Crafting a digital marketing strategy - (Context, Value exchange, Objectives, Tactics and evaluation) Key performance indicators (KPIs),Targets
Crafting a digital marketing strategy
Any activity with an end goal (whether it’s winning a war, building a city or selling a product) should have a blueprint in place for every person in the organization to
follow. In digital marketing, however, there is no single definitive approach – each business must create its own roadmap. However, there are questions you can use to guide the process.
A strategy needs to cover the questions of who you are, what you are offering and to whom, as well as why and how you are doing so. The steps and questions below cover what an organization should be aware of when creating and implementing a strategy that will meet its marketing objectives and solve its challenges.
1. Context
The first step in crafting a successful strategy is to examine the context of the organization and the various stakeholders. covered this under marketing strategy earlier in this chapter, but it bears repeating:
What is the context in which you are operating (PESTLE factors) and how is this likely to change in the future?
Who are you, why does your brand matter and what makes your brand useful and valuable?
Who are your customers, and what needs, wants and desires do they have?
Who are your competitors? These may extend beyond organizations that compete with you on the basis of price and product and could also be competition in the form of abstracts such as time and mindshare.
Thorough market research will reveal the answers to these questions.
2. Value exchange
Once you have examined the market situation, the second step is an examination of your value proposition or promise: in other words, what unique value your organisation can add to that market. It is important to identify the supporting value-adds to the brand promise that are unique to the digital landscape. What extras, beyond the basic product or service, do you offer to customers?
The Internet offers many channels for value creation. However, the definition of what is Exchange depends largely on the target audience, so it is crucial to research your users and gather insights into what they want and need.
Content marketing is the process of conceptualizing and creating this sort of content – examples of value-based content include a DIY gardening video for a hardware brand, a research paper for a business analyst, or a funny infographic for a marketing company.
3.Objectives
When setting your digital marketing goals, there are four key aspects to consider: objectives, tactics, key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets. Let’s look at each one in turn.
Objectives
Objectives are essential to any marketing endeavor – without them, your strategy would have no direction and no end goal or win conditions. It’s important to be able to take a step back and ask, ‘Why are we doing any of this? What goal, purpose or outcome are we looking for?’
What are you trying to achieve?
How will you know if you are successful?
Objectives need to be SMART:
Specific – the objective must be clear and detailed, rather than vague and general.
Measurable – the objective must be measurable so that you can gauge whether you are attaining the desired outcome.
Attainable – the objective must be something that is possible for your brand to achieve, based on available resources.
Realistic – the objective must also be sensible and based on data and trends; don’t exaggerate or overestimate what can be achieved.
Time-bound – finally, the objective must be linked to a specific timeframe.
>Key performance indicators (KPIs)
KPIs are the specific metrics or pieces of data that you will look at to determine whether your tactics are performing well and meeting your objectives. For example, a gardener may look at the growth rate, colour and general appearance of a plant to evaluate whether it is healthy. In the same way, a marketer will look at a range of data points to determine whether a chosen tactic is delivering. KPIs are determined per tactic, with an eye on the overall objective.
>Targets
Finally, targets are the specific values that are set for your KPIs to reach within a specific time period. Sportspeople need to reach targets to advance their careers
for example, come in the top ten to qualify for the final, or run 10km in under 27 minutes. If you meet or exceed a target, you are succeeding; if you don’t reach it, you’re falling behind on your objectives and you need to reconsider your approach (or your target).
Here is an example:
SMART objective:
Increase sales through the eCommerce platform by 10% within the next six months.
Tactics:
Search advertising Facebook brand page
KPIs per tactic:
Search advertising – number of search referrals, cost per click on the ads
Facebook brand page – number of comments and shares on campaign- specific posts
Targets per tactic:
Search advertising – 1 000 search referrals after the first month, with a 10% month-on-month increase after that
Facebook brand page – 50 comments and 10 shares on campaign-specific posts per week
4.Tactics and evaluation
Many digital tools and tactics are available once you have defned your digital marketing objectives. Each tactic has its strengths – for example, acquisition (gaining new customers) may best be driven by search advertising, while email is one of the most effective tools for selling more products to existing customers.
It is increasingly important for brands to be dynamic, flexible and agile when marketing online. New tactics and platforms emerge every week, customer behaviours change over time, and people needs and wants from brand evolve as their relationship grows. The challenge is to break through the online clutter to connect with customers in an original and meaningful way.
This process of constant change should be considered in the early stages of strategy formulation, allowing tactics and strategies to be modified and optimized as you go. After all, digital marketing strategy should be iterative, innovative and open to evolution.
Understanding user experience and the user journey is vital to building successful brands. Budget should be set aside upfront for analyzing user data and optimising conversion paths.
Social thinking and socially informed innovation are also valuable and uniquely suited to the online space. Socially powered insight can be used to inform strategic decisions in the organisation, from product roadmaps to service plans. Brands have moved away from being merely present in social media towards actively using it, aligning it with actionable objectives and their corresponding metrics. This is critical in demonstrating ROI and understating the opportunities and threats in the market.
Managing the learning loop (the knowledge gained from reviewing the performance of your tactics, which can then be fed back into the strategy) can be difficult. This is because brand cycles often move more slowly than the real-time results you will see online. It is therefore important to find a way to work agility into the strategy, allowing you to be quick, creative and proactive, as opposed to slow, predictable and reactive
>Tactics
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