Planning. It’s not fun is it?

According to research by E-Consultancy, one third of the biggest brands selling online in the UK don’t have a detailed digital marketing plan.  Planning can be hard work. You might face: an IT department who thinks digital is their realm, difficulties reporting across your business (tricky, especially if you’re global), or working out how your offline marketing will complement your digital and vice versa. Smaller companies might not have the time or resources, or know who is responsible to put a plan together. And the biggest challenge of all: if everything is going well now, you don’t need a plan. Right?

Having a plan is all about looking into the future. Even if your digital marketing is working well for you now, something 2009 has rudely reminded us of is that nothing is certain. Even in sunnier financial climes, digital technologies will still change. Your competitors will always be attempting to woo your customers, and if you get distracted and lose focus your customers just might start blushing and winking back.

So here are four reasons to have a digital marketing plan, even if things are looking rosy today.

Reason one: Improve your organisation’s motivation through a shared goal

Identify your business opportunities and threats, and then define measurable goals that will let you know you are on the right track. This is one of the first things you should do when putting your plan together.

• Are you a business in an intensely competitive market with a low client retention rate? What can you do to increase your customer loyalty?
• Have you noticed a particular customer segment that is fiercely loyal to your brand and has bought from you more than three times in the last year? Can you increase their average value order?

Prioritise your goals for the short, medium and long term, and how the success of these will be measured.
This will create a shared purpose for your digital marketing; things are then more likely to get done. To read more about putting your plan together I recommend Jim Nichols’ post on iMedia.

Reason two: Improve campaign effectiveness

Once you know what is important to measure, how are you going to measure it? Web analytics is the most obvious way for organisations of any size to measure the ROI of their digital marketing, Google Analytics being the most popular (and it’s free!) You might also consider qualitative tools such as customer surveys and focus groups. Collect the right data and enough of it so that it can be integrated into your existing systems (e.g. your CRM system for use by your sales team).

The point is this: use the information you gather to make decisions about what to do next.

Don’t run the risk of missing opportunities for applying online marketing methods such as search, social media or email marketing because you haven’t got a framework in place to identify the most effective channels. Don’t chase the latest digital marketing fad (there are many) just because “everyone else is doing it”. Badly planned, rushed digital campaigns are unlikely to integrate well with your other activities and will not help you towards your long terms goals. If you think this is you, go back to reason one.

Reason three: Improve customer satisfaction

A digital marketing plan is a means to achieving long term results. If you are using the information you gather to make intelligent decisions about your online activity (see reason two), you are more likely to spot areas for improvement. Keeping your customers satisfied means their loyalty to your brand will be high. If their loyalty is high they are more likely to buy from you again and again. If you do really well they might even start talking about your services via online word-of-mouth sites such as Review Centre or Facebook, giving you an invaluable free recommendation.

Without a comprehensive plan in place customer demand can be underestimated, or your value proposition can miss the mark. Have you heard the business fable about a satisfied customer telling one person about your company, an unsatisfied customer telling ten? In the digital world a dissatisfied customer has plenty of places to vent their thoughts and a large potential audience to boot.

Reason four: Gain market share from your competitors

Every organisation wants to prise customers from their competitors. However, if your lack of planning means there is insufficient budget allocated for digital marketing, then your competitors will be the ones to gain. Be the organisation who is planning ahead, and the likelihood is you will already be a step ahead of what most of your competitors are doing already.

Particularly in more digitally mature markets, such as travel or financial services, you’re creating a weakness for your organisation by not having a plan.

Conclusion

A digital marketing plan presents your organisation with a significant opportunity. Assembled correctly it will identify your key objectives and how you are going to measure them, allowing you to benchmark your progress and take further action as needed.

You must follow up your plan with activity to let your plan fulfil its potential. If you’re doing it right business will continue to be rosy now and in the future. And that’s very a satisfying feeling.