A digital marketing strategy coordinates search, paid media, email, social and the website around one audience and one set of commercial goals. It is owned by the head of digital marketing and agreed with the leaders of marketing, operations and finance.
A complete digital marketing strategy for a fictional organization: private dental group operating 28 general and cosmetic dentistry clinics.
| Organization | Private dental group operating 28 general and cosmetic dentistry clinics (400 staff) |
|---|---|
| Ambition | Fill the open chairs in every clinic by making it easy to find us, book online in a minute and turn up, at a known cost per new patient. |
| Horizon | 1 year |
The group earns $45 million across 28 clinics and sees 1,050 new patients a month, 588 of them from digital channels. The website gets 74,000 visits a month and 2.2% become new patient inquiries. Only 42% of inquiries turn into a booked appointment: 22 clinics still use a callback form, and a third of those requests are never reached. Of the patients who do book, 14% do not attend. The $90,000 monthly digital budget is split evenly per clinic, although 8 clinics run hygiene chairs at 66% utilization and 5 are booked three weeks out. Paid search costs $176 per attended new patient.
Challenges| Stage | Customer action | Digital touchpoint | Metric |
|---|---|---|---|
| Need | Searches for a dentist nearby or for a symptom, usually on a phone | Map results, paid search ads, location pages | Map views and clicks per clinic |
| Compare | Reads reviews, checks insurance accepted, hours and fees | Business profile, location page, insurance and fees page | Location page visits that start a booking |
| Book | Picks a time online or calls the clinic | Real-time booking, click to call, tracked phone numbers | Inquiries that become a booked appointment |
| Attend | Completes forms and arrives | Text and email reminders, digital intake forms | New patient no-show rate |
| Return | Books a recall visit, accepts a treatment plan, leaves a review | Recall emails and texts, review request, patient portal | Patients rebooked within 30 days of recall date |
| Channel | Role | Monthly budget | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | Capture nearby searches for a dentist, emergencies, implants and aligners, weighted to clinics with open chairs | $44,000 | 310 attended new patients at $140 or less |
| Website and online booking | Turn visits into booked appointments | $14,000 | 2.6% of visits become inquiries |
| Paid social | Build demand for implants and aligners near under-filled clinics; retarget booking drop-offs | $12,000 | 120 consultation requests at $100 each |
| Organic search and content | Rank location and treatment pages for non-brand searches | $9,000 | 32,000 non-brand organic visits a month |
| Local listings and reviews | Win the top three map results around each clinic | $6,000 | 22 clinics in the top three |
| Email and text messaging | Reminders, recall for lapsed patients and review requests | $5,000 | 350 lapsed patients rebooked a month |
| Primary conversion | A booked new patient appointment, made online or by a tracked call. A submitted callback form does not count as a conversion. |
|---|---|
| Key pages | The 28 location pages, 14 treatment pages, the insurance and fees page, the emergency dentist page and the new patient page. Location pages receive 61% of entrances and carry the booking widget. |
| Testing plan | One test at a time on the shared location page template, run across all 28 clinics and measured on booking starts, so each can detect a 20% lift in about four weeks. The first three: booking widget above the fold against a call button, showing the next available time, and listing accepted insurers by name. |
| Analytics setup | Web analytics with consent management, a tracked phone number per clinic and channel, and booking events sent from the server. Bookings are matched nightly to attended appointments in the practice management system. No treatment or health information is passed to analytics or advertising platforms. |
|---|---|
| Attribution model | First-touch source is stored on the patient record and used for cost per attended new patient by clinic. Channel budgets are set with a position-based model. A holdout test on brand search terms runs each quarter in four clinics. |
| Reporting rhythm | A weekly channel dashboard for the digital team, a monthly scorecard for each clinic sent to regional managers, and a quarterly budget reallocation based on chair utilization. |
Priorities and measures
Eight clinics run hygiene chairs at 66% while five turn patients away. Weighting budget by capacity raises utilization without raising spend.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hygiene chair utilization at the 8 under-filled clinics | 66% | 80% | Q4 2027 |
| Attended new patients per month from digital channels | 588 patients | 900 patients | Q4 2027 |
| Paid search cost per attended new patient | $176 | $140 | Q3 2027 |
The 6 clinics with real-time booking convert inquiries at nearly twice the rate of the 22 that rely on callbacks. Most of the lost patients never speak to anyone.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| New patient inquiries that become a booked appointment | 42% | 50% | Q3 2027 |
| New patient appointments booked online without a call | 11% | 45% | Q4 2027 |
| New patient no-show rate | 14% | 10% | Q4 2027 |
Clinics that appear in the top three map results get more than twice the new patient calls of those that do not. Eleven clinics appear there today, and nine have ratings low enough to cost them clicks.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clinics in the top three map results within 2 miles | 11 clinics | 22 clinics | Q4 2027 |
| Average review rating at the 9 lowest-rated clinics | 3.9 stars | 4.4 stars | Q4 2027 |
| New reviews per clinic per month | 4 reviews | 12 reviews | Q2 2027 |
With source recorded for under half of new patients, budget decisions rest on clicks and form fills. Capacity-based spending only works if cost per attended patient is trusted.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| New patients with a first-touch source on their record | 48% | 90% | Q2 2027 |
| Time to produce the monthly clinic scorecard | 12 days | 2 days | Q2 2027 |
The same structure with a prompt in every field. Copy it, or download it as a Word or Excel file.
| Organization | [Describe your organization in a few words, with its size] |
|---|---|
| Ambition | [One sentence on where you want to be at the end of the plan] |
| Horizon | [How long the plan runs, for example 12 months] |
[Where things stand today: the facts that make this strategy necessary]
Challenges| Stage | Customer action | Digital touchpoint | Metric |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Stage] | [Customer action] | [Digital touchpoint] | [Metric] |
| [Stage] | [Customer action] | [Digital touchpoint] | [Metric] |
| [Stage] | [Customer action] | [Digital touchpoint] | [Metric] |
| Channel | Role | Monthly budget | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Channel] | [Role] | [Monthly budget] | [Target] |
| [Channel] | [Role] | [Monthly budget] | [Target] |
| [Channel] | [Role] | [Monthly budget] | [Target] |
| Primary conversion | [Your primary conversion] |
|---|---|
| Key pages | [Your key pages] |
| Testing plan | [Your testing plan] |
| Analytics setup | [Your analytics setup] |
|---|---|
| Attribution model | [Your attribution model] |
| Reporting rhythm | [Your reporting rhythm] |
Priorities and measures
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
Draw the journey from first search to repeat purchase and put a number on each step. The biggest drop is where the strategy should start, and it is often after the click.
Define the primary conversion as the event the business is paid for, or the closest thing you can measure, not a form fill.
Give every channel a role, a monthly budget and a target in the same table, and check that the budgets add up to what finance has approved.
If you have several locations or product lines, allocate budget by where you have capacity or margin instead of evenly.
Agree the attribution model with finance before the year starts, and state what data you will not send to advertising platforms.
Set a rhythm for moving budget between channels, and name who has the authority to do it.
A plan only works if it is reviewed on a rhythm. This is the cadence the example assumes.
| Check-in | Outcome owners update progress and confidence weekly. |
|---|---|
| Review | Priority owners review outcomes and unblock initiatives monthly. |
| Reset | Leadership revisits priorities and targets quarterly. |
Tability keeps this cadence for you. Each priority becomes an objective, each outcome a key result with its baseline and target, and each initiative a tracked task. Owners get a check-in reminder and the plan shows what is on track.
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It should include the customer journey with a touchpoint and metric at each stage, a channel plan with the role, budget and target for each channel, how the website converts visits, and how results are tracked and attributed. Add priorities with measurable outcomes so progress can be reviewed monthly.
A marketing strategy decides who the business targets, how it is positioned and how the whole budget is divided, including offline activity. A digital marketing strategy sits beneath it and covers how search, paid media, email, social and the website work together to reach that audience and convert it.
Divide it by where additional customers can be served profitably, not equally. Look at capacity, local competition and cost per customer for each location, and review the split at least quarterly. In this example, clinics with open chairs get more budget and fully booked clinics get none for new patient advertising.
Use the simplest model your team and finance both trust. First-touch works well for measuring cost per new customer. A position-based or data-driven model is better for dividing budget between channels. Whichever you choose, run occasional holdout tests, because every model overstates the channels closest to the conversion.
Review channel results weekly, the full funnel monthly and the budget split quarterly. The audience, primary conversion and measurement approach should hold for the year. Bids, creative and tests change continuously, and they belong in the channel plans that sit beneath the strategy.
A marketing strategy names the customers a business most wants to win, how it wants to be understood by them, and where the budget goes to turn that attention into revenue.
A content strategy sets out who your content is for, the topics you want to be known for, and how each piece is produced, distributed and measured.
A content marketing strategy explains how published content will attract a defined group of buyers and move them, stage by stage, toward becoming customers.
Digital marketing strategy template
Horizon: 1 year
4 priorities · 11 outcomes
Targets are illustrative. Adapt them to your baseline before you start.