Digital marketing planning is the process of thinking about and organizing the digital marketing activities required to achieve desired online marketing goals such as getting subscribers, leads, downloads, etc.This digital marketing planning article guides you in planning digital marketing campaigns. Outlined below are the main things to include in your digital marketing planning.SegmentIn planning your digital marketing first step is the segments you want to direct your digital marketing activities to; these are consumers or businesses your digital marketing planning is to address. For example, in Adhang.com the segment of our digital marketing services are government, event organizers, public figures, and corporate bodies.PersonasThe next step in your digital marketing planning is the “Personas” (don’t confuse personas with the segment, personas complement segment) these are people that have a common background; are a set of fictional, representative user archetypes based on the behaviors, attitudes, etc. For example, in Adhang.com our target personas are managing directors, director of marketing, CEO, corporate chairmen, COO, and director of sales.ObjectiveIn the next step in digital marketing, planning is objective, your digital marketing planning should include objectives your organization wants to achieve with their digital marketing planning; this will serve as a compass for the least of the actions in the digital marketing planning of the organization. A company can have one or multiple digital marketing objectives such as brand awareness, educating the target audience, leads acquisition, client retention, etc.For example, Adhang.com objective of writing this article is to further establishing itself as an expert in the digital marketing field.Situation Analysis OutcomeSituation analysis is the foundation of digital marketing planning steps. This includes a thorough examination of internal and external factors that can affect your digital marketing campaign results. It creates an overview of the organization’s customers, competitors, market, and competencies which will enable the organization to understand factors that can influence the future and guides its decisions.GoalThe goal is one of the important aspects of digital marketing planning, it helps you to be specific on what you want to accomplish with your objectives, you can have one or multiple goals for example 1000 subscribers in three months, 2000 ticket purchase in twenty days, increase sales by 40% in twelve months, etc.BudgetThe budget in digital marketing planning step brings about how much you want to spend or the type of budget to achieve your digital marketing goals. How serious, aggressive, and important digital marketing goals are to the organization are the major determinants of the digital marketing budget. You can have a dollar budget e.g. $2000 a month or a percentage budget e.g. 10% of monthly profits.StrategyStrategy in digital marketing planning helps you to achieve your goals, in digital marketing, there are at least five components of digital marketing your company strategy can include as online content marketing, online search marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, and online display advert. In Adhang.com digital marketing plans, we ensure that we include these entire components in digital marketing strategy for clients. Ad Hang digital marketing activities are designed to run this way.TacticTactic is part of digital marketing planning because all the above steps can’t exist in isolation. Tactics are what you use to achieve your strategy; you can always change the way you use your tactics if you’re not getting the kind of result you want to achieve with your strategy, example of tactics/tools in digital marketing are article, videos, pictures/image, ebook/pdf, online banner, text message, email, newsletter, online slide presentation, etc.Channels/PlatformsChannels/Platforms, in digital marketing planning you can’t talk about digital marketing without talking about platforms to use (in the marketing field they’re commonly referred to as channels). There are many channels out there, also understand that popularity doesn’t mean effective, examples of channels are youtube, cokoye.com (African regional online open forum), google, yahoo, socialwider.com (Africa’s region social networking website), Facebook, perfectvisualhost.com, LinkedIn, etc.SchedulingScheduling is one of the important aspects of digital marketing planning, for example, a government agency might have different scheduling from corporate bodies while event organizers and pubic figures will have different digital marketing scheduling. Digital marketing scheduling methods are Continuity, Flighting, and Pulsing.In Continuity, the advertisement runs steadily with little variation over the campaign period. Flighting involves intermittent and irregular periods of advertising alternating with shorter periods of no advertising during the campaign. While Pulsing combines the attributes of continuity and flighting by employing low advertising years round and heavy advertising during peak selling period).ExecutorThe executor is the person in-house or digital marketing agency or both that will carry out all the planned digital marketing for the organization. The organization can have in-house person sending email marketing, respond to social media participants, newsletter; while the organization hand over main digital marketing activities to digital marketing agency such as Adhang.com for online banners display and designs, content marketing, video creation and marketing, article marketing, online contextual advertising, search engine ads display, press release writing and distribution, digital marketing activities monitoring, analyzing and statistic, etc. The executor put the digital marketing plan to work by implementing the plan, i.e., putting the plan to work for the organization.ControlControl ensures that the digital marketing activities are heading in the direction of the organization’s expectations or as planned. This involves gathering data, analyzing the data, and measuring the digital marketing activities using the organization’s key performance indicators. Then if need be, modifying some tools e.g. online display banners, keywords; repositioning contents, optimizing, etc.This is an Digital Marketing Planning Steps and Internet Promotion Guide.