Digital Strategy : An Introduction

Intro

Hello friends, Jordan here shining a light on the importance of digital strategy in marketing and why it shouldn’t be overlooked. I find that this is especially relatable to my time back in the agency days or even now when clients would come looking for a specific activity. Whether it be revenue via Google Ads or sign-ups via a newly developed landing page often the digital strategy piece is missing.

Even now as a new small-business owner I see this happen a lot and that’s clients engaging an agency or freelancer without clear strategic direction in mind from both ends.

So here’s some food for thought as to why digital strategy should be the backbone for your future projects.

Digital strategy defined

Digital strategy in relation to marketing, put simply, is the utilisation of digital marketing technologies and processes to achieve business goals. You can extend this definition outside of the marketing realm to maximise competitive advantage, growth or value within a business. Focusing on just the marketing side’s definition today, the key takeaways here are ‘utilisation of technologies and processes’, as well as ‘business goals’.

Your business goals will steer the course of your strategy and unpack what technologies and processes are and aren’t needed moving forward.

Importance of Digital Strategy

A strategy is a pathway to your business goals. Simple.

No pathway means no direction, and no direction for tactics is the slow inevitable route to failure. You’ve got the Ikea flat pack furniture, but without the instructions you’re worryingly gonna end up with a few spare wooden dowels and screws as well as a really sad looking bookcase.

The spare parts represent the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing tactics and the lopsided bookcase is your marketing.

Without a strategy in place there’s a tendency to miss out on a big chunk of your objective. A well thought out strategy brings you closer to the objective, provides you with a better understanding of them and offers different perspectives of them.

A ‘why’ to overcome the ‘hows’

When you understand your objectives in and out, you can adjust tactics on the fly when faced with a curveball. A real clever bloke once dropped the truth bomb, ‘he who has a why can overcome any how’.

There’s a very real marketing example of this in recent times and that is the iOS14 conundrum.

Digital Marketers scrambled as the number of users on Apple devices dropped from 70% to under 10% after they were given the choice to opt out of being tracked via third-party apps thanks to Apple’s new policies. Retargeting campaigns and audience building was greatly affected by this change and marketing tactics were forced to be revised.

The why in this case is the strategy and direction in place, the how is the iOS update. The smart marketers will pivot, refer back to the strategy and direction of tactics and employ different plans that align. This could’ve been in the form of diversifying ad spend, re-evaluating content strategy or entertaining other platforms or channels.

Those too reliant on their current tactics chose not to fall back on their strategy and objectives and instead pressed ahead towards familiar but less effective efforts resulting in inevitable demise.

Returning to the Ikea metaphor, this example is essentially the same as squeezing in the wrong part in the wrong place. Ultimately, you’ll end up with a wonky bookcase that your partner will be nagging you about. Read the instructions, it’s not worth the headache in the long term.

The more I uncover digital strategy the more doors I’m opening on the subject. Let’s leave it at that for now. Keep your eyes peeled for the sequel - ‘Digital Strategy 2: Electric Boogaloo’.

That’s all from me today folks, have a good one.