3 Digital Marketing Plan Examples UK SMEs Can Automate

Most UK small businesses don’t fail at marketing because they lack ideas. They fail because their ideas never turn into a repeatable system.

That’s why digital marketing plan examples are so useful. Not because you’ll copy-paste them, but because you can see the structure: what to measure, what to prioritise, and what to do next. And if you pair that structure with marketing automation, you stop relying on “someone remembers to send the email” marketing.

This post is part of our British Small Business Digital Marketing series, where we focus on practical ways to grow with limited time and team size. Here’s a clear approach you can run in 90-day cycles, plus three real-world-style plan examples you can adapt to your own SME.

Start with a 90-day plan (because annual plans don’t get done)

A 12‑month marketing plan sounds sensible. In practice, for SMEs, it often becomes a spreadsheet that goes stale by February.

A better default is a 90-day planning cycle using the OSA structure: Opportunity → Strategy → Action. It’s simple enough to finish, but detailed enough to drive meaningful results.

• Opportunity: What’s happening in your market and performance data right now? Where are you leaking leads or sales?
• Strategy: What are you going to focus on (and what will you ignore) to hit a specific target?
• Action: What will be built, automated, launched, and measured in the next 90 days?

Here’s the automation angle: automation turns “actions” into a system. It’s the difference between “we should follow up faster” and “every lead gets a tailored follow-up sequence within 5 minutes, with tasks created if they reply.”

What your plan should include (and what to automate)

A usable digital marketing plan isn’t a manifesto. It’s a decision-making tool. I’d include these six elements, and I’d attach automation to at least three of them:

1. Audit of current performance (traffic sources, conversion rates, CPL, CAC, email engagement)
2. Vision (what you want digital to change in the business and why)
3. SMART objectives + KPIs (targets with deadlines)
4. Strategy with priorities (channel focus and sequencing)
5. Budget (time is a budget too)
6. 90-day action plan (deliverables, owners, dates)

Automate where it removes delay or inconsistency: lead capture, routing, follow-ups, onboarding, reactivation, reporting dashboards, and basic segmentation.

Use RACE so you don’t “forget” a chunk of the customer journey

One reason SME marketing feels chaotic is that activities grow in random directions: a bit of SEO here, some boosted posts there, a newsletter when someone has time.

The RACE Framework fixes this by forcing you to think across the full journey:

• Reach: get discovered
• Act: get prospects to take a meaningful step (click, enquire, book)
• Convert: turn intent into revenue
• Engage: keep customers and increase lifetime value

A blunt truth: marketing automation is most profitable in Act, Convert, and Engage. Reach is often platform-driven (SEO, social, ads). But once a prospect raises their hand, automation decides whether you respond like a professional business—or like a chaotic inbox.

A practical mapping: RACE × Automation

• Reach → automated UTM tracking, auto-tagging leads by source, scheduled reporting
• Act → form-to-CRM capture, instant email/SMS responses, lead scoring
• Convert → sales pipelines, reminders, proposal follow-ups, abandoned basket flows
• Engage → onboarding sequences, review requests, replenishment reminders, win-back campaigns

If you build your 90-day plan inside RACE, you end up with a funnel that’s measurable and easier to improve quarter by quarter.

Example Plan 1: FMCG / E-commerce SME — traffic growth without wasting ad spend

Scenario (adapted from a typical FMCG example): A challenger food brand is losing digital share of voice as new competitors launch weekly. The team has limited SEO experience and low confidence with paid media.

Opportunity

The business is still showing up for some long-tail searches, but there’s no planned approach to protect and grow that demand. Paid budget exists, but it’s not being allocated with a clear ROI model.

What I’d measure this week:

• Landing page sessions and conversion rate (email signup or purchase)
• Top 20 non-brand keywords by impressions/clicks
• Revenue per channel (even if rough)

Strategy

Compete for high-intent traffic and funnel it into owned audiences (email/SMS) so growth doesn’t rely purely on ads.

This is where automation makes the plan scalable: every incremental visitor should have a structured path to become a subscriber and then a customer.

Action (with automation)

A focused 90-day action set:

1. Instrument tracking properly
   • Set up dashboards for landing page traffic sources, new vs returning users, and conversion rates.
2. Build 2–3 “money” landing pages
   • One product-led, one problem-led (“high protein vegan meals”), one comparison page.
3. Automate capture and nurture
   • Pop-up or embedded form → welcome sequence (3–5 emails)
   • Segment based on interest (e.g., “high protein”, “family meals”, “gluten-free”)
4. Run a small paid test with clear rules
   • Retarget landing page visitors with a single offer
   • Cap spend; evaluate weekly on cost per first purchase

Snippet-worthy rule: If you can’t name the one metric your campaign is meant to move in 90 days, you don’t have a campaign.

Example Plan 2: Financial services SME — increase repeat borrowing with automated engagement

Scenario: A UK financial advisor/lender sees mortgage conversions dip, while enquiries about home improvement loans rise. Returning customers exist, but engagement is inconsistent and hard to measure.

Opportunity

Rates and consumer behaviour shift quickly. Without segmentation and lifecycle tracking, you can’t tell whether you’re growing profitably or just sending more emails into the void.

What I’d measure this month:

• Returning customer rate and repeat application rate
• Email engagement by segment (not overall)
• Time-to-response for enquiries (speed matters)

Strategy

Build an always-on customer engagement system focused on repeat value. The goal isn’t “send more emails”. It’s “send the right message at the right time, automatically, based on life stage and behaviour.”

Action (with automation)

A pragmatic 90-day build:

1. Create customer segments you can actually use
   • Homeowners vs renters, previous product type, time since last loan, postcode region (where appropriate), and consent status.
2. Automate 3 lifecycle journeys
   • Onboarding: confirmation, what happens next, how to contact, FAQs
   • Nurture: educational sequence tied to home improvement planning
   • Reactivation: 6–12 months after completion with tailored offers
3. Add pipeline automation for enquiries
   • Enquiry form → CRM record → assign owner → task + reminder → follow-up sequence
4. Improve measurement
   • Track repeat borrowing rate and LTV proxy (even a simple “2nd product within 12 months” KPI)

This kind of plan fits the reality of a small team: you set it up once, then it runs while you handle regulated, high-trust conversations.

Example Plan 3: B2B SaaS SME — raise average order value with clearer positioning

Scenario: A SaaS tool has plenty of customers and case studies, but wants bigger accounts with higher average order value (AOV). The value proposition isn’t consistently communicated across the lifecycle.

Opportunity

You don’t win larger deals by shouting louder. You win them by being clearer—especially across the stages where stakeholders evaluate risk.

What I’d measure this quarter:

• AOV by segment (SMB vs mid-market)
• Demo-to-close rate and sales cycle length
• Content-assisted conversions (which pages appear before demo requests)

Strategy

Run a campaign that makes the brand’s promise obvious to larger buyers, and back it with proof (case studies, security/credibility content, integration pages).

Automation matters because B2B buying cycles are long. Consistent follow-up is where smaller teams often drop the ball.

Action (with automation)

A clean 90-day execution:

1. Tighten the message
   • One positioning statement for the homepage, ads, and demo pages.
2. Build an editorial calendar that matches objections
   • “How we reduce influencer risk”, “Approval workflows”, “Compliance”, “Reporting”.
3. Automate lead qualification and routing
   • Lead scoring based on company size, pages visited, and intent actions (demo, pricing page)
   • Auto-assign high-intent leads to sales; keep others in nurture
4. Automate a post-demo sequence
   • 5–7 day follow-up with the right assets (case study, ROI calculator, security page)

One-liner worth remembering: Automation doesn’t replace sales skill—it protects it from being wasted on the wrong leads.

“Which automation should I set up first?” A simple SME priority list

If you’re early in your marketing automation journey, don’t start with complex branching logic. Start with workflows that remove manual chasing and speed up response.

1. Lead capture → CRM → owner assignment (no lost leads)
2. Instant response (email/SMS confirmation + expectation setting)
3. Simple nurture sequence (5–7 emails over 14–30 days)
4. Pipeline reminders (tasks created automatically)
5. Customer onboarding (reduce churn and support load)
6. Reactivation/win-back (often the cheapest revenue)
7. Dashboards (weekly visibility without spreadsheet pain)

If you want a single KPI to focus your first 90 days: speed-to-lead and follow-up consistency. These two changes alone can make a small team feel twice as responsive.

A 90-day planning template you can run next week

Here’s a quick format you can copy into a doc:

• SMART objective (90 days): e.g., “Increase qualified leads by 20% by 31 March 2026.”
• Opportunity: what the data says now (baseline numbers)
• Strategy: 1–2 channel priorities and what you’ll stop doing
• Actions: 5–10 deliverables with owners and dates
• Automation build list: which workflows go live and when
• KPIs: 3–5 metrics you’ll check weekly

If you’re following our British Small Business Digital Marketing series, you’ll notice the theme: simple systems beat heroic effort. A plan gives you focus; automation gives you follow-through.

Most SMEs don’t need more channels. They need fewer priorities, tighter measurement, and workflows that run even when the team is busy.

What would change in your business if every new lead got a fast, relevant follow-up—without anyone remembering to do it?