Developing a great digital marketing strategy

If you have been reading the articles,or propaganda, on Internet marketing and social media you might think that if you don’t jump into digital marketing that your brand is going to perish.  That is not necessarily the case as any great marketing initiative starts with strategy development that seeks to answer the “why” and the “how” before spending money and doing something just because everyone else is doing it.  Here are some strategic questions that every company needs to answer when developing a great digital marketing strategy.

1ne:  What do we know about our current customers and prospects ?

This is probably the most important framework for a great digital marketing brand experience.  Brands need to understand how consumers make the decision to convert to customers and more importantly where that decision is made.  For example, is someone really going to go online and research Oreo cookies or is a POP display and shelf position more effective in driving conversion ?  You need to not only know what customers and prospects think but you also need to align your organization to leverage insights and act on them a lot quicker.

2wo: How many resources should we put into social media ?

This by far is the biggest mistakes a lot of brands are making as facebook has brainwashed a lot of people.  Ask yourself this; are people coming to our facebook page to determine if they want to be customers ?  Is our facebook page to be used to announce new products and will consumers who become a fan of our brand actually read our posts or is our current facebook page for existing customers ?    A new study from Omnicom’s OMD concludes that the average content posting by an advertiser on a Facebook page has a surprisingly low shelf life: about 18 hours.Shelf life is defined as the length of time that users provide feedback after content is posted, and for Facebook it appears to be far less time than other media platforms, said Colin Sutton, U.S. director of OMD Word, who runs the agency’s social media practice and oversaw the study. Remember that only 16% of your posts are going to be seen by your brand fans.

3hree: Do we have the resources to develop a great brand website ?

Brand websites lead to conversion more than anything you do on social media short of announcing a major promotional effort like pizza delivery chains.   Too many brand websites look more like giant billboards than product websites.  Do you know why people are coming to your site and what they want when they get there ?  Have you done usability testing or is your agency providing you with sites that look great but aren’t functional for consumers ?

4our: Content is king but only the right content

More people are using tablets than ever before and a good rule of thumb is that your content should never exceed to finger swipes to read.  There is a direct correlation between the length of content and people who don’t read the whole page.  Keep is simple and to the point and for God’s sake can the sales and marketing talk and treat visitors with respect.  You also need a media plan to keep your site updated and to keep visitors coming back and engaging with the brand.

5ive: Finally, do we have great emarketing talent and someone who can look at our web analytics and turn the data into actionable insights ?

A great emarketing person is part geek, has a great marketing background and has demonstrated real value with digital marketing leading to brand objectives.  Web producers are people who produce even if they know what they are doing is not in consumers’ best interests.   Anyone that sends you numbers like number of visitors, time  on site etc. is not doing their job.  What senior managers need to know is where are our visitors coming from and why and where are they going on our site ?  What is our bounce rate and bounce rate for keywords ?  Numbers don’t mean a hell of lot without insights and actionable recommendations.