According to the Completo marketing group, 87% of company executives and marketers who think they have a digital strategy are actually wrong. In most cases, digital strategy is not what it really is.
This is what digital marketing does, in most cases.
Where do dummies come from?
1. Consulting option
You have ordered a digital strategy from a third-party agency. You made an expensive and attractive presentation, painted each point step by step, drew conclusions, and the golden mountains of future profits.
Such strategies are good on paper and need to amuse the owner's ego. But in reality, they do not work. The main rule is that whoever makes a strategy implements it. Let it be a team of specialists or an agency involved, but you will understand who to ask for the result.
2. Fast and inexpensive
A variant for a hurry. What is there to meet and analyze? Any full-cycle middle-range agency can make you a strategy based only on web analytics and your wishes. At the output, we get a tablet with channel planning and approximate figures for traffic and sales.
Such a plaque is definitely needed, but it is definitely not a digital strategy.
3. Creative product strategy
"You need to change the name, positioning, and advertising slogan" - sometimes instead of a digital strategy you are given a creative concept for product packaging. It can be good and it can even shoot at the beginning. Only such a strategy is just the tip of the iceberg, which does not concern the main "boring" processes in a company: communication with customers, collecting feedback, building a customer's path, and so on.
4. A strategy for the channel growth of internet sales
And here's another substitute for a full-fledged digital strategy. It is based on one point of contact with the client - your website. This is a small fraction of the "black holes" that a global analysis of the situation can shed light on. If you don't start digging deeper, you will be beaten by competitors in six months.
5. Strategy as a set of unrealistic goals
Sometimes strategies are "masterful" based on the owner's wishes. "The boss wants us to be number 1 on the market." "The boss wants us to sell twice as many goods." It's not clear where these goals come from. He may have dreamt about them. A list of company goals is drawn up based on these wishes. Such a strategic plan is doomed to failure because it is based on absolutely nothing and does not take into account the real situation.
6. Strategy from Superman Single
You have one marketer in your team. If he were seven eggheads in the forehead, he is unlikely to give you a good strategy, let alone implement it. You need at least 3 specialists and 1 manager to create a complete digital strategy. One person cannot turn down the mountains and move the business from the dead end.
7. No connection to the sales department
The digital strategy must integrate all business processes of the company. If you have marketing separately and sales separately, nothing good will come of it. You will have to act as an arbitrator between the ever conflicting departments. The strategy will only live in conjunction with the CRM system and sales department plans.
8. Strategy without a plan
The marketer has painted you a picture of the ideal future: traffic is going off the charts, sales have reached their historic peak, satisfied customers are running to write their own praises, and you are in chocolate. Only how to achieve this is unclear, as you do not have a tactical plan to achieve these figures. This is not a strategy, but an oil painting.
Even if my strategy is not a strategy at all, but something else," you argue, "it does not interfere with my business. The marketer regularly reports on traffic, while the sales department reports on transactions. This is quite enough because business takes its course.
But suddenly, without any visible traffic changes, the sales curve drops down.
- What is it? - Are you asking the marketer?
- I don't know, because the traffic has remained at the same level.
- What is it?? - you are shouting at the sales staff shivering for fear.
- We do not know. No calls. And all the applications are dead.
7 steps for building a digital strategy in the company
1. Business audit and market analysis
Goods (what we sell).
Target audience: who these people are, audience segmentation, pain. Displayed through interviews with local buyers, online surveys.
Company turnover: what is the composition of the company.
Sales system: we conduct interviews with sellers.
Price policy: what the price is made of.
Dealers: the interaction system.
Competitors: analysis of presence on the Internet, field trip.
"Substitutes": what can replace your product: other categories, competitors.
Advertising: studying the channels used and available.
Demand: current and potential.
2. Attracting an audience
Traffic growth: where will we grow?
Catalog on the website: systematization and structure.
Omnipotence: a bunch of advertising channels among themselves.
Gradation of demand: formed, unformulated, competitive, adjacent, etc.
Recognisability is important for the audience, if so, we create triggers to increase recognisability.
Feedback and complaints: establish a processing system and use it in marketing and sales.
Product video (not just youtube).
Cross-marketing: cross-pollination of audiences from different channels, attracting partner audiences.
3. Contact points
Role of the site: what information we broadcast and what we will measure: traffic, references, and sales.
Client's path: before visiting the site - during the visit - after the visit.
The functionality of the site.
Structure of site pages and distribution by the audience: how the site works out the path of the client.
Each page of the site must be equated to a landing page. We do it in stages.
Mobile version of the site. Do I need an application?
Dealer sites/applications: do I need it?
Scheme of traffic redistribution between pages: a map of site visits.
Conversion of traffic into sales.
4. Audience retention
E-mail marketing: regular mailing, trigger chains of letters, segmentation of the base.
SMM: a comprehensive approach.
Content marketing.
Personal accounts on the site for different user groups.
CRM-marketing.
Sales scripts for the sales department.
Retargeting: return a customer who has forgotten about you.
Loyalty system in conjunction with digital.
5. Analytics and end-to-end analytics on the website
KPI: workflow-table.
Google-analytics reports Yandex Metrics.
Automated, clear reporting with regular intervals.
Cross-cutting analytics: integration "advertising campaign - site - CRM".
Calltracking: call analytics.
6. Marketing and sales automation
Integration of all company systems: calltracking+CRM+1C+logistics, etc.
Automation at all business stages and creation of necessary products: personal offices, applications, services for call center, etc.
Automation of specialists' work.
7. A prognostic model for achieving results
Clear model parameters.
Forecast payback period (ROI).
Periodic reconciliation with the model.
When customers ask us for advice on how to grow from 20,000 visits per month to 100,000, for example, we shrug ironically. Will digital strategy help in this? Maybe it will, or maybe it won't. We need it a little bit for another.
The digital strategy will give you an accurate understanding of all the processes within the company and the direction of growth. Maybe you don't need the growth of internet traffic now, it will be too expensive, but you need to work better with what you have: develop a dealer network or work with the sales department, increasing the profitability of customers before the deal.
There are many ways to grow, but you won't know which one is right until you have a digital strategy.
Examples of a successful digital strategy? Hmmmm...
It is almost impossible to share the case of a successful digital strategy. Then this article would be such a long long corridor with a huge amount of data that it is unlikely that anyone would read it through. Still, we chose three companies with which we had a very impressive record of working for a long time. Please note: the content of the work is different everywhere. The audit of the current situation has revealed its growth points for each particular company.
Let's sum it up:
Most of the implemented digital strategies are dummies. They nominally exist but do not work for business purposes in any way.
Two starting points are important for creating a full-fledged digital strategy: business objectives and a budget for the digital transformation of the company.
There is no universal recipe for growth. But if you want to know where to go next and how to get around your competitors, then a digital strategy is a must for the company.
A good digital strategy is long and expensive. If you don't have the time or if you are short of budget, then start with channel planning. This is not a strategy, of course, but it is something already.
The results of the digital strategy can be seen after several years of its planned implementation. If you want the result in 2-3 months, then launch targeted advertising and deliver the KPI to sellers.