The Must Do’s of Your Digital Strategy
What is a Digital Strategy?
Digital strategy is the application of digital technologies to business models to form new differentiating business capabilities. In the future. All business strategy will be digital strategy.
It focuses on using technology to improve business performance. Whether that means creating new products or reimagining current processes. It specifies the direction an organization will take to create new competitive advantages with technology. As well as the tactics it will use to achieve these changes. This usually includes changes to business models. As new technology makes it possible for innovative companies to provide services that weren’t previously possible.
Where to Start?
How do you build a digital strategy? Rather than asking, “What’s our digital strategy?”, an article from Harvard Business Review suggests using the five following questions to ground your understanding of digital technology:
- Does digital technology change the businesses you should be in?
- How could digital technology improve the way you add value to the businesses you are in?
- Could digital technology change your target customer?
- Does digital technology affect the value proposition to your target customer?
- How can digital technology enhance the enterprise capabilities that differentiate you from your competition?
Elements of a Digital Strategy
1. Accountability Is Key
Before you get too far along in creating your strategy, it is imperative that you clearly define the roles of everyone set to be a part of the project. Leadership and management roles are especially important to discuss. Everyone must be on the same page regarding tactical decision making in order to be successful.
This will prevent the project from stalling in the event of organizational or leadership changes. By carefully defining roles and responsibilities, your detailed strategy will minimize the impact of these changes down the road. Ensuring everyone is on the same page and establishing strong support for the cause can prove invaluable to keeping an approved strategy moving forward without delay.
2. Defining Your Audiences
Take a moment to consider your target market. Odds are you are trying to reach a variety of consumers with diverse backgrounds, traits, and habits. Because of this, a one-size-fits-all strategic approach will do little to address the motivations driving each unique personality type.
Creating individual personas that describe your audience can help you make important decisions while building your strategy. Personas are an excellent way to identify the key target audiences you wish to attract while revealing specific goals for each one. The more research and effort you invest in defining your audiences, the more refined and effective your strategy will end up being. You should also consider performing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis during this step.
Other Elements:
3. Set Your Calls to Action
As we’ve mentioned in the past, original content is going to play a big role in any well-thought-out digital strategy. But great content will never be enough on its own. It is critical that you always remember the actual reason for building your site – and it isn’t to just fill it with copy.
You must decide what the purpose of your site is, and what the content you’re creating is meant to do. Where are you trying to drive your visitors? What are you wanting them to do? You should be able to answer these questions and then create effective calls to actions to drive them home. You need to put them in a position where they can easily make a purchase, register, call, or donate once they visit your website.
4. Measuring Value
Along with generating powerful CTAs, you must be prepared to consider which KPIs you wish to measure moving forward. Choosing these carefully will allow you to effectually demonstrate the value that your digital strategy is providing to your organization. Both time and energy should be committed to this step. Failure to do so will make attributing successes of future projects much harder than it needs to be.
Although your strategy will need to be tailored to the goals of your business, these components should all be considered while planning. By incorporating them into your game plan, your digital strategy will be off and running in no time.