Strategy and the Digital Organization

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Strategy And The Digital Organization 

How does strategy serve an organization? 

Strategy is a broad concept that outlines how an organization or a business hopes to reach its goals and objectives. 

It is the theoretical foundation that an organization uses it to help it achieve and maintain market success. In a sense, a strategy entails what a business can and should do, and what the business cannot and should not do. 

A business strategy should contain details on:

• A business’s strengths and capabilities to be leveraged
• Its weaknesses and limitations to defend against 

So, we can summarize a strategy by saying: A business strategy is how an organization plans to succeed in a particular sector, marketplace, or any environment in which it operates. It's important that the organization has this robust plan so that it can decide how it is going to position itself and how it is going to succeed.

Why strategy is important

A strategy ensures that a business’s fate is not left to market conditions and competitive actions. Instead, it states how the business plans to understand the competition and give itself a competitive advantage. 

A strategy also studies the general conditions of the market and the country. It introduces actions and contingencies to:

• Leverage any opportunities arising from these conditions.
• Defend against any threats resulting from the same conditions. 

So in a way, a strategy makes sure that an organization’s fate and performance are deliberate and not just left to chance. 

Levels of strategy

There are four levels of strategy. 

• Corporate-level strategy: This is the top level of strategy. It defines the business’s core ambitions and goals. Other levels of strategy all work to achieve this.
• Business-level strategy: This level looks at how a business can gain competitive advantage in a specific market. For organizations with multiple business units, each will create its strategy under the same corporate strategy umbrella. 
• Functional-level strategy: The strategy here is at a departmental level within the organization. So, it might refer to finance, marketing, or product development, for example. Each function’s strategy supports the business and corporate-level strategies. 
• Operational-level strategy: This level of strategy puts in the processes and structures needed to deliver the goals and objectives. 

What is a digital strategy?

A digital strategy is a business-level plan designed to achieve business goals through digital best practices and execution. Digital strategies apply across all digital channels used by an organization. They are used to outline how creative digital formats can work together to drive towards a single objective or set of objectives.

Understanding an audience and its behaviors is a key component of any digital strategy. A business might then try to encourage new audience behavior that involves its brand, product, or services online.

What is a digital marketing strategy?

A digital marketing strategy is a functional-level strategy that details all digital marketing activities, communications, and channels which work together to drive an overall objective. This enables a business to establish clearly defined success outcomes

This strategy involves a mix of setting goals, executing tactics, and attempting to achieve high level business results. It is also a blueprint for the use of digital. From the start, everyone should be aware of, and committed to, a clear purpose and clearly identified success outcomes.

The digital-first organization

Finally, let’s consider the strategic impact and benefits that the organization can gain by being digital-first: 

• It can accelerate digital transformation by embracing automation, cloud technologies, and platforms to streamline operations.
• It can shift to remote work models, investing in remote infrastructure and technologies to support distributed teams and ensure productivity.
• It can prioritize data-driven decision-making to extract actionable insights from data.
• It can adopt customer-centric strategies to respond to customer expectations and increasing acquisition costs.
• It can focus on flexibility and agility to allow organizations to respond to rapidly shifting market trends.
• It can introduce partnerships and collaborations to increase reach and capitalize on synergies.
• It can increase focus on cybersecurity and risk management to protect digital assets and sensitive information.
• It can easily integrate sustainability and corporate social responsibility into digital strategies in response to consumer expectations.
• It can implement voice-enabled devices and conversational AI technologies to enhance customer engagement.
• It can ensure equality and fairness through a focus on ethical AI practices and governance.