Before starting a digital communications plan, you have to set the business and audience objectives. Every single tactic must be coherent with the strategy, in that form the business goal will be achieved.

Start with goals: You need to do is align/balance marketing and PR objectives with the business and audience objectives.

Segmentation and create personas:  You need to make personas a part of the planning process. A persona is “a representative of a type of buyer that you have identified as having a specific interest in your organisation / product /service or having a market problem that your can solve”.

Content Strategy: Then you can focus on the message and ongoing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), selecting the platforms/channels to communicate and creating a publishing calendar.

The Construction Marketing Association Blog has shared a great marketing mix chart:

Marketing Mix Chart

Planning: Now that you have your strategy in place, personas and marketing mix, the planning is essential. You have to start with resource selection (internal and external partners), allocate the budget, define the scope and the calendar.

Set KPIs: In order to measure your performance (ROI, new customers acquired, revenue generated by personas, engagement).

Ongoing improvement: Analysis of the outcome, action plan: corrective actions and share lessons learned

Prepare risks analysis and crisis contingency plan to be alert / ready for any negative impact.

Every digital plan has a challenge, but I think these are common to almost every programme:

Internal:

• Marketing / Communication / PR must work together
• Engage other functional areas at the organisation
• To have a coherent message (business goals have to be always at the top)

External:

• To achieve business / users objectives
• User interaction and engagement
• To inform / educate / entertain / engage

In order to help to visualise the strategy, you can review the Marketing Strategy Planning Template created by David Meerman Scott.