Why is having a digital strategy 

In today's world, no business can survive without a good digital strategy. Of course, keeping up with technological developments has become a prerequisite for success in the professional world. But how do you put in place a successful digital strategy? And what are the advantages?

But what do we mean by digital strategy?

The digital marketing is a very effective tool to develop a communication strategy and marketing strategy on the web, mobile devices and social media. By adopting such a technique, the company can easily achieve its goals. In general, the SWOT (Strengh, Weakness, Oppurtunity and Threat) is one of the most used means to take stock of its weaknesses and strengths in order to exploit them to the maximum for the benefit of the box, as well as on the threats that threaten her every day and the opportunities that should never be missed! Of course, the road to success is full of pitfalls. This is why it would be necessary to re-examine its global strategy and adapt them to the digital world. A digital training may also be necessary to learn basic techniques!

Read our article: Social Media Marketing and strategy.

But why a digital strategy?

The presence on the internet is essential for any company that wishes to perpetuate its activities. A firm must follow new trends to evolve, to compete with its competitors, to keep their market share, to gain popularity, etc. Digital tools are then inexpensive means that can be used to rapidly increase the turnover of a company. By fully mastering all the devices, the firm can reduce its communication and overall marketing costs. Moreover, thanks to digitization, information can go around the world in a few minutes. It is therefore a significant asset that should be exploited at all costs!

In short, we can say that the implementation of digital marketing can save a business !!!

What is the link between global marketing strategy and digital strategy?

Oh ! These are inseparable terms. The digital strategy must be an integral part of the overall marketing strategy. Why ? Because, whatever the chosen campaign, the strategy must above all be consistent with the overall objectives of the company.

Discover Our Article: How does Digital Marketing Strategy Help to grow a Business.

Indeed, many complex tools are used in the digital world. However, we should try to master them! If the team encounters difficulties in the implementation, the ideal would be to use a digital marketing agency or to follow a digital training to support and guide employees. In any case, it is an investment that will not be in vain!

How to build a digital strategy?

1. Define your target customers
2. Identify your goals and tools
3. Analyze your existing media
4. Plan your owned media
5. Analyze your earned media
6. Audit your paid media
7. Put it all together

1) Define your target customers.

For any marketing strategy (offline or online), you need to know which target customer you are dealing with. The best marketing strategies are based on detailed buyer profiles , called a buyer persona, and your first step is to create them.

Buyer Profiles represent your ideal customers and can be created by doing research, conducting surveys, and interviewing your business' target audience. It's important to note that this information should be based on real data whenever possible, as making assumptions about your audience can lead to the misdirection of your marketing strategy.

To get a big picture of your buyer persona, your research panel should include a mix of customers, prospects, and people outside of your contact database who come close to your target audience.

But what kind of information should you collect for your target customer profiles in order to fuel your digital marketing strategy? It depends on your business and is likely to vary depending on whether you are in B2B or B2C, or whether your product is expensive or inexpensive. Here are some best practices, but you will need to refine them according to the specifics of your industry.

Discover Our Article: Digital and Social Media Difference.

Quantitative (or demographic) information

• Location . You can use analytics tools like Google Analytics to easily identify where your traffic is coming from.
• Age . Depending on your business, this may or may not be relevant. It is best to gather this data by identifying trends in your existing prospect and customer database.
• Income . It is best to collect sensitive information like personal income in personal research interviews, as people might not want to share it through online forms.
• Profession . It is most relevant for B2B companies. This is something that you can get roughly from your existing customer base.

Qualitative (or psychological) information

• Objectives . Depending on the need your product or service meets, you may already have a good idea of ​​the goals your typical customer is looking to achieve. However, it is best to confirm your assumptions by talking to customers.
• Challenges . Again, speak with your customers to get a feel for the common issues your target is facing.
• Hobbies. Ask your customers and people who match your target audience. If you're a fashion brand, for example, knowing whether large segments of your audience are interested in fitness and wellness as well, as it can help guide your future content creation and partnerships.
• Priorities . Ask people who match your target audience to find out what is most important to them about your business. For example, if you are a B2B software company, knowing that your target audience appreciates competitive customer support is invaluable information.

Now, create one or more target customer profiles , like Cathy below, and make sure you use them at every step of your digital marketing strategy.

2) Identify your goals and the tools you will need

Your marketing goals should always be linked to the core business goals. For example, if your business goal is to increase your online income by 20%, your marketing goal might be to generate 50% more leads from the website compared to last year to contribute. to this success.

Whatever your overall goal is, you need to know how to measure it and, more importantly, be able to measure it (for example, having the right marketing tools in place to do it). How you measure the effectiveness of your digital strategy will be different for each business and will depend on your goals, but it is essential to make sure that you are able to do so, as these are the metrics that will help you adjust your strategy. in the future.

3) Analyze your existing marketing and media channels.

When you are evaluating the available marketing channels or media to use in your strategy, it helps to first consider the big picture to avoid getting overwhelmed. The POEM (Owned, Earned, and Paid) media classification is widely used by marketers and helps categorize the media and digital channels you already use into three categories.

Media owned

This refers to the digital assets that your brand or business owns, whether it's your website, your social media profiles, your content, or your images. These media belong to your company. This may include offsite content that you own, but that is not hosted on your website, such as a blog posted on Cybexo Inc , for example.

Media won

Quite simply, Earned Media refers to the exposure you have gained through word of mouth. Whether it's the content you've posted on other websites, the PR work you've done, or the customer relationship you've created, media earned is the recognition you receive . You can gain media by getting press mentions, positive reviews, and by other people sharing your content on social media , for example.

Paid media

Paid media is a bit more self-explanatory and refers to any medium or channel that you pay to grab the attention of your buyers. This includes things like Google AdWords , paid social media posts, native advertising (like sponsored posts on other websites), and any other medium for which you pay directly in exchange for visibility .

Gather what you own and categorize each sales channel or digital communication medium in order to have a clear picture of your existing, acquired and paid media.

Your online marketing strategy could incorporate elements of all three channels, all working together to help you achieve your goal. For example, you could have content belonging to a page on your website that was created to help you generate leads . To amplify the number of conversions generated by the content, you may have made a real effort to make it shareable, meaning others are distributing it through their personal social media profiles, thus increasing traffic to the page of destination. To support the success of the content, you could have posted it on your Facebook page and paid to get it seen by more people in your target audience.

This is how the three types of media can work together to help you achieve your goal . Of course, it is not mandatory to always use all three. If your owned and earned media are both efficient, you may not need to invest in paid services. It's about evaluating the best solution to achieve your goal, and then incorporating the channels that work best for your business into your internet marketing strategy.

Now that you know your marketing communications materials already available, you can start thinking about what to keep and what is best to stop.

4) Plan your owned media.

At the heart of digital marketing is your own media, which almost always takes the form of content. Every post your brand delivers can generally be categorized as content, whether it's your "About" page, product descriptions, blog posts, PDFs, infographics, or social media posts. . Even the newsletter you send by email to your subscribers is marketing content! This strategy is called Inbound Marketing , it is about attracting visitors to your site through engaging content rather than classic and boring advertising.

Content helps convert your website visitors into prospects and customers , and helps improve your brand image online. Once optimized, it can also boost whatever effort you put into natural search  (SEO). Whatever your goal, you will need to use content that aligns with your digital marketing strategy.

To develop your web marketing strategy, you need to decide on the content that will help you achieve your goals . If your goal is to generate 50% more leads through the website compared to last year, your "About" page is unlikely to be included in your strategy, unless this page is already a generator. of turnover.

It is more likely that a downloadable PDF via a form on your website will lead to a lot more leads, and therefore, this might be a technique you would like to explore further. Here's a quick method for identifying the content you'll need to achieve your goals:

Audit your existing content

Make a list of your current content and rank each item based on what has been performing best against your current goals. If your goal is lead generation, for example, rank them according to those who have generated the most leads in the past year. It could be a particular blog post, a PDF, or even a specific page on your website that converts well.

The idea here is to understand what is currently working and what is not, so that you can set yourself up for success when planning future content.

Identify gaps in your existing content

Based on your buyer profiles, identify gaps in the content you have. If you are a shoe brand and have discovered in your research that one of your target market's biggest challenges is finding the right size, but you don't have any content that addresses that concern, then you should to create a.

Looking at your content analysis, you might find that downloadable PDFs on a certain type of page on your site look really good (much better than the downloads page for example). In the case of this shoe company, you might decide to add a PDF on “how to find the right size” on these pages.

Plan the creation of your content

Based on your conclusions and the gaps you identified, make a content creation plan outlining the elements needed to put in place the actions that will help you achieve your goals. This should include:

• Title
• Format
• Goal
• Broadcast channel
• Why are you creating it? (for example, "Cathy is having trouble finding the right shoe size, so we create a size guide")
• Priority level

It can be a simple Excel that should also include budget information if you plan to outsource content creation, or a time estimate if you produce it yourself. In the case of a business creation, this budget must be included in your business plan .

5) Analyze your earned media.

Analyzing your old earned media against your current goals can help you get a sense of where to focus your efforts. Look at where your traffic and leads are coming from (if that's your goal) and rank each earned media source from most effective to least effective.

You might find that a particular article that talks to you on a news site has driven a lot of qualified traffic to your website, which in turn converts very well. Or, you might find that LinkedIn is where most of the people relaying your content are, which in turn brings in a lot of traffic. The idea here is to map the media gained that will help you achieve your goals, and those that won't, based on historical data. However, if there is something new that you want to try, don't rule it out just because it hasn't been tried yet. Test and innovate!

6) Audit your paid media.

This step involves much of the same process: You should assess your existing paid media on each platform (Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to determine what can help you meet your current goals.

If you've spent a lot of money on AdWords and haven't seen your ROI, it might be time to fine-tune your campaign or pause it to focus on optimizing another platform. which gives better results.

At the end of the process, you should have a clear idea of ​​which paid media platforms you want to continue using and, if so, which ones you want to remove from your strategy.

7) Put it all together.

You've done the planning and research, and now you have a solid vision of what will make up your digital marketing strategy. Here's what you should have so far:

• Detailed target customer profiles
• One or more specific marketing objectives
• An inventory of your owned, earned and paid media
• An audit of your owned, earned and paid media
• A content creation plan

Now it's time to put it all together to form a cohesive strategy document. Let's review what digital strategy means: the series of actions that will help you achieve your goal (s) using online marketing.

Based on this definition, your strategy document should outline the series of actions you will take to achieve your goals, based on your research to date. A spreadsheet is an efficient format, and for consistency you might find it easier to plan based on the owned, acquired, and paid media structure we've used so far.

You will also need to plan your strategy for a longer term period. Usually 12 months is a good place to start, depending on how your business is set up. For example :

• In January, you could start a blog that will be continuously updated once a week, for the whole year.
• In March, you could launch a new PDF guide, along with a paid promotion.
• In July, you may be preparing for the most important month in your business. What do you hope you have observed at this point that will influence the content you produce to support it?
• In September, you might consider focusing on media acquired in the form of PR to generate additional traffic during the re-entry period.

By taking this approach, you also create a structured schedule for your activity, which will help you communicate your plans to your colleagues.

Your digital marketing strategy is unique

Your strategy document will be very specific based on your business, which is why it is almost impossible for us to create a unique digital marketing strategy template.

Remember that the purpose of your strategy document is to define the actions you are going to take to achieve your goal over a period of time. As long as it allows you to do that, then you have the basics of creating a digital strategy .

Warning ! Remember to regularly check for ROI and Return on Attention to determine if your digital marketing is performing or not! Now, it's your turn to play !

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