What is Digital Marketing? Why is planning necessary?

Digital marketing refers to marketing activities that utilize digital platforms such as websites, social media, search engines, and email to reach target customers. For small businesses, implementing a well-structured marketing strategy can save costs, increase brand awareness, and boost sales.

What is Digital Marketing? Why is planning necessary?

However, many business owners make the mistake of doing digital marketing impulsively: seeing others running Facebook Ads and doing it themselves, or seeing competitors using TikTok and doing it too. This leads to wasted budget without achieving results. Therefore, a detailed plan is essential to clearly define goals, select appropriate channels, optimize budget, and measure results clearly.

A detailed guide to creating a Digital Marketing plan.

Step 1: Analyze the market and competitors.

Before starting any activity, identify the product or service area you offer, assess growth trends and consumer behavior of your target market using tools like Google Trends or keyword research on Google Keyword Planner.

In parallel, let's analyze the competitors in the same industry:

• Which platforms are they promoting their products on?
• What is particularly noteworthy about the content they use?
• How do customers interact?

Understanding your competitors' methods isn't about copying them, but about identifying your own unique selling points and competitive advantages.

Step 2: Define your Digital Marketing goals.

Each campaign needs to be tied to a specific goal to avoid wasting money and effort, which could be increasing orders, attracting potential customers, or building brand awareness.

Applying the SMART model will help you specify your goals:

• Ensure that goals are measurable, realistic, and have clear deadlines.
• For example, instead of setting a goal to "increase revenue," set it to "increase website orders by 300 in the next 3 months."

SMART model

Step 3: Confirm the target customer persona.

To market effectively, you need to clearly understand who your ideal customer is.

Create a detailed portrait of them: age, gender, occupation, income level, social media habits, hobbies, and even the pain points they are experiencing.

For example, if you sell products for mothers, clearly identify when they are usually online, what they are interested in, and what content makes them stop and read. Understanding your customers will help you choose the right channel, the right message, and increase conversion rates.

Step 4: Choose the right channel and strategy.

Not every business needs to be present on all platforms. Choose 2-3 channels that best suit your target customers, as identified in the previous step. If your customers use Facebook frequently, focus on Facebook content. If they often search for information on Google, invest in SEO and run search ads.

The accompanying strategy is also crucial. If it's a new product and you need to create awareness quickly, you can choose a strategy of widespread coverage using Facebook ads. If the goal is to close sales, use a landing page along with remarketing tools or follow-up emails after customers leave their information.

Check out GTG CRM's Landing Page Templates: https://gtgcrm.com/gallery

Step 5: Create content for each channel

Content is the bridge between brands and customers. Each platform has its own characteristics, so you need to tailor your content accordingly.

• For Facebook, content should be concise, images eye-catching, and headlines attention-grabbing.
• With LinkedIn, create professional, informative content.
• For Google, optimizing content for keywords is essential to ranking highly in search results.

More importantly, all content must address the customer's pain points, questions, or needs. Don't just talk about the product; talk about how the product makes their lives easier.

You can try GTG CRM's "AI Content Creation" feature, which helps you create cross-platform content effortlessly.

Step 6: Budgeting and Resource Allocation

A good plan needs a clear budget. Whether you have 5 million or 50 million VND per month, list your expenses and allocate them wisely.

• If the majority of your customers come from advertising, your budget should prioritize ads.
• If you need to build a long-term brand, invest in content.

At the same time, you need to consider the costs of tools such as email marketing software, landing pages, CRM, etc., and also personnel if you outsource. Creating a budget will help you avoid exceeding your budget while still ensuring that all activities are carried out fully.

Step 7: Measure and optimize the campaign

Digital marketing has the great advantage of being measurable. But without tracking, you won't know which ads are effective, which content is good, and what needs improvement. Keep track of key metrics such as:

• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Conversion rate (CR)
• Cost per order (CPA)

From that data, you'll know which ads to turn off, which channels to increase the budget for, or how to adjust the content.

Conclude

A well-structured digital marketing plan doesn't need to be complicated, but it needs to be clear and measurable. When you know what you're doing, for whom, and what your goals are, results will be clearer, budget won't be wasted, and you can achieve sustainable growth.

If you're a small business owner looking to start a streamlined digital marketing strategy, consider a tool like GTG CRM – an integrated platform that combines landing page creation, email marketing, campaign performance measurement, customer management, and much more, all in one place.