paid campaigns bring you “lead juice” (read: desired traffic), landing pages are able to convert it into purchases, sign-ups, etc., which ultimately may be expressed in money.
In addition to driving conversions, landing pages offer valuable insights through A/B testing and analytics. Marketers can experiment with different headlines, images, and call-to-actions to see what resonates best with their audience. This data-driven approach helps refine digital marketing strategies and improve ROI.
Lastly, landing pages can be optimized for SEO to rank high in search engines. This way, they can drive tons of traffic that, in the next steps, can be converted into users or clients.
Where to Find Digital Marketing Plan Template for Small Business?
CoSchedule provides the best digital marketing plan template for small businesses. It’s simple and limited in structure and items, so it’s in line with a typical small business activity scale. For the same reason, it’s also perfect to work with for beginners to the marketing planning concept.
Additionally, the plan is served with a bunch of guidelines and tips for a good start.
Create a Digital Marketing and Execute with Landingi
If you already have a marketing plan and looking for effective tools to implement it at a reasonable cost, there are very few solutions to choose from. Most of the platforms you need are limited in functions, while others are very pricey. But, fortunately, there are a few exceptions…
One of them is Landingi, a versatile and constantly developed digital marketing platform ready to help you in:
- creating landing pages (from scratch or based on over 300 templates), microsites, pop-ups, forms, lightboxes and other digital assets,
- generating relevant and precisely targeted content (and SEO!) with AI,
- testing and optimizing your campaigns based on data,
- selling products and promoting offers through built-in payments and integrations with e-commerce tools,
- scaling your business through automated translations, programmatic pages and Smart Sections.
If some of these points are of your interest, just sign-up for free and start your digital marketing journey right now!
