Digital Strategy Checklist
Consider
this checklist a basic jumping-off point for developing your digital marketing
strategy:
- Define specific marketing goals
that are “tactic-neutral.”
For example, increasing qualified leads, sales, building your brand and
forming relationships. Click-thru rates, search engine rankings, and other
tactic-specific measurements are not the type of goals we mean here.
- Define your target audience. Are you a B2B or B2C company?
Who is your ideal client/customer?
- Pinpoint where your audience
lives online.
For example, what websites are they most likely to visit? Do they frequent
social media sites, and if so, which ones?
- Develop a content strategy. It should be closely related
to your overarching marketing goals and designed to attract or influence
your target audience.
- Consider content production
needs. Include
everything from blog posts and social media updates to sales, promotions
and email marketing. Who will develop this content? Do you have the
resources needed to produce it?
- Know your “real” budget. This is an area that’s often
overlooked for tactics like social media and content production, which
require a lot of time, not just money.
- Give yourself adequate time and
adjust expectations.
There are long-term digital tactics and there are short-term digital
tactics, but all of them require good planning and available resources to
be executed. Dealing with multiple agencies and vendors usually requires
advanced planning.
- Learn from past successes and
failures.
Revisit past marketing initiatives to understand what worked and what
didn’t (and why). Are there any lessons to be incorporated into your
new strategy?
- Learn from your competitors. Pinpoint their strengths and
weaknesses—what are they doing that you aren’t? What can you do better?
- Form strategic digital
alliances.
Build online relationships with trade groups, associations, your peers,
member organizations, or any mutually-beneficial partnership that is
likely to help grow your business.
- Don’t completely forget about
offline marketing.
Ensure there is synergy between both your online and offline marketing
initiatives as the two can help drive each other.
- Leave yourself wiggle room to
adapt. There’s
always going to be new technologies and trends; digital is always changing
and it’s foolish to assume you’ll never need to adjust strategy or
execution. Just don’t be completely distracted by every hot, new
tech start-up that comes along.