A digital marketing plan is a document containing the details for all the planning for your digital marketing campaigns or actions. It details, among other things:
– Short, medium and long-term business goals.
– The strategies to achieve these goals at the digital level.
– The channels or medium to use.
– Action and development plans.
– Investment and budget.
- Keyword research: This involves identifying relevant keywords to use correctly in our content to organically improve our SEO. This is imperative for every content strategy if you want users to find you on search engines like Google, Bing Yahoo etc.
- Content calendar: A content calendar is key for ensuring your strategy makes sense. It provides value; it lets you think long-term and optimize your resources, help create ideas, and more. In a content calendar, you should include the date of publication, author, post topic, keyword, the tags to use/take into consideration, and so on.
- Social posting: Writing an article and promoting it on social media is imperative, plan out what you are going to publish and when on every social media platform with the copies best suited for each one, all while having the ideal number of characters, links, hashtags, quality pictures and more.
Identify yourself and your goals before starting your digital journey
- Create your digital identity
The first step is to create the digital identity of your bakery. a clear identity will help you to sell your products online and it will also help people to get awareness about your brand, product and services. This can be done by following ways:
- Creating a website either by coding or on platforms like WordPress, Shopify, Wix etc. This will help your audience to understand your brand, products and services better. With a website you can also reach customers online and give information about deliveries, menus, taking orders and testimonials.
- Website accessibility is key in maintaining a loyal user base. A company’s website must be clear and easily navigated otherwise a business runs the risk of losing users because of a cluttered or difficult interface. Customers must be able to find what they are looking for and quickly.
- Visual engagement can be the difference between an engaging website which draws in lots of online consumer profit and a website which drives sales away. Images are the best form of promotion in the food industry as most consumers make purchases based on sensory appeal.
- Creating pages and accounts on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest are the most successful with selling food items and marketing food products to consumers. Sharing photos of your products helps to engage your audience visually.
Identifying and selling your unique selling points (USPs)
Identifying what makes the business unique and different from the wide array of businesses already in that area or region is vital. What is your bakery’s super-power and what does it offer that others do not? consider the design / packaging / ingredients / store style / baking style.
An example of this is Patisserie Tomoko:
- Using your social media to build strong customer relationships
Influencer Marketing can promote your product and extend its reach across the globe, it can create brand awareness for customers who are not easily targeted. Influencers can encourage viewers to buy your product and see your menu in real time. You can also use an influencer on special occasions to promote your product or services. Influencers can tag specific products and designs which you wish to upsell and they can share your bakery’s location.
Penny Baldwin, CMO at McAfee, “80% of the Internet’s impressions are driven by just 6% of its users.”
Building strong customer relationships is essential to the long-term survival of any food business. Strong relationships can be created through the telling of a brand’s story. Introducing yourself to your customers and sharing your story, values and passions. You can improve your online sales and customer base with personal touches to your website and customer outreach.
You can also take advantage of social media lives and stories to showcase your bakers at work making their wonderful creations, having fun with their products and making speciality designs for events and occasions.
Milk bar, NYC
Customer feedback is also a crucial element to maintaining loyal relationships, being active online is necessary to make sure you are aware of any customer complaints and addressing these regularly. Conducting polls on your platforms and asking followers to share their opinions on products is an effective way to get customer feedback and improve customer relationships.
- Developing user engagement can be done by hosting brand events and inviting users / consumers and customers to participate. Consider having an in-store baking competition or hosting a charity event which will connect you to your local community, charity work is not socially responsible and provides community support but it will also increase brand awareness at the same time.
- Hosting events at your bakery. You can host food festivals and seasonal or occasional events such as St. Patrick’s Day or Valentine’s Day celebrations to offer couples special menus or wedding packages / tastings. Hosting a baking competition in the bakery which is streamed live and followers and customers can vote for their favourite bake!
- Charities such as Macmillan Cancer Support frequently hold coffee and cake mornings, the business could host a Macmillan Cancer coffee and cake morning and donate all proceeds to the charity. This would encourage the local community to donate to the charity and make them aware of your products and services.
- Customer loyalty programmes can increase your regular customer base. Consistent email marketing is a useful tool to keep your customers up to date on your latest offers, promotions, products and live events. Regular customers can avail of delivery offers and promotions and they can access these in a Baker’s Club email chain.
- Creating and setting up an account in google my business. This helps users to navigate your shop and get to know about your shop’s timings, reviews, contact, website etc. In today’s time it’s imperative to have a google my business account.
- OFF-Page and On-Page SEO
Having a good mobile friendly website which has proper site architecture, with relevant keywords and optimized images, in short On-page SEO. By making relevant content and updating yourself will help your website/socials offer something useful information to your users and will increase the engagement. Off- page you drive traffic from other external sources to your website either via social or guest blogging etc.
Also, by creating relevant content and linking it with your socials and other websites by collaboration you can optimize your page both On-page and Off-Page. Thus, optimizing your page will bring traffic to your website and will also bring relevant audiences.
Sharing food blogs can drive your SEO optimisation in the right direction, making use of relevant keywords can drive sales and increase consumer engagement. Blogs could include a favourite baking recipe or a how-to for one of your most sold products that customers can make at home. You can also integrate this with your other social media platforms as well like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
- Running ads on google and social media platform/ SEM and PPC
Running advertisement on social media platforms have its own advantages:
- It will increase the awareness or it can help in boosting orders/ visits especially during special days or seasons.
- It can also help in increasing orders for delivery as per the given circumstances.
- You can even target your local audiences by running ads locally within your region and then expand according to the demand.
- Keeping an eye on the competitors/ SWOT Analysis
Keeping an eye on the competitors does not mean that you have to copy stuff from them rather take inspiration on updating yourself and coping up with the trends like veganism etc. This also helps you to stay relevant in the dynamic environment.
Strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats
5) Measuring Results and KPI’s:
We have to measure every action using KPIs to figure out if we earned the ROI we expected. Measuring the effectiveness of the strategies and activities we implemented in our digital marketing will help us correct what doesn’t work to achieve the goals we set.
Make sure you have an effective real-time data visualization system like Google Analytics. The digital world evolves rapidly, so you need to be on the lookout at all times to identify opportunities and room for improvement in an instant.
Conclusion
Your digital marketing strategy is the backbone of your bakery’s success and to make sure you are making the most of the resources available to you, you must consider the following things before executing your campaign:
- Identifying the brand and your goals
- Your digital footprints (your digital identity)
- Building customer relationships (social media engagement)
- Your product’s/services’ unique selling points
- SEO / SEM (website traffic and Google / social media ads)
- Competitor analysis (SWOT analysis)
- Measuring results and KPIs
Created by: Ritwik Pant & Alexandra Knowles
References:
- https://milkbarstore.com/blogs/recipes
- https://coffee.macmillan.org.uk/
- https://www.bourkestreetbakery.com/
- https://www.timeout.com/newyork/restaurants/patisserie-tomoko
- https://www.wearemarketing.com/blog/a-step-by-step-guide-to-structuring-a-digital-marketing-plan.html#:~:text=A%20digital%20marketing%20plan%20is,%2D%20The%20channels%20to%20use
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/digital-strategy-guide