Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
Strategic planning
It is worth taking some time to consider what strategic planning is and what it can help the organization achieve when implemented successfully. Strategic planning is a process that enables an organization’s leaders to define their vision for the future and identify key business goals and objectives.
A well-planned strategy also outlines the tactics, or specific actions, that need to be taken to achieve these goals. Knowing which tactics to incorporate when executing a digital marketing strategy is crucial. Each tactic needs to be evaluated and prioritized based on performance and its effectiveness.
Strategic challenges
The challenge for digital marketing strategists, however, is the sheer scope, scale, and ever-evolving nature of the industry, which can at times hinder a strategy’s progress. Often, digital marketers disregard the huge benefits of longer-term planning by focusing more on short-term optimization. This can lead to missed opportunities to better target, message, and optimize, with the aim of increasing customer retention.
As a strategist, you may sometimes find it overwhelming to think about the scope of your plan or strategy. Breaking tasks down into manageable, achievable parts can help to overcome this challenge, by making the plan seem less daunting plan. Breaking down your plan into more manageable sizes can also help you decide on the appropriate allocation of resources.
What not to do
Strategic planning is just as much about deciding what not to do, as well as what to do. This often means carefully considering a range of tactics and weighing up the resources at your disposal to implement your strategy successfully. It means making difficult choices and leaving some exciting opportunities out, in favor of those you believe will deliver better business outcomes or objectives.
Scope of a digital marketing strategy
Typically, the scope of a digital strategy is dictated by your marketing or business objectives. Your objectives and targets, combined with the resources available, will dictate the duration, resourcing, and organization of your digital strategy.
The scope of your strategy and expectations will differ between enterprise-level organizations and small or medium sized businesses or SMBs, so it’s important to match the scope with the size and composition of your organization.
For example, there is a substantial difference in scale and scope between a digital strategy to launch a regional anti-drink-driving campaign in the lead up to the holiday season versus one to launch a new route network by an airline in South-East Asia.
The same best practices apply when developing and executing a digital strategy. Regardless of the scope and size of the project, changing factors will always include timelines, resourcing, and targets.
The success of a digital strategy also depends on collaboration between multiple departments within an organization. You must therefore communicate early with colleagues in marketing, data analytics, brand, and finance, to generate and sustain support for the proposed strategy. Their feedback will shape the next steps of the planning phase.
It’s also important to define who owns the digital strategy and who is driving it, in order to facilitate questions on direction and implementation, and for transparency.
Benefits of implementing a digital strategy
There are multiple benefits of implementing a digital strategy.
These include:
- Less resource wastage, with regard to human effort, and budget
- Prioritization of the most valuable objectives by focusing on high-impact actions
- Increased ability to get required resources in order to deliver on your plan
- Prediction of future problems and opportunities that may emerge from research or data
- Breaking down of silos due to increased cooperation and aligned activity across the business
- Transparency of processes, which enables you to avoid action duplication and to drive efficiency
Clark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
Bill Phillips
Bill is an international facilitator, trainer, and team coach. He has successfully coached CEOs, board members, directors, executive teams, and team leaders in public and private companies, NGOs, and UN organizations in 15 countries across four continents. He is also the creator of Future-basing®, a highly potent process for building strategy, vision, and cooperation.
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Critically analyse target audiences and objectives to recommend digital channels
- Synthesise information to develop an action plan and digital marketing strategy
- Evaluate the process of planning and formulating a digital strategy
