October 2015 -

The Most Effective Digital Strategy

You’ve likely heard marketers talk about the difference between Digital Strategy vs. Digital Marketing Tactics, but a Good Digital Strategy goes much deeper than just knowing the difference.

Digital Strategy is the guidance needed to create a plan of digital marketing tactics across a number of channels that meet the goals set by an organization. This could be generating leads, new customers, more revenue, etc.

The tactics are simply an execution on a digital channel. Posting to Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter, Optimizing a website for the search engines, running paid search or shopping ads and others are all familiar digital marketing tactics.

It is amazing how many business owners and marketers still confuse the two.

That is the easy part.
Creating an effective digital strategy is reliant on gaining deeper insight into a company, who and what it is, why it is, it’s motivations, it’s culture, the goals, etc.
Many companies do not know the answers to these questions and need guidance on how to work through getting to these answers.

This is where it becomes critical for a business owner, executive or marketer to be receptive and open-minded.
It may be necessary to constructively criticize what a stakeholder thinks the business’ vision, identity, goals, customers, etc. are. In many cases assumptions will be made and less than optimal research & communication will take place to acquire this information.

For an in-house team this can be difficult, because in many organizations the norm (everyday team) is viewed as less credible or to be questioned. In-house teams are considered to do as they are told. This becomes a massive problem in creating a successful digital strategy.

Maybe the team really isn’t that strategic and that is OK.

One of the smartest things a company can do is to bring in a 3rd party who is a well respected and seasoned Digital Strategist. They are totally objective and work on creating a sound strategy that is in the best interest of the business. They speak the truth because there is no fear of tarnishing a manager / employee relationship or losing a job.
You can still use your in-house team to work on this, but having that outside specialist will aid in driving more honest and productive feedback from your team.