How to create a digital marketing plan: Steps & strategies

Maps reveal the fastest way to a destination, alongside alternate routes that can also get you where you need to go. For this reason, roadmaps are often an apt business metaphor (and an actual product deliverable) because there’s generally more than one approach to reaching a desired business goal.

Many teams need roadmaps to help keep them on track—including marketers—and that’s what a digital marketing plan represents. Digital marketing plans help marketing teams meet prospects where they are with consistent messaging, strategies, and tactics, all designed to move leads deeper into the marketing and sales funnel.

What is a digital marketing plan?

A digital marketing plan outlines your marketing strategy across digital channels. It defines your business goals, identifies your target audience, and establishes the tactics you'll use to reach potential customers. Digital marketing plans focus specifically on online marketing channels such as social media, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and paid advertising.

The plan connects your business objectives with specific marketing campaigns and initiatives, ensuring all marketing efforts support your overall strategy. A well-crafted digital marketing plan includes detailed buyer personas, defines your value proposition, outlines your content marketing approach, and establishes measurable KPIs to track success.

Why is a digital marketing plan important?

Digital marketing plans are essential whether you’re a startup or a large enterprise. Without clear goals and a structured approach, marketing activities can become scattered across teams and regions. This makes them less effective and wastes both time and budget.

Instead, a solid digital marketing plan helps you optimize your marketing efforts by focusing resources on the most effective digital marketing strategies for your business. It enables you to understand your target market's pain points, preferences, and demographics, allowing you to create relevant marketing campaigns that resonate with your ideal customer. It also ensures alignment across your team.

Digital marketing plans are also important because they’re more cost-effective in comparison to out-of-home advertising or hosting large events. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates and return on investment (ROI) in tools like Google Analytics, you can see what's working in real time and adjust your plan accordingly.

5 steps to create a digital marketing plan

1. Define your goals and objectives

Start by establishing clear goals that align with your overall business objectives. For example, if the broader business is focused on customer retention and expansion, then your campaigns should target current customers and introduce them to products or features they aren’t currently using. Use the SMART goals framework to ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Using a different example, instead of something broad like "increase brand awareness," set a goal similar to this: "increase website traffic by 40% within six months through SEO and content marketing."

Your goals might include expanding into new markets, improving conversion rates, or building brand awareness on specific social media platforms like LinkedIn or TikTok. Whatever you choose, make sure each goal has corresponding KPIs that allow you to track progress and measure the success of your digital marketing strategy.

2. Research your audience and competition

Digital marketing plans should be backed by detailed buyer personas. If you don’t already have personas in place, you’ll need to conduct thorough market research to understand your target audience's demographics, behaviors, preferences, and pain points. Look beyond basic information like age and location—dig into what keeps your ideal customer up at night, what social media platforms they use, and what type of content resonates with them.

Segment your target market into distinct groups based on shared characteristics. This allows you to tailor your messaging and choose the most relevant marketing channels for each segment. With the advent of AI, some customer engagement platforms now offer sophisticated campaign orchestration for different segments or even 1:1 personalization.

It’s also important to have a handle on what marketing campaigns your competitors are running, which digital channels they prioritize, and how they communicate their value proposition. Perform a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to evaluate where your business stands relative to competitors. Don’t use this information to copy their tactics—instead, ensure that your message stands out.

3. Choose your marketing channels

As you begin to define your campaign plans, select the digital channels where you’ll see the most impact. Your digital marketing strategy might include a mix of SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, influencer partnerships, or paid advertising.

Consider that different channels serve different purposes in the customer journey. For example, search engine optimization helps attract potential customers actively searching for solutions, while social media platforms help build brand awareness. Email marketing is great for nurturing new and existing relationships, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can drive immediate traffic to landing pages.

Don’t spread yourself too thin—it’s better to focus on the marketing channels where you can really be present and provide great content.

4. Develop your content strategy

With your marketing channels selected, it's time to plan the actual content and marketing campaigns you'll create. This may include high-quality case studies, infographics, blog posts, guides, or social media posts that demonstrate your expertise and address your audience's pain points. Develop campaign themes that tell a cohesive and consistent story across touchpoints.

Begin by mapping out a content strategy for each marketing channel. For social media platforms like LinkedIn or TikTok, for example, you might plan a mix of educational posts, behind-the-scenes content, and user-generated material. For content marketing, consider blog posts, case studies, infographics, and videos that demonstrate your expertise. Email marketing might include newsletters, product updates, and other content relevant to your audience.

For example, a product launch might include teaser content on social media, a detailed landing page optimized for SEO, email announcements to existing customers, and paid advertising to reach new audiences.

It’s helpful to create a content calendar to track campaign content creation across channels. Your calendar should specify topics, formats, publishing dates, and which team members are responsible for each piece.

5. Set your budget and measure results

Allocate your budget strategically across marketing activities based on the expected ROI for each initiative. Consider the cost of marketing tools you'll need and the resources for content creation, influencer partnerships, or paid campaigns.

Establish a system for tracking metrics and measuring the performance of your marketing efforts. Beyond vanity metrics, focus on data that connects to business goals—conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, and overall return on investment. Use these insights to continuously optimize your digital marketing strategy, shifting resources to what’s working best.

What should your digital marketing plan include?

A comprehensive digital marketing plan should include:

Digital marketing plan examples

Let’s look at a hypothetical example of how a small business might structure its digital marketing plan. Imagine a small fitness studio launching its digital presence with clear business goals: increase membership by 30% and boost brand awareness among health-conscious professionals aged 25-45, within a 10-mile radius.

The studio’s digital marketing strategy might focus on a few primary marketing channels: Instagram and TikTok for social media marketing, Google search for local SEO, and email marketing for member retention. They’ve done their research, so they know that their prospective customers are busy, and they need tailored workout options versus hitting the gym after work with no guidance.

The gym’s content marketing approach includes posting workout tips and client success stories on social media platforms three times weekly, creating blog content optimized for local search terms, and sending a monthly email newsletter with class schedules and wellness tips. They've allocated 40% of their budget to paid advertising, including PPC campaigns targeting local searches and influencer partnerships with local wellness advocates.

They track website traffic, landing page conversion rates, social media engagement, and email open rates through Google Analytics and their social media platforms. Although their budget is limited, they take a focused approach that they can measure.

A real-world enterprise example: SUSE

SUSE, a global enterprise software company, uses Airtable to centralize its digital marketing plans across multiple teams and regions. Using Airtable, SUSE's marketing team consolidated their campaign planning, content creation, and performance metrics into a single source of truth. Airtable allows the company to track marketing campaigns from ideation through execution, assign ownership across distributed teams, and measure key performance indicators in real time. This unified approach improved collaboration between its content, demand generation, and field marketing teams while giving leadership clear visibility into how marketing activities align with business objectives.

SUSE can now manage complex, multi-channel marketing campaigns more efficiently, optimize its marketing channels based on measurable data, and ensure its digital marketing strategy remains cohesive across all global marketing efforts.

Create your digital marketing plan with Airtable

Building and managing an effective digital marketing strategy requires organization, collaboration, and flexibility—all of which Airtable's marketing solutions can provide.

With Airtable, you can centralize all aspects of your marketing efforts—from campaign planning and AI-powered content calendars to budget tracking and campaign performance. Create custom views to visualize marketing campaigns across different digital channels and collaborate with team members in real time. Whether you're managing social media content, coordinating email marketing campaigns, or tracking SEO progress, Airtable keeps your entire team aligned to your broader business objectives and marketing goals.