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Digital Marketing is an art to mix social activities and general marketing with latest technology tools. It includes social media, email, search engines, graphics, automation and forums.Since, digital marketing is an art to bring real life activities and create sales digitally through internet, hence it is important for everyone. Whether you are a scientist or an artist or a IT professional or a doctor, you need to know digital marketing and its application in your field.To start, you must learn how does a simple marketing is designed. Here are 9 steps to make a simple marketing plan#1- Know what is your Vision, Objective and Benchmark to successThis is an important part of a marketing strategy plan. Your digital marketing campaign should be going through this path as a guiding structure. If not then there is a serious problem. If you don’t know where you’re going, where will you end up? Then feel free to contact me.To build vision, mission and objective you must know what are the metrics which you want to consider. Follow the steps below.Segment your industry : Define your type of business example- Wholesale/ Service/ Retail etc.Segment your customer : Know your customers learn in step 4 of the articleSegment the problem you solve: Find out some problems in your industry faced by Customers and explain how your enterprise will solve some of them.Explain how you will solve that problem : As mentioned in above point, Show how will you solve the problem.Example-Vision: “Our initial goal is to become the premier provider for Car rentals. We will then leverage our customer base and position in the market to offer new equipment sales as well as comprehensive maintenance and service, custom equipment fittings, and expert trail advice.” [4]Objective: Become the largest shareholder of Car Rental in California. Generate $100000 as net income at the 2nd quarter of 2018.Keys to success: Provide a standard and quality Car with a 24 hour support online. Extra discount through loyalty program.# 2 – Decide and finalize the budget for your marketing campaign.Ad Budget Calculation“Take 10 percent and 12 percent of your projected annual, gross sales and multiply each by the markup made on your average transaction. “ [7]“Deduct your annual cost of occupancy (rent) from the adjusted 10 percent of sales number and the adjusted 12 percent number.” [7]“The remaining balances represent your minimum and maximum allowable ad budgets for the year.” [7]Example- You sell a Mobile Phone for $150 and the cost price is $100. So markup is 50% and margin is 33.33%.Assume your business is predicted to make $1 million this year 2017. Profit Margin is 48% and Annual rent is $52000. So let’s calculate percent of sales and 12 percent of sales (4100,000 and $120,000).Now let’s convert profit margin to mark up so divide gross profit by cost (48% i.e $480,000 hard cost). Hence 480,000/520,000= 92.3 %So Profit Margin= 92.3 %Ok so now multiply 92.3% * $100,0000(10%)=$ 92,300Multiply 92.3% * $120,000(12%)= $111,760Now subtract the rent from both rangesHence Lower ad range= $92,300-50,000= $42,300 (4.2 % of gross sales)Higher ad range= $110,000- 50,000= $60,000 (6% of gross sales)# 3- Develop Personas and create campaigns or blog posts accordinglyTo develop a persona follow the below stepsKnow your target consumerWrite all demographic data for your target consumer- age, gender, geographic areaFind out problems faced by this consumer categoryGet some more information like emotional desires, fear etc. about the personaYou can go through the Audience Report on Google Analytics for knowing the characteristics of your persona.Find the list of people who will be influencers to your persona/target audience. Ask them for help or use their influencing information along with your campaign.OrYou can also use the given tool for automatic persona creation. Makemypersona is one of the best persona creation platform so use it for free.# 4- Designing your campaignFind popular topics to your audience: When your are running a campaign or posting an article, remember one important thing “What are you posting” [5]. Find out the most shared and liked topics by your segmented audience using the following tools Buzzsumo, Scoopit etc.Use a marketing calendar : Use a marketing calendar to set up a plan when to give special offers or posts according to an event. You can get a free marketing calendar here Click to download.Use right Keywords: Keywords are important factors to attract your audience when searching for something or seeing an ad on social media. Some of the helpful tools for keyword research are Google keyword planner and SERP.Designing your social media poster:Graphics is one of important parts of a marketing campaign.I would call it the Hero shot [6]. Canva and Adobe Indesign are some of my favourite tools for designing posters. Everyone likes a story – If you have a vision, then a company video is a great tool to connect with your audience. Have a personal message recorded by your founder and experience of your users. Have some animation integrated on your video to tell the story. Adobe Animate CC is one of the important video animation tool. Remember to add a call to action button. There are several tools for call to action and landing page templates, I like the tool Unbounce.# 5- Communication | Email Marketing |Check whether you have used right keywords in your marketing campaign. If it’s a email campaign then make sure you have used right tools for monitoring and segmenting leads and future leads while Title/Subject of the email is the most important part of the email.. If you are using wix then do not forget to use the email marketing server of wix because you can track your emails and download the list of emails that opened your email and those who do not open. Hence you can re target the audience according to behaviour and demographics.There many other email marketing tools like Mailchimp, Drip etc. While Email Subject is a very important part of an email campaign, the second most important reason is timing. Use SeventhSense for sending an email campaign according to time. ​Seventh Sense is a terrific tool that delivers your sales and marketing emails to your recipients at the ideal time—when they’re in front of their email. Apart from email set up, content is very important so are chances of getting spammed. This tool “EmailCopyChecker” checks the words in the content of your email and tells you which part of email is leading towards spam.For Social Media Approach and tools, read the upcoming advanced version of this article in March.# 6 – Do you have an advanced mobile friendly website ?There are approximately 4.6 billion mobile users [3] in the world so if you have an old website which is either not advanced/ user friendly or mobile friendly then you need serious help right now. If you are a small start up and need website only for content then I would suggest going for Wix or Weebly where you can edit the website using website builder without coding. While if you need a website for advanced level of work example- LMS or Search Database then you use WordPress.#7- Best time to post on social mediaChoose the channels for campaign- Adwords, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Hootsuite is one of my favourite automation software for social media campaigns.Remember“The best time to post on Twitter is at 3 p.m. Monday to Friday.” [2]“The best time to post on Facebook is between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And on Saturday and Sunday between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m.” [2]“The best time to post on Instagram is from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Monday to Friday.” [2]*Time may be different for different customer based on location.# 8 – Set the plan as Agile (Think “Outline” not “Campaign”)“As research on disruption and market transitions suggests, you’re better off these days if you can quickly identify and adapt to changes in your environment.”[8] Follow the below 4 phases for applying agile strategy in your marketing planAnnouncements and Initial AdvertisementCustomer engagement and Ad set upPromote new product salesAnalyze and regroup [8]# 9- Analytics | Google Analytics |After running a marketing campaign, the first thing you should do is track the activities and result. Mark the key performance indicators and measure the return on investment. Set the benchmarking tool and compare the your campaign or website analytics with your industry average. Find the audience according to region, technology, browser, age, gender etc. Segment the audience according to your target market.Read the full following articles one by one. It will help you to learn digital marketing in short span of time.Chapter 1: 9 Steps to make a Simple Marketing PlanChapter 2: 9 Online Marketing Strategies for a StartupChapter 3: 3 Steps to Identify Your Market and Calculate Market SizeChapter 4: 3T’s of Email MarketingChapter 5: Which one is more effective? Email Marketing or Social Media MarketingChapter 6: 10 Free Content Marketing Tools Every Startup Should Be UsingChapter 7: 5 Free Quality Marketing Tools for Email and Social MediaABOUT THE AUTHOR: Asif Razzaq is a digital marketing specialist with 5 years of experience in marketing and digital health. Asif holds an undergraduate degree in Biotechnology and Graduate Certificate in Bio Science Management from Keck Graduate Institute. He is Google Adwords Mobile and Search Engine Certified. He is also Inbound certified from Hubspot. He has cofounded two startups in India and he has been awarded Young Biotechnology Entrepreneurs Award at SGPGI NCBL Conference March 2013.www.digitalasif.com

“According to a ‘Managing Digital Marketing’ study by Smart Insights, 46% of brands don’t have a defined digital marketing strategy, while 16% do have a strategy but haven’t yet integrated it into their marketing activity.” [1]If you are among the above 46% or 16%, do not worry! Follow the steps below to make one by yourself.#1- Know what is your Vision, Objective and Benchmark to successThis is an important part of a marketing strategy plan. Your digital marketing campaign should be going through this path as a guiding structure. If not then there is a serious problem. If you don’t know where you’re going, where will you end up? Then feel free to contact me.To build vision, mission and objective you must know what are the metrics which you want to consider. Follow the steps below.Segment your industry : Define your type of business example- Wholesale/ Service/ Retail etc.Segment your customer : Know your customers learn in step 4 of the articleSegment the problem you solve: Find out some problems in your industry faced by Customers and explain how your enterprise will solve some of them.Explain how you will solve that problem : As mentioned in above point, Show how will you solve the problem.Example-Vision: “Our initial goal is to become the premier provider for Car rentals. We will then leverage our customer base and position in the market to offer new equipment sales as well as comprehensive maintenance and service, custom equipment fittings, and expert trail advice.” [4]Objective: Become the largest shareholder of Car Rental in California. Generate $100000 as net income at the 2nd quarter of 2018.Keys to success: Provide a standard and quality Car with a 24 hour support online. Extra discount through loyalty program.# 2 – Decide and finalize the budget for your marketing campaign.Ad Budget Calculation“Take 10 percent and 12 percent of your projected annual, gross sales and multiply each by the markup made on your average transaction. “ [7]“Deduct your annual cost of occupancy (rent) from the adjusted 10 percent of sales number and the adjusted 12 percent number.” [7]“The remaining balances represent your minimum and maximum allowable ad budgets for the year.” [7]Sign up to get the next version of this article with a sample preparation in 2017, MarchExample- You sell a Mobile Phone for $150 and the cost price is $100. So markup is 50% and margin is 33.33%.Assume your business is predicted to make $1 million this year 2017. Profit Margin is 48% and Annual rent is $52000. So let’s calculate percent of sales and 12 percent of sales (4100,000 and $120,000).Now let’s convert profit margin to mark up so divide gross profit by cost (48% i.e $480,000 hard cost). Hence 480,000/520,000= 92.3 %So Profit Margin= 92.3 %Ok so now multiply 92.3% * $100,0000(10%)=$ 92,300Multiply 92.3% * $120,000(12%)= $111,760Now subtract the rent from both rangesHence Lower ad range= $92,300-50,000= $42,300 (4.2 % of gross sales)Higher ad range= $110,000- 50,000= $60,000 (6% of gross sales)# 3- Develop Personas and create campaigns or blog posts accordinglyTo develop a persona follow the below stepsKnow your target consumerWrite all demographic data for your target consumer- age, gender, geographic areaFind out problems faced by this consumer categoryGet some more information like emotional desires, fear etc. about the personaYou can go through the Audience Report on Google Analytics for knowing the characteristics of your persona.Find the list of people who will be influencers to your persona/target audience. Ask them for help or use their influencing information along with your campaign.OrYou can also use the given tool for automatic persona creation. Makemypersona is one of the best persona creation platform so use it for free.# 4- Designing your campaignFind popular topics to your audience: When your are running a campaign or posting an article, remember one important thing “What are you posting” [5]. Find out the most shared and liked topics by your segmented audience using the following tools Buzzsumo, Scoopit etc.Use a marketing calendar : Use a marketing calendar to set up a plan when to give special offers or posts according to an event. You can get a free marketing calendar here Click to download.Use right Keywords: Keywords are important factors to attract your audience when searching for something or seeing an ad on social media. Some of the helpful tools for keyword research are Google keyword planner and SERP.Designing your social media poster:Graphics is one of important parts of a marketing campaign.I would call it the Hero shot [6]. Canva and Adobe Indesign are some of my favourite tools for designing posters. Everyone likes a story – If you have a vision, then a company video is a great tool to connect with your audience. Have a personal message recorded by your founder and experience of your users. Have some animation integrated on your video to tell the story. Adobe Animate CC is one of the important video animation tool. Remember to add a call to action button. There are several tools for call to action and landing page templates, I like the tool Unbounce.# 5- Communication | Email Marketing |Check whether you have used right keywords in your marketing campaign. If it’s a email campaign then make sure you have used right tools for monitoring and segmenting leads and future leads while Title/Subject of the email is the most important part of the email.. If you are using wix then do not forget to use the email marketing server of wix because you can track your emails and download the list of emails that opened your email and those who do not open. Hence you can re target the audience according to behaviour and demographics.There many other email marketing tools like Mailchimp, Drip etc. While Email Subject is a very important part of an email campaign, the second most important reason is timing. Use SeventhSense for sending an email campaign according to time. ​Seventh Sense is a terrific tool that delivers your sales and marketing emails to your recipients at the ideal time—when they’re in front of their email. Apart from email set up, content is very important so are chances of getting spammed. This tool “EmailCopyChecker” checks the words in the content of your email and tells you which part of email is leading towards spam.For Social Media Approach and tools, read the upcoming advanced version of this article in March.# 6 – Do you have an advanced mobile friendly website ?There are approximately 4.6 billion mobile users [3] in the world so if you have an old website which is either not advanced/ user friendly or mobile friendly then you need serious help right now. If you are a small start up and need website only for content then I would suggest going for Wix or Weebly where you can edit the website using website builder without coding. While if you need a website for advanced level of work example- LMS or Search Database then you use WordPress.#7- Best time to post on social mediaChoose the channels for campaign- Adwords, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Hootsuite is one of my favourite automation software for social media campaigns.Remember“The best time to post on Twitter is at 3 p.m. Monday to Friday.” [2]“The best time to post on Facebook is between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And on Saturday and Sunday between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m.” [2]“The best time to post on Instagram is from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Monday to Friday.” [2]*Time may be different for different customer based on location.# 8 – Set the plan as Agile (Think “Outline” not “Campaign”)“As research on disruption and market transitions suggests, you’re better off these days if you can quickly identify and adapt to changes in your environment.”[8] Follow the below 4 phases for applying agile strategy in your marketing planAnnouncements and Initial AdvertisementCustomer engagement and Ad set upPromote new product salesAnalyze and regroup [8]# 9- Analytics | Google Analytics |After running a marketing campaign, the first thing you should do is track the activities and result. Mark the key performance indicators and measure the return on investment. Set the benchmarking tool and compare the your campaign or website analytics with your industry average. Find the audience according to region, technology, browser, age, gender etc. Segment the audience according to your target market.Read my articleAbout Author-Asif Razzaq is a seasoned digital marketing specialist and digital health expert with robust industry experience and an enviable portfolio in Business Development, Digital Marketing, Market Research and Animation. An astute entrepreneur, Asif has distinguished himself as a startup management professional by successfully growing startups from launch phase into profitable businesses. This has earned him awards including, the SGPGI NCBL Young Biotechnology Entrepreneurs Award.Asif also has verifiable proficiency in Turnaround management and Bottom-line performance; he has helped organizations achieve increased revenues through aggressive marketing and management initiatives.He has also worked extensively with USA’s leading medical device and biotech organizations like Bioviva, MedTech Catalyst, HealthConnexions and Epinex Diagnostics.Asif Razzaq is Google AdWords Mobile and Search Engine certified. He is also Inbound certified from Hubspot. He holds a degree in Biotechnology from India, a Graduate Certificate in Bio Science Management from Keck Graduate Institute, California, a Certificate in Design Thinking for Business Innovation from The University of Virginia Darden School of Business and, a Certificate Training on Financial Modeling from Stanford University.Asif is invested in helping businesses achieve turnaround through aggressive digital marketing growth strategies and digital health initiatives. He hopes to become one of America’s most renowned digital marketing consultants in a few years.

There are a lot of aspects that need taking into consideration. First and foremost, it is advisable to consider the type of eCommerce platforms. All three WooCommerce, Magento and OpenCart are open-source shopping carts where the original source code is freely available and can be adjusted or modified easily. I will note the pros and cons of these 3 platforms for you so you can decide which one is better for your shop:WooCommerceWooCommerce is a bit different from other eCommerce solutions. It’s a customizable, open-source shopping cart plugin built on WordPress. However, WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform in the world, about one-third of all online stores are powered by this CMS.1. CostWordPress and WooCommerce are totally free to use, both of them can be downloaded freely from the website. However, you have to pay for domain name, normally, the cost of a domain name is $14.99/year, hosting solution $8/month and SSL certificate $70/year.2. Design and CustomizationThe first place you should have a look at is Storefront, which is the WooCommerce default store theme. It has all important features of an eCommerce store and is fully-responsive on mobile devices.Moreover, you can customize your store’s look by adding a child theme ($0-$39/piece) and extensions ($69/bundle) for Storefront.3. Apps and Add-onsWooCommerce is an open-source platform and built on top of WordPress. This gives users the access to more than 56000 Wordpress plugins, besides almost 400 extensions are specifically made for WooCommerce.The main disadvantage of WooCommerce is that installing too many plugins and extensions tend to slow loading speed and overall performance. It is advisable to implement the desired functions through CSS, jQuery or HTML codes or limit the number of apps installed.MagentoMagento is a self-hosted eCommerce Content Management System (CMS), owned by Adobe. It’s one of the most popular eCommerce platforms, providing scalability and reliable performance for the biggest companies worldwide. Such industry giants like Nike, Jack Daniel’s, and Ford have their stores running on Magento and successfully serve millions of customers and thousands of daily in-store operations.1. CostMagento is mostly used free, especially if you only use Magento Open Source.Magento Commerce’s license feeHowever, for the Magento Commerce version, it can actually cost you a great deal of money. The annual license fee of this product starts at $22,000.00 for merchants generating less than $1 million in revenue.The license fee of running your business on Magento Commerce Cloud is even higher. It can cost you almost double for the same gross sales revenue tier as Magento Commerce, ranging from $40,000.00 to $190,000.00. Thus, it is recommended to use this edition if you have a huge business; otherwise, it’s not worth it.2. Design and CustomizationCurrently, Magento provides two default themes: Luma, as a demonstration theme, and Blank as a basis for custom theme creation. These themes are based on a responsive design that renders the display of your storefront for different devices.In addition, Magento offers 16 other ready-made themes for your shop in its marketplace, where the price varies from zero to $499. You can also visit Themeforest, Template Monster or Magenest for more feature-rich design options of this platform.3. Apps and Add-onsIt would be no exaggeration to say that Magento has the most robust marketplace among eCommerce solutions. Its marketplace has a wide range of almost 6,000 free and paid extensions, which allows you to enhance and expand your store’s functionality significantly.OpenCartOpenCart is another popular open-source online store management program that you should put on your list. The software is developed in the PHP programming language with MySQL database and HTML components, which is quite similar to Magento. Both platforms allow the ease to add products by using the templated approach and support multiple languages and currencies.1. CostOpenCart is an open-source option as discussed, and this means downloading and installing it is completely free of charge. However, being a light platform, hosting expenses are much cheaper. Otherwise, you can use the OpenCart Cloud version, which is an eCommerce solution hosted on Amazon web service (AWS) servers. This service has three different pricing plans, ranging from £25 – £150 .2. Design and CustomizationOpenCart offers a variety of themes for online merchants, most of which are fully mobile-optimized and quite nicely-designed. Currently, there are more than 1,600 templates listed on its marketplace.3. Apps and Add-onsOpenCart delivers quite well when talking about its collection of applications. Currently, the OpenCart marketplace is filled with more than 13,000 extensions in many different fields such as themes, languages, payment methods, shipping methods, reports, order totals etc. Hence, you can easily expand your store capability by integrating these extensions with your store.