• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
Allee Creative

Allee Creative

Content Marketing Twin Cities

  • About
  • Capabilities
  • Who we serve
  • Our work
  • Tools & Resources
    • Ideas & templates
    • Full Calendar
  • Blog
  • Let’s Connect
  • Book Melissa
October 19, 2021
Content Strategy

Digital marketing: Close Q4 on a high note, plan for the year ahead

Melissa Harrison

READING TIME: 5 minutes

SHARE ON SOCIAL

The best way to plan for updated digital marketing strategies is to use what you know about your current marketing tactics and metrics. This information will guide your strategic communication planning whether for the next month, the next year or next quarter. Check out our recommendations for getting started, below.

What do you want to achieve?

Before crafting your marketing plan, think about your business goals; what is it that you want to achieve and how can marketing support those goals? For instance, are you looking for:

  • Higher quality leads
  • Increase in brand awareness, recognition or sentiment
  • More website traffic
  • Improved customer engagement
  • Larger share of the market than your competition

While content marketing in the digital world does not largely equate to a 1:1 revenue driver, it is an important part of the relationship-building process. For many brands, the use of digital marketing will not directly impact sales. This is especially true for those in the professional services, B2B, nonprofit, manufacturing or association industries. Content and digital marketing can largely be used as top-of-funnel marketing–getting your audiences to trust you and learn about your expertise. If you are an e-commerce company, retail or consumer goods company, you may have an easier time correlating direct sales to your digital marketing efforts. Doing it all with perfection is possible with expert guidance and assistance and with knowledge about marketing resources.

Nonetheless, digital marketing is a component worthy of planning in any marketing strategy. Consider your overall goals before jumping in and set tactics to match those goals.

Use marketing metrics dashboards

Set yourself up for success by putting together marketing metrics dashboards for the year to make it easy to input the data each month without having to re-create the wheel. Set up dashboards that can track digital metrics for:

  • Email marketing
  • Websites
  • Social media

Pull stats each month and analyze to get a sense of what is working, where your audience is, what types of content have high engagement, where traffic is coming from, etc. Our free marketing templates page is a good place to start or check out the sample templates in each of these categories below.

Email marketing metrics dashboard

email metrics dashboard example

Website traffic dashboard

website metrics dashboard example

Social media metrics dashboard

social media metrics dashboard example

Basic digital marketing metrics definitions

It’s not just your social media metrics that matter. ‘Likes’ to your Facebook page and Instagram accounts are vanity metrics that don’t mean much. Dig deeper into your digital marketing metrics; how can you track them back to business and brand reach?

Start with these six digital marketing metrics and then dig into other metrics that will be helpful as you plan.

Bounce rate

Percentage of users who land on a page on your website and leave without clicking on anything or navigating to any other pages on your site.

Click through rate (CTR)

The number of clicks your content receives divided by the number of times it is shown (formula = clicks/impressions).

Conversion rate

Percentage of people who complete an action such as filling out a form, making a purchase or registering for an event.

Engagement rate

The amount of interaction (likes, shares, comments, retweets) a piece of content on a social media channel receives.

Reach

The actual number of people that have been exposed to content (vs. impressions where there were opportunities to see the content regardless of whether they did or not).

Unique visitor

A single person who visits a website (as compared to total site visits). A single person could visit a site 50 times which means the site has 1 unique visitor but 50 site visits (by the same person each time).

It’s most helpful when you can speak to top results and use the marketing metrics dashboards that you set up ahead of time to make inferences about your digital marketing success. You should know the answers to things like

  • % of website visits increase over last month, quarter, year
  • % of new leads generated from specific digital channels (compared to specific time periods)
  • % increase in traffic/leads/sales for organic social, video, paid digital, email, etc.
  • Top performing content (by topic, channel)
  • Top performing channel (by lead, reach)

Assess your buyer personas and paths-to-purchase

It’s all about your audience and if you’re paying attention, they’ll show you where (and how) they like to receive their information. While our goal is to move our customers down the sales funnel, we first must understand where they are on their journey.

Customer Journey Funnel

Personas and what we know about the digestion of content is important. Think about where you can get data from your target audiences such as

  • Where they live
  • How they get their information
  • What they struggle with (pain points)
  • How long it takes them to make a decision to buy (path-to-purchase)
  • Who they trust for information

In a down economy, your focus may also shift to the economic buyer–the person with the most say in spend. Because of this, agile personas are key during times of unrest, recessions, pandemics or major shifts in business. Annual review of your target audiences and personas is critical to developing successful digital marketing strategies.

Pandemic considerations

Yes, still. Businesses continue to work through implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and will be changing strategies and modes of communication, likely, for years to come. The way consumers interact online has changed. As you develop ongoing marketing strategies, consider new ways you can communicate your brand’s message.

Be accessible. Engage. Monitor. Answer. Listen harder. We are seeing longer sales cycles and our audiences are looking for valuable, educational information from brands of all kinds. Focus on helping first.

Document your marketing plan

Typically, when I present on topics of marketing, I always ask the question, “Who here in the room has a documented marketing plan?” and every time I do, maybe half of the room raises a hand (and that’s on a good day). In fact, only 46% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing plan. And it’s not just those in the B2B space; on the whole, there is a larger percentage of those who do not have documented marketing plans than those who do.

Be different. Document your plan.

Think of your marketing plan in 12-month chunks of time. Remain fluid in your planning and create documentation that supports all phases of your audience’s journey—discovery, awareness and decision. Use what you’ve pulled from above in your plan and outline how you will define success.

At minimum, your marketing plan should include:

  1. Overview
  2. Key messaging
  3. Goals
  4. Target audiences and persons
  5. Competitive analysis
  6. Distribution channels and frequency
  7. Budget (here is a great starting point to marketing budget planning)
  8. KPIs/ROI and measurement
  9. Timeline
  10. Supporting documents

By closing out the year with metrics and documentation on what worked, what didn’t and what’s on your wish list for the future, you put your company in a better position for growth. Documenting a marketing plan can also help you determine additional resources that may be needed or how to structure your marketing team going forward.

How can we help?

This is all just the tip of the iceberg. We want to give you a deep dive on all of the above and set you up for successful marketing. Contact us to learn about our digital marketing trainings and workshop, or to work together on a customized project to fit your marketing needs.

Read more posts like this:

Gen Z marketing strategies for 2022

Planning for the new year: Content marketing strategies

How to land your next client with brand storytelling

Melissa Harrison

Melissa Harrison is CEO at Allee Creative. Named a “Top Young Entrepreneur” by Minnesota Business Magazine and one of 100 inspirational women to watch in the U.S. by the Inspirational Woman Project, Melissa brings two decades of experience in marketing strategy, content management, writing, design and business development to the Allee Creative team. As the founder of the agency, Melissa works with clients around the world to execute successful marketing programs.

PO Box 515
Saint Michael, MN 55376

763.208.1384

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn

Upcoming Events

Jun 27
12:00 pm – 1:15 pm CDT

SCORE digital marketing webinar

Aug 29
12:00 pm – 1:15 pm CDT

SCORE marketing basics webinar

Oct 25
12:00 pm – 1:15 pm CDT

SCORE digital marketing webinar

View Calendar

Email list sign-up

Copyright © 2006–2023 ALLEE. All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy | Design by Flying Orange

Get expert marketing insight straight to your inbox.

Join our email list for blog updates and marketing training events.