What Is a Digital Strategy? Definition, Benefits and Tips
As businesses embrace new technology, a well-defined plan can guarantee that the technology serves all employees within a company. A successful strategy can aid a company in enhancing brand awareness, attracting new customers, and streamlining business operations.
Understanding digital strategies can assist you in developing and utilising one for optimal results. In this article, I will define digital strategies, outline the components of these plans, highlight some key advantages of having one, and detail the process of creating an effective digital strategy.
Digital Strategy: An Overview
What is a digital strategy? A digital strategy is my approach to using technology, like computers, mobile devices and internet services, to grow my brand. This plan can help me reach customers, increase sales and showcase my brand effectively. I may design and adjust my strategy based on market needs, popular technology or platforms, and my business performance. I might develop a document or project plan that states the elements of my digital strategy and sets strategic goals for implementation.
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What does a digital strategy include?
While a company's industry, size, and growth goals might determine the exact content of my digital strategy, many of these plans include the following components:
Digital marketing: Digital marketing uses technology channels to increase brand awareness and engagement. The different areas of digital marketing include social media, email, and content marketing.
Advertising: Digital advertising is when companies deliver targeted materials to attract new customers and engage existing customers. Companies may pay to advertise on websites, through search engines, or through pay-per-click.
E-commerce: E-commerce is the ability to buy and sell products or services online. Many companies develop e-commerce capabilities so that customers can buy products from laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Customer interaction: Having open channels for feedback and interaction with customers can help customer service teams provide a positive customer service experience. Interacting with customers can also provide important data for targeting specific groups or for product improvement.
Search engine optimisation: Search engine optimization can help a company appear on search engines. Tags, keywords, links on the company's website, and other online content can be part of the plan to increase the website's traffic and accessibility.
Related: Complete Guide to Digital Marketing
Benefits of Creating a Digital Strategy
An effective digital strategy can increase a company's brand awareness and revenue. Here are a few benefits of creating a digital strategy:
Enhanced Data Collection
Many companies have a web presence, either through a company website or through social media platforms. These channels collect vast amounts of consumer data every day, and a strong digital strategy can help marketers and sales employees collect and manage this consumer data. Analytics programmes use cookies and other data collection techniques to identify trends in site visitors and social media engagement. This information can help marketers identify the company's key audience and develop campaigns that appeal to potential customers.
Related: A Guide to Digital Marketing Analytics: Definition and Types
Improved Asset Management
Along with traditional assets, such as property and equipment, many companies possess digital assets, including videos, audio files, and documents. Utilising digital content to engage potential consumers is a fast and cost-effective marketing tactic. A crucial aspect of a digital strategy revolves around the storage and distribution of this content. Marketers may employ hard drives or cloud storage for content storage. This enables employees to access the latest file formats for sharing with potential customers via the company's website, email campaigns, and social media initiatives.
Related: What Is Digital Asset Management?
Resource Management for Efficient Business Operations
Resource management encompasses the tools and processes that aid a company in managing its resources, such as employees, content, financial assets, and more. For instance, automated tools like instant emails or chatbots on websites enable customer service employees to assist more customers promptly. Additionally, inventory management tools can assist operations employees in saving time by automatically tracking shipments. By empowering employees to optimise their resource utilisation, a robust digital strategy has the potential to result in cost savings for a company.
Related: A Complete Guide To Business Process Automation
Increased Brand Recognition
An effective digital strategy might include a digital marketing plan, which allows me to expand the brand's reach across the internet. Social media posting calendars, scheduled email campaigns, digital resource management and analytics all play a role in building a strong online presence. By increasing brand recognition, I can encourage potential customers to interact with the brand and identify additional revenue streams.
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How to create a digital strategy in 6 steps
If you're a marketing employee or a member of a company's leadership team, you might help to create a digital strategy that unites technology across departments. Here are 6 steps you can take to achieve this goal:
1. Define the purpose of the strategy
A digital strategy can achieve a variety of goals, including increased brand awareness and more efficient use of resources. The leadership team for the company might establish a few key goals to focus on in the first stage of the strategy. That way, they can measure how effective the strategy has been in achieving these goals.
Related: Complete Guide To Setting Strategic Goals (With Examples)
2. Define your brand
Digital branding can make a brand consistent across all platforms and channels so customers can identify the company easily and employees understand the company's values. Most digital strategies include resources that define the key elements of the company's digital brand. Define the reasons customers might choose this brand over competitors. Then, create a style guide that includes the colours, phrases and tone that internal and external content can share.
Related: How To Create a Brand Style Guide in 7 Steps
3. Identify customer channels
Since digital content is available across numerous channels, it can be advantageous to identify the key audience of the company and ascertain which channels are likely to resonate with them. The marketing aspect of a digital strategy frequently involves strategies to engage consumers through various key channels.
For instance, marketers working for a company that produces and sells childcare products might monitor the average age of users on different social media platforms. Subsequently, they can focus their marketing efforts more intensively on platforms that have a significant number of parents within specific age brackets.
Related: 9 Types of Effective Digital Marketing Channels To Consider
4. Create adaptable processes
Consider creating processes whereby managers can regularly review data, update content, and adapt to new technology. If the digital strategy involves multiple departments, you could request that individual department heads establish criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of digital tools. The digital strategy team could also convene regularly to pinpoint new technological tools and digital channels. For instance, if a new social media platform gains popularity among the target consumers of a company's products, the company's marketers may alter the social media strategy to concentrate on the new platform.
5. Create a content strategy
One of the biggest parts of many digital strategies involves publishing digital content for consumers. Building a content strategy to target key audiences can help marketers create and publish content quicker. For example, you might decide to post infographics when you release blog posts and choose how often you want to post on social media.
Related: What Is a Content Strategy? (Plus How To Create One in 5 Steps)
6. Choose which tools to use
Once the team has established the strategy's goals and built key processes to measure the effectiveness of digital campaigns, they can choose the tools they plan to use to enact the strategy. Some companies might use comprehensive digital platforms that allow them to automate tasks across operations, sales and marketing teams, while others might use different programs for each part of the strategy. Consider asking the managers of each team taking part in the strategy to suggest tools that might help their team succeed.
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Tips for implementing a digital strategy
Here are a few ways to increase the effectiveness of a digital strategy:
Explore partnerships: Partnerships with existing digital brands can be a quick way to build credibility online. Choose a partner that aligns with the company's values and brand persona.
Measure continuously: Measure all growth and success metrics that align with stated goals, such as the number of new customers. This can help you identify what parts of the strategy are successful and what parts you might adjust.
Request feedback: Marketing and sales strategies might include regular customer feedback. Consider using automation tools that can send surveys to customers, or use existing tools on social media to get feedback.
