It isn’t really difficult to have a good digital marketing plan, but it does rely on certain basic tools. Before you expand your digital marketing outreach, make sure you have these tools strongly in place.

A Consistent Brand

What is it that you are telling your customers? What do you want them to know? What does your brand stand for? Answers to these questions will guide your online activities. It helps to choose the right words and phrases in your SEO. The digital design and content should be consistent across all of your digital channels including website, email, social platforms and mobile apps.

Search Engine Marketing

About 90% of consumers use a search engine to gather information about products or services. This is true in both consumer and business marketing. And 70% of final purchase decisions start with a search. The ROI of SEM is pretty clear – because you don’t pay for a website visit unless someone has clicked on your search ad. Original content on your website is also an important part of your digital marketing plan.

Optimizing Your Content

In order to perform well, a website must have valuable, original content. Your plan should include optimizing your content across mobile devices and different browsers. Google will punish your site if it is not mobile friendly and does not have relevant, updated content.

Social Media

Creating a conversation between you and your customers is very important and social media helps foster that. You want your customers engaged with your industry, business and products. Social media offers marketers an opportunity to engage across platforms they go to for information. Master two or three platforms (Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc.) and try, with analytics, to determine which platform is working better.

For example, Facebook can be used for most companies, and Pinterest works great for companies where visual is important. Twitter works well when information needs to be sent out and for entities where location is important, try Yelp. Google+ now combines features of many social media platforms.

Leads

Guerilla marketing suggests that it takes at least seven separate touches for a customer to respond to a promotion or advertising in general. All of these touch points should offer a way to collect information about your customer. Offer something in return for their interest and information – a discount code, white paper or newsletter subscription would work.

Track and Measure

Get to know how to use Google Analytics and start by setting up an account. You’ll learn many things including: where your visitors are coming from, age, gender and country. You can also get a list of valuable search terms used to get to your site and if a conversion tool is used, you can actually calculate ROI. Google Analytics is an indispensable digital marketing tool.

These essential tools should become an important and daily part of your digital marketing plan. It will take some time to master them but once you do, it will lead to more and more leads, inquiries and sales.