‘A company without strategy is willing to try anything’.
The possibilities are endless, especially if you are taking into consideration the online landscape. The risks and the stakes are high. And time and money are never enough to test each and every online opportunity that might be suitable for your company. Drawing up a digital strategy will give you the sense of direction and stability you need in order to keep up with the fast-paced online environment.
Although 50% of digital marketers have no defined strategy in their online marketing activities, digital strategy should be a key priority for any organisation. The main purpose of defining a strategy is to offer a plan of how the company will engage with the digital audience and the tools and platforms required to support this activity.
image via Smart Insights
So why is a digital strategy important for your business?
Building a consistent vision and direction will ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards achieving the same goals and objectives. It can be implemented by setting up clear benchmarks, a unified communication model and specific goals.
Without a clear strategy, you might find yourself in the situation where every manager or director sets their own aims and priorities related to the online activity, resulting in everyone working cross-purpose without even realising it.
Here’s how your organisation can go about creating a digital strategy and benefit from having a clear and cohesive one in place.
1. Setting up Benchmarks and Objectives
A digital strategy gives you more focus in your marketing efforts and clearly outlines the tactical steps to be taken. Without establishing specific goals, it’s hard to decide on what online platforms and channels to use or how to connect with your online audience. Creating a digital strategy forces companies to keep in line with specific objectives, measure strict KPIs and analyse results thoroughly.
Setting up benchmarks and objectives for your online campaigns gives you a more fluent action plan and it is also an indication of the success of any online marketing campaign.
2. Deeper Understanding of Your Target Audience
When you outline your strategy, it forces you to think deeper about your target audience. Having a deeper understanding and knowledge of who your target audience is and where they can be found allows you to easily draw up and adjust your online marketing messages, create powerful CTAs and decide on the best digital channels you should be using to send messages across.
By doing so, you will avoid wasting time and budgets to test out different types of messages and marketing channels directed at a general, diluted audience, instead of the one you should reach.
3. Developing an Integrated Marketing Communications Model
Using a defined strategy for implementing your online marketing activities helps you develop a cohesive integrated marketing communications model for your business. Every marketing channel you are using to promote your company is a piece of a puzzle that creates a holistic perspective of the company’s communication model. Each piece should be adapted to perfectly fit with the others, creating a seamless branding experience online and offline.
Having a digital strategy ensures the same company message and vision are communicated to the target audience in a unified approach, regardless of the online channel or platform.
4. Budgeting and ROI
Once you have a clear understanding of where your online marketing efforts are spent, you are better equipped to work out in advance solutions for present problems and plan ahead for the future. Understanding how your digital budget is distributed per channel or platform and what your ROI is will keep you prepared to plan your next move. As a result, online budgeting will become much easier to manage and control.
Most companies who have a straightforward digital strategy that outlines any cost related benchmarks will usually see better ROI results from their spent compared to those who don’t have any strategy in place.
A good strategy sets benchmarks for your activity, enabling you to measure what’s working and what isn’t in your online activity, allowing you to make the necessary adjustments and constantly optimise your marketing efforts to reach the highest ROI from your marketing spent.
Need help in developing your digital marketing strategy? Get in touch with us to see how we can help you!
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