The development of a plan of action that expands an organization’s goals — including but not limited to mission, vision, sales, and communication through leveraging the benefits of digital initiatives. A digital strategy may address brand, user experience, social channels, mobile, and content — specifically targeted to achieve the objectives of the plan set forth.
Much like developing a website, a digital strategy requires detailed understanding of a business to assess its goals — plus planning, creation, launch, platforms, engagement, and data analysis. Each of these are ultimately required to nurture customer trust and advocacy. Let’s take a look at these seven subjects to get a better understanding of why digital strategy is so important to healthy brand development.
We can’t stress enough the importance of thoroughly analyzing a company in order to create a digital strategy. Our goal at noptim is to fully understand every aspect of your business. We do this by breaking the big picture down into smaller parts to get a grasp of who you are, who you want to be, short- and long-term goals, business processes, capabilities, distribution, internal technologies, prior campaigns, and organic rankings — just to name a few. After all, without knowing these things, how can we develop a plan to take you to the next level?
With a firm grasp of your corporate goals, planning begins by looking at available technologies and products that may be beneficial. Next, we’ll cross reference with your current inhouse and web applications to verify if integrations make sense. We’ll map the benefits of each technology and determine how they can help achieve business goals. Finally, we’ll present the ideas and benefits to make sure the plan has potential to progress your business forward.
Like developing a website, creating a digital strategy whereby we connect technologies to collect data for automation takes time and creativity. From writing ads and designing landing pages to integrating platforms — each component needs to be carefully orchestrated and prepared for launch. The importance rests on the strategy’s ability to funnel potential customers from an awareness stage to advocacy and long-term customer value.
Launch is going to look different for every strategy as business goals and intent are dependent on information collected in the analysis stage. From simple PPC to connecting Salesforce for collecting leads on orders or potential, intent should be captured for future marketing opportunities. Remember that launch is just the beginning — you should expect noptim to recommended changes as new technology products are introduced and the plan develops and matures over time.
The word “technologies” has popped up multiple times — we use that term in regard to platforms. As technology gets better so too do marketing platforms that integrate your website with business processes, analytic tools, and remarketing abilities. Simply put, finding the right product to achieve your business goals and integrating properly to maximize benefits is our job and responsibility.
Developing creative, strategic, and meaningful content to engage potential customers drives traffic. Engagement is the most important piece of beginning a process to move a stranger from visitor to promoter. That all important decision to “click” may be the first step in the relationship process to build customer long term value.
When considering potential and existing customers — understanding them, what they like, and their buying habits can help with offering the best possible products and services. A simple example would be tracking how visitors react to a landing page from paid ads. Do they bounce, do they engage, do they visit other pages or convert — each of those may have an effect on how the page could be modified to perform better. Applications like this throughout a digital strategy are what help dial in targeted objectives.
At noptim, we would never claim to know it all — in fact, we’re learning every day. As new technologies emerge it is important to stay on top of the influx of information available. Our commitment to our clients is to continue to learn and apply practices that make sense to achieve their goals.