Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
Strategic control
You can use strategic control processes to evaluate a digital marketing strategy and ensure it’s moving in the right direction. Strategic control essentially involves monitoring a strategy’s progress and execution, and then making actionable adjustments to the strategy as required. The purpose of strategic control is to guide a business toward achieving its long-term goals and objectives.
You can think of goals as being a forecast of expected results. You expect to hit your goals, so by setting goals you’re forecasting a result.
Using comparative analysis techniques
With strategic control, the first and most obvious step is to identify the most suitable metrics and KPIs for measuring your strategy performance. After that, you can use comparative analysis techniques to draw further insights and make decisions about your strategy.
When making comparisons, be sure to compare current performance against any goals, forecasts, or projections you made before launching the strategy. By comparing the current data against your forecasted data, you can see if you’re on track to meet your goals, or indeed if you’re ahead or behind target.
Drilling down into performance
As well as reviewing your high-level performance, you can drill down into individual elements of your strategy to determine which specific aspects are performing well and which are less effective. Armed with this information, you may decide to do more of what’s working for you and to pull back on ineffective activities.
To drill down into your performance, consider your best- and worst-performing:
- Locations
- Channels
- Audience targets
- Ads and messaging, including social posts
- Devices
- On-site content
Tweaking your strategy
This exercise will generate valuable and fresh new data. When you review this data, you may wish to tweak your strategy and alter your tactics. These tactical tweaks can range from simple actions such as increasing or decreasing budget on channels or markets, to more iterative changes such as tweaking campaign wording, images, or content.
Consider the impact that these changes may have on different teams and departments in the business. There are likely to be multiple dependencies in your project plan for most activities, so a change of strategy can have a ripple effect throughout the organization.
For example, if you find that your creative assets are not performing as expected on social media, you might require a new set of images and videos. Alternatively, you may decide to shift budget from social media to search marketing. These changes may require you to communicate with one senior manager only or with the whole team. They may also require additional budget. Assess the significance of your changes, then clearly communicate them to all affected parties as early as possible.
On target or ahead of target
If you’re on target or ahead of target, the channels, markets, audiences, and messaging that are outperforming expectations should be clearly evident. In these situations, you simply need to increase focus and budget on your best-performing campaign elements in order to meet or even exceed your goals. In other words, “back your winners!”
Behind target
If you’re behind target, it’s even more important to take action urgently. You must determine where exactly the performance gap is!
When reviewing the data, look for laggards and outliers in terms of performance. Compare your laggards and outliers with what’s working well in the strategy. By analyzing the positive and negative aspects of the strategy, you can work out how to refocus your budget and resources to get back on track.
Bear in mind that external markets might be impacting your performance. If that’s the case, you’ll need to reforecast with those market forces in mind and set more realistic goals.
Managing performance
Regardless of how your strategy tactics are performing, you’ll need to take action to manage performance – whether that action is designed to get you back on track or to meet and exceed goals.
Digital strategists don’t simply set a digital strategy and then forget about it. On the contrary, digital strategy requires your ongoing focus and attention. By using KPIs to measure performance and identifying the top-performing and laggard elements of your campaigns, you can continuously adapt your strategy to meet your objectives and increase your chance of success.
Back to TopClark 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.
Will Francis
Will Francis is a recognized authority in digital and social media, who has worked with some of the world’s most loved brands. He is the host and technical producer of the DMI podcast, Ahead of the Game and a lecturer and subject matter expert with the DMI. He appears in the media and at conferences whilst offering his own expert-led digital marketing courses where he shares his experience gained working within a social network, a global ad agency, and more recently his own digital agency.
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Evaluate contemporary models and approaches for enabling digital strategy execution
- Appraise how digital strategy and marketing activities can support wider business strategy and drive growth
