Your road to success

BUSINESS START-UP
& ENTREPRENEURSHIP
2017
 ABE LEVEL 3 AWARD IN DIGITAL MARKETING
ESSENTIALS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

Element 5 – Creating a digital marketing plan for a small business

Learning outcome 8 – Develop a creative digital marketing plan for a small

business

This presentation is provided by ABE for tutors to use to facilitate classroom

learning, in conjunction with the session plans and activities supplied. Please
involve your students actively in your sessions, using the ideas provided here -
plus some of your own.

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 THE DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN

Learning Outcomes:
 8. Develop a digital marketing plan for a small business (Weighting 35%)
8.1 Summarise the background and analytical steps to developing a digital marketing plan
• Setting effective objectives and consider acquisition, customer retention and customer loyalty
• Provide the market context for the digital marketing plan i.e. an outline of the market in which the business operates
• Understanding the target market and their behaviour online
• Setting the budget
8.2 Recommend messaging, digital tools and scheduling within a digital marketing plan
• Designing an appropriate message
• Developing an appropriate mix of digital and online tools capable of achieving the objectives
• Develop a schedule of activities for implementation
8.3 Recommend methods of measuring the effectiveness of the digital marketing plan
• Monitoring performance
• Methods of measuring success
• Use of analytics

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 A DIGITAL MARKETING
PLAN FOR A SMALL
BUSINESS

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 Background and analysis

If you don’t record what you want to do before you start, how are you
able to know what works, what’s a good use of your time and what will
make your business a success?

A plan will help you make sure:

• Everything is in place from the start

• Time is not wasted in repetition or doing the things that don’t contribute to your goals
• Predictions are realistic, objectives are set and methodology established

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 Setting your objectives

What are your aims in terms of digital

marketing?

An effective objective will be:

Place image here

•Clear
•Focused
•Quantified

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 Defining your objectives

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 Defining your market

To give your digital marketing plan focus, you need to define the market in
which your business sits

This can be as simple as one sentence that covers:

• what you sell or what service you offer

• to who
• in which space

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 Tips for defining your market

• Be specific: having too broad of a market

means you cannot be focused

• Look at how your competitors describe

themselves on their website and on social Place image here

media for inspiration

• Think of this as your elevator pitch: the one

liner you use to tell people what your
business is about

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 Who are your target customers?

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 Assigning a budget

Assigning a budget for your plan allows you to allocate money and plan
your spending.

Some online activities are free, e.g. PR and blogs, whilst others will have to be paid for

What do you need to pay for?

• Manpower – your time, and anyone else you need to pay for.
• Advertising – social media adverts, banner adverts, search adverts.
• Design – buying photos, hiring a photographer and designer to create on-demand
images.
• Tools and platforms membership – depending on which tools you choose.

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 Defining your budget

Your budget should fall between these two metrics:

How much money is

How much money
reasonable to achieve
you have
your objectives

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 MESSAGING, DITIGAL
TOOLS AND SCHEDULING
WITHIN A DIGITAL
MARKETING PLAN

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 Designing appropriate messaging

Digital marketing messaging is how you talk about your business online

Messaging informs all the communications in your digital marketing – whether that’s
written, in images, or in video and audio content.

Your messaging must do three things simultaneously:

• represent you, your business and your brand

• appeal to your target customers
• connect to your marketing objectives

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 Creating your message

The key components of messaging are the:

• digital marketing tone of voice: the words

and language used
Place image here

• central marketing message: the message

that links directly to digital marketing
objectives.

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 Establishing a digital marketing tone of voice

Your digital tone of voice will inform:

• how you phrase your social media posts in words and images
• how you write your emails
• your longer-form content: written, audio, video
• the written content on your website
• the words you use on digital sales platforms

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 Think about your tone of voice

Do you use
emojis, or Do you use Do you refer to
popular adverbs or other the business as
acronyms like descriptions? ‘I’ or ‘we’ or ‘it’?
‘lol’?

Do you quote
Do you use Do you use
statistics and
exclamation complicated
numbers or
marks? words?
phrases?

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 Establishing your central marketing message

A central marketing message describes what you offer, to who, and what
makes you special.

A central marketing message is used:

• in an ‘about me’ section on social media or digital sales platforms

• in cover photos on social media
• in long-form content, to give a hook to the audience
• as part of a call-to-action, which drives sales
• in email messaging to remind subscribers what the business does
• prominently on a website

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 What makes a strong central marketing message?

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 Steps to creating a strong marketing message

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 Implementing a digital marketing plan

Implementing a digital marking plan is likely to involve a combination of

online and digital tools. The tools you choose need to be appropriate for
your niche or your local area.

Tool Example
Audiovisual content YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, iTunes

Blogs/website/online store Wordpress, Tumblr, Squarespace, Wix

Online sales platform eBay, Etsy, Amazon, PayPal

Social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn

Email Mailchimp, YouSentIt, Gmail (or a combination)

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 The online sales funnel

1 – Identify and
introduce

2 – Capture
and engage

3 – Campaign
and sell

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 Creating a schedule

A schedule helps you manage the activities of an online business.

It is broken down into monthly, weekly and daily tasks depending on your objectives, the
market your business is in, and your target market’s online behaviour.

Scheduling your digital marketing activities means:

• you can plan your time efficiently
• you have ready-made to-do lists to help you stay organised

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 A content plan

A content plan helps you schedule all the content you need to create and
publish, so that it is created on time and sufficient to meet your
objectives.

Content type Suggested Frequency

Long-form content 1–2 per week
Social media 10–20 per week
Design As required
Email 1 per week, or on a campaign basis
Adverts 1 set per week
Digital PR and influencer 1–3 per month
Social proof (testimonials or referrals): 1–3 per month

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 MEASURING THE
EFFECTIVENESS OF A
DIGITAL MARKETING
PLAN

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 Measuring effectiveness

Once you’ve set your objectives and created a plan, you need to keep track
of how close you’re getting to your goals.

Tracking progress from the start enables you to monitor the effectiveness of your digital
marketing attempts, and focus more time and attention on those which are bringing you
closer to your objectives.

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 Monitoring performance

The key principle of monitoring digital

marketing
A simple spreadsheet in Google Sheet or Excel can be used to record monthly progress
towards meeting your digital marketing objectives.
For example: If your objectives relate to follower growth, include a column to record the
monthly increase in followers on each social media platform.

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 Use of analytics

Some digital tools have built-in analytics.

It is important to check whether:

• you need to set up tracking of specific goals
Place image here
in advance such as in Google Analytics
• you look retrospectively like on most social
platforms
• the analytic tool measures the exact metrics
you are looking for in relation to your
objectives

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 Measuring success

Benchmarks may be available online, but they may not match your unique
situation such as your market, skills, budget and local area.

Tracking progress from the beginning of your digital marketing journey enables you to
benchmark against your own success.

Measuring success for the first six months:

• Are you improving month-on-month in each metric you are measuring?
• Are you learning new things each month that help you adapt your plan? 

Measuring success after six months:

• Based on the numbers you recorded each month from the start, what reasonable targets can you
look to reach in 6 months’ time?

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 Key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are a numerical measure that shows your

success in a specific area

They should be attainable but challenging and

therefore should:
Place image here
•Be based on your changing performance over
time so far
•Drive you to achieve the maximum rather than
staying static.

For example: Grow 50 followers per week

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 ABE’s offices are located in New Malden,
Greater London, UK.

5th Floor, CI Tower, St. Georges Square,

New Malden, Surrey, KT3 4TE, UK

Tel. +44 (0)20 8329 2930

Fax: +44 (0)20 8329 2945

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