Dering Hall’s December webinar, Creating a Digital Marketing Plan for 2019, took place on Thursday December 6. Special guest Loree O’Sullivan, Digital Marketing Manager at Fabricut, joined Dering Hall’s Head of Marketing, Erin Gilbert, to provide some helpful tips and advice for creating an easy, effective digital marketing plan that can executed at any level and almost any budget.

About Loree:
Loree O’Sullivan has been Digital Marketing Manager at Fabricut for about 2 years now. Prior to Fabricut, she was an account manager at Hubspot for a couple of years and then moved on to open her own marketing agency where she was able to live abroad and travel the world.

Topics discussed in this webinar:

Setting Goals: Long term & short term (slide)
What aspects of your business are part of your digital marketing plan? Why do goals matter and how can you prioritize them? In this section we discuss the importance of goal setting and how to properly plan out your process for achieving these goals.

Evaluating your available resources (slide)
Take a close look at your team and determine where your strengths, shortcomings and opportunities are. Working smarter, not harder is a great rule of thumb to follow when managing your resources. Pro tip: If possible, look into nearby universities that provide course credit for internships.

Building a realistic budget (slide)
Do you currently have a marketing budget? Are you happy with the results of the efforts coming out of the marketing budget? When was the last time you evaluated your budget and the tools you’re currently using? It is important to make your products and services work for you and your budget. Perhaps there is a way you can obtain certain services through various partnerships? Pro tip: check out these recommended free tools and not-so-free tools.

Roadmapping your objectives (slide)
Roadmapping is very useful in determining the action items that make up your goals. By stepping back and looking at the industry from 30,000 feet, you can see what success looks like and the steps it will take the achieve success for your business.  

Distributing your messaging through appropriate channels (slide)
Where does your presence matter? Start by researching the brands, competitors, and influencers in your industry. How are their results? Is their effort making an impact? Are they getting engagement? By using the data that’s readily available, you can begin implementing these elements into your strategy.  

Setting realistic timelines (slide)
Be sure to track your progress along the way and make sure you are documenting everything. This will help you to build out your roadmap and allow you to keep track of everything going on in your business.  

Evaluating your success and adapting your approach (slide)
Look at the goals you initially set. Was the goal accomplished? If yes, is there anything you’d like to improve? If no, what can you do to change your strategy so that you can meet your goals the next time?

Resources: Tools & Resources (slide)
Check out Loree’s list of resources and free tools.  

Putting it all together (slide)

• Set your goals. Think big, start small.

• Use your available resources.

• Talk to your audience, in relevant spaces.

• Check your work. See what sticks