Digital Marketing Success Plan®

Build Your Digital Marketing Success Plan® Before You Spend

The Digital Marketing Success Plan® (DMSP) is how we build an objective, actionable, and accountable digital strategy with you. Through our five-step START Planning process, we research, plan, and prioritize, so you know what will move the needle before you invest in tactics. Then we help put it to work, alongside your team or other partners where they fit best. Already spending? Many of our clients are. We can keep your current campaigns running in parallel while we build the plan, then make that spend accountable to your goals and ROI.

No two plans look the same. Many agencies come in with a set mix of channels and budgets before there’s a plan. We don’t. But a plan only matters if it gets put to work. We keep START focused and efficient, so you don’t get stuck getting ready to get ready, and your budget goes to work on results instead of months of prep.

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VOLTAGE team presenting, working and recognized for their work

“Without a plan, you’re just spending money.”

In an initial conversation, a prospective client told us that another agency said they should spend $7,000 a month on paid search. Then they asked what we thought. Our answer was that we didn’t know yet. We weren’t even sure paid search belonged in the plan. No one can know without understanding your goals and doing the research.

That’s what the Digital Marketing Success Plan® is for. It gives everyone a clear view of what will move the needle and what won’t, so no one has to guess. We believe in planning this way so much that we wrote a book about it.

Corey Morris, President/CEO

“They truly cared about us and our project; they wanted more than anything for us to succeed.”

Andrew Hoffman, CEO at Cullum and Brown

Analytics8 logo

“They care about our results and they immerse themselves in our line of business to recommend the best approach.”

Jennifer Moreno, Marketing Director at Analytics8

Leasing company, verified review on Clutch

“Everything they’ve done for us to date has been on time and on budget or ahead of time and below budget.”

CEO, Leasing company, via Clutch

What working from a plan changes for you.

Companies come to us from different starting points. Some have worked with an agency that jumped into channels without a strategy. Some are new to search and want a partner before adding it to the mix. Others are adding expertise or capacity alongside an in-house team. Wherever you’re starting, you get collaboration, deeper questions, and real calculations behind each recommendation.

Business and ROI thinking

We track digital marketing KPIs, but we don’t stop at impressions and clicks. We care about the full funnel and beyond, and whether our work is moving your bottom line.

Problem solvers

We don’t hand you recommendations and walk away. We’re strategists, implementers, and business-minded advocates, and we plan for how the work will actually get done.

Depth of expertise

We focus on search marketing, websites, and the strategy and measurement that connect them. We won’t experiment on you, and we won’t tell you we can do something we can’t. Search is often at the core of the plan. If yours also calls for other channels or broader marketing and advertising, we bring in trusted partners with the same depth, so your plan covers the full picture.

Ready for the unexpected

Tech stacks, teams, resources, and regulations vary. Our team has worked with many of them across industries, so we don’t start from zero. We dig in to understand yours and work through the options until we find the right fit for your situation.

Our START Planning process turns research into a plan you can act on.

START is the five-step process we use to develop a Digital Marketing Success Plan®, and it’s our most common starting point with new client partners. It produces the strategy and plan that guides your digital marketing for the year ahead and beyond, and the plan keeps evolving through regular reviews.

Strategy

We build your profile, audit what’s in place, research your audience and competitors, and set goals tied to business outcomes.

Tactics

We evaluate platforms, channels, networks, and placements with projected performance, then select the ones that align with your goals.

Application

We inventory the assets each tactic needs, from ads and content to email templates and website updates, so everything is defined before anything gets created.

Review

Before launch, we set up the reporting that ties your data together and a plan for managing resources, so you can see the full picture of ROI.

Transformation

We bring it all together in a calendar of tactics and milestones, with checkpoints to revisit strategy, so the plan is documented, accountable, and ready to launch. It stays actionable and in focus, even when distractions come up and things change down the road.

What you get

Your plan is ready to put to work.

At the end of START, you have a documented Digital Marketing Success Plan®. Many clients continue with us as their implementation and ongoing strategy partner, especially for search and websites, with your team or other partners owning the pieces they’re best positioned to handle. There’s no long-term contract required before we start, and the plan is valuable on its own whichever way you go.
Projection

An ROI model built from your data and your market’s, with realistic growth expectations and the key metrics that drive them.

Lifecycle

A map of your customer journey, from first touch to closed-won business, with the channels, platforms, networks, and placements that fit each step.

Inventory

The assets the plan needs, from website architecture and tracking events to content and media, with their creative and technical requirements.

Dashboard

Benchmarks and pacing goals, the full investment across media, technology, staff, and partners, reporting at set intervals, and who’s accountable for each metric.

Calendar

Milestones, launch flights, experiments, and tasks scheduled for your team and partners, with checkpoints to continue, adjust, or stop, so each channel comes into play at the right time.

What happens next

No sales process. Just a real conversation.

You won’t be put into a sales process, talked at, or pitched with slide decks when you talk with us. You’re not getting handed off to a sales team and will be talking directly with our senior level staff and leadership. Our focus is on understanding your goals, culture, and making sure that we fit what you’re looking for. We are as good at working ourselves out of a deal as we are demonstrating that we are the right partner. We want mutual wins that start with a solid strategy that leads to ROI.

When you fill out our form to reach out to us, we’ll prepare for our initial conversation. We do our homework to prepare as we’ll ask a lot of questions, give you the opportunity to do the same, to get a sense for how we think, and to also fairly evaluate the fit of us for your team. No pressure, no obligations.

01 You fill out the form
02 We do our homework before we talk
03 A real conversation, with no slides and no pitch
04 We both decide if it’s a fit
FAQ

Questions about the DMSP®.

We combine your team’s expertise with our process and our depth in digital marketing and websites. We keep meetings and milestones efficient, and we ask for your input in each phase of START, so the plan reflects your business and isn’t built on assumptions or missing answers and data.

START Planning is built for expertise-driven organizations, from B2B professional services, where we have deep experience in AEC, logistics, and commercial real estate, to consumer brands and nonprofits. We size the process to fit your needs and the level of effort that makes sense.

About 90 days for the full process. We can shorten it for a focused scope or extend it to fit your timeline. We want enough time for the full process and real collaboration, but not so much that anyone gets planning fatigue or feels stuck getting ready to get ready.

You’ll work directly with the people doing the work. That includes experienced strategists, digital marketers, UX professionals, and an account lead who keeps everything on track.

You have a defined plan that’s ready to implement. Many clients continue with us as their implementation and ongoing strategy partner, and we recommend options for our role based on your resources, timing, and desired ROI. There’s no long-term commitment required up front.

No. Many clients are already spending when we start. We can keep existing campaigns running, and in some cases manage them in the meantime, while we build your Digital Marketing Success Plan®. Then the plan makes that spend accountable to your goals and ROI.

We look at the digital channels that can reach your audience, including organic search, AI search, paid search, LinkedIn, email, and your website, plus channels your team or partners may run. The plan only includes the ones that fit your goals.

Pricing depends on the size and complexity of your organization and its digital footprint, how competitive your market is, how much groundwork already exists, and the scope of the process itself. Our tiers reflect that scope, including how much research and how many stakeholder interviews are involved, how many channels we assess, and how much implementation planning goes into the final plan. Some clients want the plan alone, to hand to their own team or another partner. Many want us to build and run it with them. Both are good starting points, and neither obligates you to the other. Each START Planning process runs on a defined timeline, so you know what you’re committing to. It’s a meaningful investment, built for organizations where marketing ROI matters to the business. And you’ll get a straight answer, without meeting after meeting or sales games wasting your time.

Many agencies have some kind of discovery or setup phase. We often hear from companies that were burned by agencies that jumped into channel work without a strategy, used a cookie-cutter setup that didn’t account for their goals, weren’t transparent, or focused on the channels they prefer instead of the ones that fit. START is built to avoid that, with research, a documented plan, and measurement agreed on before the work begins.