Dan Mortimer, managing director at Red Ant, introduces a new series of articles designed to explain what’s involved in a comprehensive digital strategy.
This is the first in a series of articles which aim to demonstrate what’s involved in a holistic digital strategy from putting together initial aims, targeting audiences, generating ideas and evaluating campaigns, not to mention a review of the areas that need to be considered for build processes. Beyond this, the articles also hope to show the benefits that a digital campaign would have on your brand.
In the coming weeks, we will take a close look at the planning stages of a digital strategy, including aims, background and persona research and location segmentation. We will also get to grips with ideas generation through the clever use of brainstorming, engagement evaluation and needs hierarchy.
The digital arena is changing daily. Digital is currently the fastest growing area of marketing, customer retention and engagement. According to the IAB, internet advertising spend, overtook TV advertising spend at the end of 2009. What’s more, according to Google, internet usage in the UK overtook TV in 2006 and in April 2009, and the average Briton spent 22 hours and 20 minutes using social media channels. These figures are only likely to grow.
Engagement through digital channels is now expected by audiences looking to connect with a brand. However, developing a comprehensive digital strategy can be a daunting task for any brand. In order to start the process we must attempt to define exactly what we mean by digital.
What is digital?
In short, digital is about finding the best way of achieving goals - normally promoting a brand or service - through electronic connected media. This could be online on the web, through specialist internet applications or through mobile phone applications (both network and Bluetooth connections). Digital consultancy can also tie into traditional media outlets either as traditional first (bringing an audience into a digital campaign) or traditional last (by using an existing digital audience as content generators).
Digital is also the great equaliser and relationship builder. Humans by their very nature are communicative and inquisitive, and digital channels allow brands to interact with their audience on both levels. The level of involvement required by the audience to engage with a brand - in many cases a simple click of the mouse - shrinks the gulf between interaction and offline brand perception.
Relationships are the great benefit of digital. Unlike any other broadcast medium, digital channels allow direct engagement with each member of the audience.
Definition by difference
Digital offers brands new opportunities that traditional methods cannot easily match:
- Digital does not obey the line
- Digital can be broadcast and personalised
- Digital can be reactive as well as proactive
- Digital should be cost efficient
- Digital should always prove returns
Industry changing
Digital strategy offers brands and companies new, unique ways of engaging with their customers and audiences to a far higher level than has been previously possible. Initial faltering steps in digital marketing such as PPC and SEO are just the tip of the iceberg as to what is possible.
Well conceived digital strategies and campaigns will push brands ever forward in the consciousness of their audience and lead to lasting adoption and advocacy. Digital allows a shift from monologue to dialogue.
Building a digital strategy
There are four core stages to building and running a digital strategy. These are: planning, evaluation, creation and actualisation. Each of these stages runs into the next to deliver a coherent digital campaign. Combined, they deliver an ongoing digital strategy as the audience and brand perception evolves.
Planning
The planning of a digital strategy involves analysing the following:
- The initial aims and expected returns
- The background of the brand, present positioning and perception
- The audience (broken down into key segments)
- Audience locations and value of each audience segment against initial aims
The planning stage deals purely in the analysis and identification of focus areas.
Creation
The creation stage is purely focused around campaign formalisation. This involves:
- Planning campaign elements based upon previous analysis
- Creating key performance indicators per channel and estimating expected return per channel
- Design and build of campaign elements / channels
- Planning and establishing actualisation routes, communication flows and expectations
The creation stage for each channel ends with the launch of each channel.
Actualisation
The actualisation focuses on the delivery of the campaign, including:
- Running the campaign and each channel of the campaign
- Engaging with the audience
- Reacting to the flow of the campaign against pre-agreed checkpoints
- Maintaining a ‘lessons learnt’ log for strategy evaluation
The evolution of the campaign based against the performance indicators and audience uptake is tightly tied to the creation team allowing the tailoring of specific channels to maximise performance.
Evaluation
It is imperative to evaluate a digital strategy in order to learn the lessons of the campaign. This involves:
- Evaluating KPIs
- Reviewing the user journeys
- Comparison of the ‘lessons learnt’ log against initial thoughts
- Recording audience evolution and engagement
Evaluation improves the effectiveness of future campaigns and strategies by becoming the key building block in planning them.
These core stages will be analysed in the coming weeks. The next article in this series will explore the planning stage.
