10 Key Elements To Consider When Launching A Scalable Digital Strategy For Your Business
When it comes to effective digital marketing, intent in each marketing activity is everything. Today, Google focuses more on intent than on search queries and keywords. Mapping out each marketing activity to be fueled by intent, starts with mapping out a clear digital strategy.
Every business must have a digital strategy if they hope to scale and stay relevant in their marketplace.
But what is it, exactly?
… it is an action plan that leverages digital media to promote a company, product, or service. Indeed, the appearance of the web has opened the way to completely new ways of communicating, through websites, search engines, mobile applications, or even social networks …
Tools that are at the heart of any modern marketing strategy.
However, many companies still neglect certain aspects of their digital strategy.
Why Implement a Digital Strategy?
To gain visibility and increase sales, businesses simply cannot do without the Internet. Consumption habits have changed significantly in recent years. The buyer of the 21st century learns about the web, consults customer reviews, he gains expertise… In this context, being invisible on the web amounts to be simply invisible.
Recently, the Covid-19 crisis has only confirmed the essential nature of new technologies. While traditional commerce was put on hold, it is on the Internet that companies have been able to continue their activity as best they can.
Now all that remains is to create a solid digital strategy, which will allow you to stand out on the web and find new customers… And that is by no means obvious! Here are 10 essential elements to take into account before you start.
1. Take Stock of Your Situation
Before setting up a large-scale project, it is always good to take the time to think it over. Take stock of your business, its identity, and your reasons for going digital.
This internal analysis should allow you to make an overview of your strengths and weaknesses.
- Does your product have a distinctive feature that stands it apart from others?
- What’s the image you convey to your customers? Are you perceived as an authority/expert?
- What web-related skills do you have internally?
This simple little inventory will help you lay the foundations of your digital strategy.
2. Analyze Your Market
After the internal analysis, the place for the external analysis. Study your market to learn more about current trends.
- Is your customers’ way of consuming changing?
- Is the role of the web growing in your field of activity?
- What are the trendy digital tools?
This study also includes competitive intelligence work.
- Who are your competitors?
- How is their digital strategy built?
- What is their strategy?
This watch is essential because it will allow you to develop an action plan to differentiate yourself from others.
3. Define The Objectives To Be Achieved
The question is simple (but the answer can be complicated):
- What do you want to achieve by increasing your web presence?
- What do you expect from a head digital strategy?
Without clear objectives, the implementation of a digital communication strategy makes no sense.
The end goal is to develop your sales, and therefore your turnover thanks to the internet. But there are many ways to achieve this: expand your community on social networks, attract traffic to your site, make sales from an online store…
Your objectives will condition your entire strategy: choose them carefully and define SMART objectives!
4. Determine Your Marketing Positioning
Positioning is one of the great classics of any marketing strategy and this also applies to digital!
The following are questions to evaluate the performance of your digital strategy:
- What’s the one thing that makes your product or service different?
- What benefit does it bring to the customer?
- What is the universe of your company?
Your positioning must be clear, concise, and distinctive vis-à-vis your competitors. Competition is fierce on the web and original positioning is essential to stand out from the crowd.
It must also be in line with all the marketing actions you undertake, for the sake of consistency.
5. Choose Your Performance Indicators
Key performance indicators (called KPIs) are of paramount importance. They allow you to monitor and analyze the results of your marketing actions.
On a website, for example, a tool like Google Analytics will be particularly useful to you.
It measures the traffic generated on your site, its origin, the time spent on your pages, the bounce rate, and many other indicators!
The same goes for social networks, which allow you to track the number of likes, views, or comments on a publication. Either way, these KPIs should be consistent with the goals you set.
6. Develop a Content Strategy
Content marketing has become a strategic element for many companies. Today, content is king and it is the foundation of any digital action plan.
Content always plays a key role, whether it’s on a site, blog, or social media.
Thus, a successful digital transformation cannot be done without the development of a good content strategy.
Knowing your targets and your market will allow you to identify the needs and issues to be addressed in your content.
The objective is above all to inform and help your prospects: the commercial aspect comes only afterward.
Don’t overwhelm your content with promotion!
7. Establish an Editorial Calendar
When it comes to content marketing, consistency is highly important.
On the one hand, a frequently fed blog or Facebook page will allow you to retain your audience and gain notoriety.
On the other hand, regularity is valued by search engines in their referencing criteria.
But to be able to publish stably, it is necessary to follow a very precise roadmap. That’s why you should create an editorial calendar, a formidable planning tool for your digital strategy.
It will allow you to list all the subjects you want to address and intelligently structure the publication of your content.
8. Use Marketing Automation
For your content to be viewed by your prospects, it is necessary to share it with as many people as possible. To do this, social networks, e-mailing, or push notifications are excellent means.
However, manually sending your latest productions to your entire contact base can be very laborious, but this problem is only a distant memory with marketing automation!
This technique allows you:
- Send content automatically and instantly based on scenarios you can create.
- Personalize your messages according to your targets, with advanced lead nurturing campaigns.
- Share your content at the best time therefore, your customers are most likely to read it.
9. Adopt the Logic of Inbound Marketing
Content creation, natural referencing, marketing automation… All of this is part of a global strategy called inbound marketing.
This qualitative approach aims to naturally bring visitors to your site and gradually transform them into customers. The inbound marketing method can be broken down into four steps:
- Attract new visitors to your site, with the help of a good SEO strategy.
- Convert your visitors into qualified leads, simply put, transform your leads into customers.
- Retain your customers over the long term.
- Transform your customers into brand ambassadors and thus attract new prospects.
10. Monitor and Measure Your Performance
Your digital strategy is not fixed: it will evolve to gain efficiency. This is why you must regularly monitor your performance indicators: conversion rate, number of visits, sharing of your publications, etc.
This analytical work will allow you to measure the performance of your current web strategy and make the necessary adjustments, in a logic of continuous improvement.
A digital strategy cannot be improvised!
Even the smallest detail is important and can influence the success of your action plan.
By carefully examining each of these key elements, you will be able to build a solid and cohesive end-to-end strategy.
The good news is, we are ready to clearly map out a revenue-generating strategy so you can easily attract & convert a flood of highly qualified customers for your business.
If you want more information on this, kindly send us a message.
