Digital Marketing Plan Template

Digital marketing is part of every modern marketing strategy. That’s because it’s a cost-effective way to get your message in front of the people who truly matter: your target audience. 

In traditional marketing, you spend a lot of money to blast your brand to the masses. And it can be tough to calculate ROI because you never really know who’s at the other end of your ad. 

Digital marketing brings the advantage of precision, with clear metrics for measuring success. You get to choose who your message goes to when and engage directly with your ideal customer in the spaces they’re most active. The result is higher conversion rates with less money wasted.

What is a digital marketing plan?

A digital marketing plan is the core document you’ll use to map out how you market your brand or product in digital spaces. You might have high-level plans for website optimization, content marketing, SEM, and social media initiatives in your digital marketing strategy. It’s where all the details live and breathe—from business goals and objectives to campaign timelines, budgets, and marketing channels. 

A digital marketing strategy helps you deliver the right message to specific segments within your target audience. Consider it a roadmap for how you’ll guide potential customers through your marketing funnel. Your digital marketing plan should include activities that:

• Raise brand awareness
• Convince your audience to evaluate your product or service
• Lead prospects to make a purchase decision
• Re-engage or delight existing customers
  

Creating a digital marketing plan

Before you sit down to build out your plan, you’ll need to do a little legwork. Let’s take a look at the details that go into a digital marketing strategy and how to put a solid plan together.

What should your digital marketing plan include? 

Here are a few key elements to consider: 

• Business goals or objectives: Every digital marketing plan should tie into overarching business goals, so be sure your digital marketing strategy contributes to your organization’s big-picture objectives. 
• Audience: Buyer personas are a great tool for understanding your target audience and can help ensure every piece of your marketing plan delivers optimal results.
• Budget: Set clear expectations for what you can spend on marketing initiatives, and use it as a guide to inform your decisions. Remember to take any monthly subscription fees, paid advertising campaigns, and third-party agencies or freelance workers you may hire into account as you plan your annual or quarterly budget.
• Timeline: Be sure to consider major company goals and initiatives so you can sync your campaigns to business objectives appropriately. Think through dependencies as you scope out major phases of your plan (e.g., do you need to build a landing page before you can launch a campaign?) You’ll also want to factor in any big meetings, deadlines, outages, or other drivers that may affect your timeline. 
• Channels: There are lots of ways to reach your target audience. But which channels will be most effective? Evaluate the channels you have available to see which ones give you the best bang for your buck—with the biggest growth potential—at each stage of your digital marketing strategy.

How to outline a digital marketing plan

After you’ve done your research and gathered all the pieces, it’s time to lay out your digital marketing plan. Here’s the process we recommend. 

1. Start by sitting down with your team and/or stakeholders, and sketch out a rough plan together. You’ll need their input to understand the full scope of work involved, and it’s a great opportunity to discuss any expectations and/or limitations that may impact your plan. 
   

2. Once you’ve gathered input from all the right people, you’re ready to turn your high-level sketch into a detailed plan. Build your digital marketing plan out in a project management tool that’s easy to update and share with team members and stakeholders. That way everyone can log progress and collaborate on tasks together. 
   

3. Keep an eye on how your plan is progressing throughout the year, and regularly update your team and stakeholders on progress. Talk about risks and issues early and often so you can work together to keep everything on time and under budget. If plans shift, note the reason why and capture changes so you can plan better next time. 
   

Digital marketing plan example

In this digital marketing plan example, we grouped marketing activities by type. For instance, all content-related initiatives, such as blog posts and webinars, fall under the Content marketing category. There’s also a place to schedule major campaigns so you can see how campaigns fit into your larger digital marketing picture. 

We used a gantt chart for this example because it makes it easy to keep track of all the moving parts in your digital marketing plan. Gantt charts are visual by nature, so you can communicate key dates and milestones to your team and stakeholders without the confusion. If (and when) change happens, adjusting your plan is a cinch. 

Free digital marketing plan template

Own your digital marketing strategy with TeamGantt’s free digital marketing plan template. Save time with setup so you can go from strategizing to making an impact sooner.  

With our digital marketing plan gantt chart, you’ll get a high-level view of what’s been completed and what’s coming down the pipeline. Updating and communicating your project plan is a breeze. 

Here’s how to customize a digital marketing plan that works for you.

Drag and drop tasks to schedule your plan

Configuring your digital marketing plan is as easy as dragging and dropping tasks—or entire task groups—into their new rightful place. Click and drag the edges of each taskbar to set a new task duration.

Duplicate tasks 

Need to add another campaign to your plan? No problem! Simply duplicate a task or entire group, update the details, and drag it to reschedule the work appropriately.

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Color-code taskbars by activity type

Task colors are a great way to view and filter your digital marketing plan. Assign a color based on task owner, status, or activity type. For instance, we’ve color-coded all content marketing tasks purple in the example below.

Communicate with comments 

Collaboration is easy with TeamGantt's discussion feature. Share documents and chat with your team directly from a task’s Comments section. Use notes, to communicate important information—like campaign goals, target audience, and budget—at the project level. 

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Create your first digital marketing plan with TeamGantt

Ready to plan a digital marketing plan of your own? We’ve created a free digital marketing plan template for you in TeamGantt so you can jump right in!

Customizing the template is quick and easy, thanks to TeamGantt’s drag and drop simplicity. And since everything’s online, your whole team can collaborate on activities in real time.

Sign up for a free TeamGantt account today, and save time on project setup with this free digital marketing plan template!

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