How to create a digital marketing plan: a one-page structure that works
To create a digital marketing plan, fill six boxes on one page: the goal, the audience, the channels, the budget, the measurement and a 90-day calendar. If it does not fit on one page, it will not be read, and if a box is empty, the plan is not ready. This guide describes the template box by box, works through an example for a Perth renovation builder, and covers how to present the plan and when to hand the work to an agency.
What is a digital marketing plan?
A digital marketing plan is a short written document that states what you want digital marketing to achieve, who it must reach, which channels will do it, what it will cost, how you will know it is working, and what happens in the next 90 days. The strategy is the thinking behind those choices. The plan is the page you act on.
Most plans fail because they are the wrong size. A 30-page document is written once and never opened, and a plan in someone’s head cannot be shared or checked. One page, reviewed monthly, survives.
How to structure a digital marketing plan on one page
Structure the plan as a single landscape page divided into six panels, two rows of three, read left to right. The top row is the thinking: goal, audience, channels. The bottom row is the doing: budget, measurement, 90-day calendar. Each panel holds a few lines, and every line in the bottom row must trace back to something in the top row.
The template, described so you can build it in any document tool:
- Panel 1, Goal: one number, one date, one sentence on why that number.
- Panel 2, Audience: who they are, what they search, what they worry about, where they look.
- Panel 3, Channels: two or three channels, each with the job it does and the reason it was chosen.
- Panel 4, Budget: the monthly total split into media, labour and tools, with the cost per enquiry you can afford.
- Panel 5, Measurement: the one metric per channel, where it is tracked, and who reads it when.
- Panel 6, 90-day calendar: three blocks of 30 days, each with what ships and who owns it.
Below the six panels leave three lines for assumptions: the things you are guessing at that will be checked in the first 90 days.
Panel 1: Set one goal with a number and a date
Write the goal as a number of customers or enquiries by a date. “Grow online presence” is not a goal. “Eighteen qualified renovation enquiries a month by 31/03/2027, up from eight” is, because you can plan backwards from it and you will know on 01/04/2027 whether you hit it.
Pick one goal. A plan with four goals spreads the budget four ways and hits none of them. If the business wants both leads and brand awareness, decide which one this quarter is for and put the other on the next page.
Tie it to money in the “why” line. Ten extra enquiries a month at your close rate and average job value gives a revenue figure, and that figure justifies the budget in Panel 4.
Panel 2: Describe the audience in their words
Describe one primary customer, and describe them by what they are trying to do rather than by demographics alone. Four lines cover it: who they are, what they search for when they need you, what they are afraid of when buying, and where they look before they decide.
Get the words from real customers. Read the last 50 enquiry emails, listen to sales calls, and note the phrases that repeat. Those phrases become ad copy, page headings and content topics.
If you serve two very different audiences, such as homeowners and commercial clients, pick the one the goal depends on. The other gets its own plan.
Panel 3: Choose two or three channels and give each a job
Choose channels by matching them to where the audience looks and what the goal needs, then limit yourself to two or three. Each channel gets a one-line job description so nobody confuses activity with progress.
A working set for most service businesses:
- Google Business Profile and local SEO: the job is appearing in the map pack when someone nearby searches for the service.
- Google Ads: the job is enquiries from high-intent searches, starting this month.
- SEO and content: the job is organic rankings that keep producing enquiries after the ads are paused.
- Meta advertising: the job is reaching people who are not searching yet, and bringing back visitors who did not enquire.
- Email: the job is repeat work and referrals from past customers.
Start with what produces enquiries soonest, add what compounds, and leave out anything you cannot resource. A channel with no owner is a channel that does not run.
Panel 4: Set a budget that covers media, labour and tools
Split the monthly budget three ways: media (what the platforms charge), labour (who does the work, whether staff or agency) and tools (tracking, software, subscriptions). A budget that is all media is the most common mistake, because campaigns need managing and pages need writing.
Work the number backwards from Panel 1. If the goal needs ten extra enquiries and you can afford to pay a certain amount per enquiry given your margin, that sets the ceiling for the media spend. Write that cost per enquiry on the page. It is the number that tells you in month two whether the plan is working.
Do not write a percentage-of-revenue figure. It ignores your margin and your competitors.
Panel 5: Decide what you will measure and who will read it
Measure one number per channel, and make it a number that moves closer to revenue than clicks do. For Google Ads that is enquiries and cost per enquiry. For local SEO it is calls and direction requests from the profile. For SEO and content it is organic enquiries and rankings for the pages you built. For email it is replies and bookings.
Name where each number lives (Google Analytics 4, the ads account, the Business Profile, call tracking) and who reads it on which day of the month. Set up the tracking before the calendar starts. If the phone is how customers reach you, call tracking is the difference between knowing and guessing which channel produced the job. Our guide to digital marketing metrics worth tracking covers the wider list.
Panel 6: Write a 90-day calendar in three blocks
Plan 90 days, not twelve months, because after 90 days you will know things that change the plan. Break it into three blocks of 30 days with what ships in each and who owns it.
A typical shape: days 1 to 30 fix the foundations (profile completed, tracking live, landing page built, first campaign launched). Days 31 to 60 add the compounding work (first content pieces published, technical SEO fixes, email list cleaned and first send). Days 61 to 90 optimise (cut what is not producing enquiries, scale what is, review the assumptions). At the end of day 90, rewrite the page.
What is a digital marketing strategy example?
Here is the one-page plan filled in for a Perth renovation builder, which is the kind of business that asks us this most often.
Goal: eighteen qualified renovation enquiries a month by 31/03/2027, up from eight. Why: at the current close rate that is roughly three extra projects a quarter.
Audience: owners of established homes in Perth’s inner and western suburbs planning a kitchen, bathroom or second-storey renovation in the next twelve months. They search “renovation builders Perth”, “kitchen renovation cost Perth” and “how long does a renovation take”. They are afraid of blown budgets, missed timelines and builders who disappear. They look at Google, then Instagram, then reviews.
Channels: Google Ads on renovation searches with a quote-request landing page (enquiries now). Local SEO and a Google Business Profile with project photos and reviews (map pack). Content answering the cost and timeline questions on the website (organic enquiries over time). Instagram showing finished projects (reach and proof).
Budget: a fixed monthly media spend for Google Ads and Instagram, agency or staff time for management and content, and tracking tools. Target cost per enquiry set from margin on an average project.
Measurement: enquiries and cost per enquiry from Google Ads, calls and direction requests from the profile, organic enquiries from the content pages, and saved posts and profile visits from Instagram. Reviewed on the first Monday of each month.
90 days: month one, landing page, tracking, profile and ads live. Month two, two cost-and-timeline articles published, review requests sent to every completed project. Month three, cut the ad groups with no enquiries, scale the ones producing them, rewrite the plan.
That is the same shape we use in our digital marketing for home and commercial builders work, and it transfers to most trades and professional services.
What is the best digital marketing strategy for an Australian small business?
For most Australian small businesses the best strategy is local and search-led: a complete Google Business Profile with steady reviews, local SEO so you appear in the map pack, Google Ads on the searches with buying intent, and a website that converts the visitors those three send. Add content once the foundations produce enquiries, and add social advertising if your customers are not searching for you yet.
The reason is intent. Someone searching “emergency electrician Joondalup” wants to hire one today. No other channel puts you in front of a customer at that moment, and a small budget spent there produces more enquiries than the same budget spread across five platforms.
What is a holistic digital marketing strategy?
A holistic digital marketing strategy is one where every channel has a job and the jobs connect, so an ad click, a review, a blog article and an email are all steps in the same customer journey rather than separate activities. The one-page plan enforces this by making every channel answer to one goal and one audience.
In practice it means the landing page the ads send people to also ranks organically, the reviews on the profile appear on the website, the article that answers “how much does a renovation cost” is the one your email links to, and remarketing brings back the visitors the content attracted. We explain the commercial case in how a holistic digital marketing strategy can increase your bottom line.
How to present a digital marketing plan
Present the one page, in this order: the goal and what it is worth, the cost, the cost per enquiry you are targeting, the three assumptions you are checking, and the decision you need. Everything else is supporting material.
For an owner or a board, lead with the number in Panel 1 and the revenue line beside it, then the budget, then the date they will see the first numbers. Show the assumptions openly, because the person approving the budget will trust a plan that names what it does not know.
End with one question: are we doing this for 90 days? A plan that is approved “in principle” has not been approved.
Mistakes that break digital marketing plans
- A vague goal. If you cannot say whether you hit it, you did not set one.
- Too many channels. Two run well beat six run badly.
- No tracking before launch. You will spend a month unable to tell what worked.
- A media-only budget. Someone has to manage the campaigns and write the pages.
- Vanity metrics. Followers and impressions do not pay invoices. Enquiries do.
When to hand this to an agency
Hand the plan, or the execution of it, to an agency when you can fill Panels 1 and 2 but not 3 to 6, when the calendar has jobs no one in the business can do (tracking setup, landing pages, technical SEO, campaign management), when two or more channels need daily attention, or when a previous plan ran for a year without anyone measuring it.
A good agency will start with a discovery conversation about your business and customers, assess your audience and competitors, present a strategy and a roadmap for approval, then execute and refine against reporting. That is the six-stage process on our services page (onboarding, marketing assessment, strategise, roadmap, execute, refinement), and it produces the same six panels described above.
Keep it in-house when you have one channel, a small budget and a person with the time to own it.
Build the plan with PWD
PWD builds and runs digital marketing plans for Perth businesses from our West Leederville office, with SEO, Google Ads, social advertising, content, web development and tracking delivered in-house. We work to a one-page plan you can read, report against it monthly, and do not use lock-in contracts.
See PWD’s digital marketing services, or call 08 6146 0195 to start with a discovery conversation.
