It might sound obvious to have a plan before you do something, but weekly we come across businesses that are participating in Digital Marketing or engaging online without any sort of plan or business goal they are trying to obtain.
And for small businesses, I would go as far as to say the majority are basically just “winging” it and doing random actions, pictures, posts and advertising. For some reason people seem to forget that business is a marathon not a sprint. A business may have revenue goals, the owner plans a holiday, to go to the gym etc. But then with Digital Marketing, there’s just a series of Ad Hoc random activities.
If your planning to run a business for the next 5+ years, what’s the point in running an Ad for a few weeks, getting no real data then turning it off? Even if you get a sale, that business will have no idea how they did it and they won’t be able to replicate the performance.
We often see:
- Ad Hoc Posting – The business may post daily for a week or two, then the owner gets busy and stops or changes the Digital platform, say from Facebook to Instagram.
- Tracking – You are posting and have no idea if it’s even working.
- Random Actions – Such as running an ad for a short amount of time, not tracking it, having no real data that you can replicate and then turning it off.
- Advertising Variables – If you mess with multiple variables in the targeting of a Facebook advertisement, how do you know which one worked? For example, if your Facebook Ad was performing and targeted towards the middle of a city and 25-35yo women. If you then alter it to the country and towards 40-60yo men. If it performs or does not, you will have no idea why.
Why you need a Plan
The issue is that Digital Marketing is a numbers game and if you have the correct data you can replicate results. But if you’re all over the place with random activities, you don’t know what’s working and you won’t be able to replicate anything.
You really need to start from the top, work out what you’re trying to achieve and then put a clear plan in place to get an outcome.
For example, a business might need to generate 3 sales a month and its conversion rate may be 1 in 5 from leads to sales. This means that if it can generate 15 leads a month, it can hit it’s sales target. Therefore it needs a strategy that can generate at least 15 leads a month.
You can then take that target and work out the best way to advertise online to generate the required inbound leads while tracking results. Once established, you can continue to optimise the strategy and also replicate it if you choose to expand.
For more information on this please contact Zelesco Consulting:
