Building a Digital Strategy - Planning Investigated

Posted on 20 November 2009

The following post is taken from our whitepaper *Planning and Creating a digital strategy*.

Aims are the foundation of any digital strategy. They should be at the planning stage in a generic form rather than specific form so as not to overload with detail. The detail behind the aims of a digital strategy will be defined by the digital strategy process. Concentrating on specific aims from the outset runs the risk of missing potential opportunities and channels of a digital strategy. Goals normally include increased awareness, building an audience and / or educating that audience, increasing reputation, and ultimately making the conversion. Limitations generally consist of conflict of interest with existing business practices and / or outlets, initial perception (both audience and reputation), and budget. Working with these goals and limitations digital consultants can start to build clear strategies to meet these aims.

Whilst each brand will have its own specific aims and objectives they can normally be aligned to one of these three main groups.

• Consumer awareness and demand creation
• Direct consumer drive to retail and purchase
• Education and incentive within the retail space

Each of these groups will have mirrored activities in the offline space and it is imperative that any existing activities that a brand is doing are covered within the background.

Positioning Aims

Aims can be further clarified by ranking against:

• Focus of aim: Aims can have a very direct and specific focus that can be achieved in few ways or a broad focus that can be achieved in many different ways
• Process: Aims can require the audience to handle few or many steps (e.g. awareness as opposed to conversion)
• Length of engagement: Aims may have a short term turnaround or be long term engagements / relationships

Reference	Aim	Focus	Process	Engagement
A1	Increased awareness of core brand products	Broad	Conversion	Short term
A2	Target audience groups likely to become long term consumers with below the line offline promotion	Direct	Conversion	Medium term;
A3	Capture details of potential consumers for future campaigns	Direct	Conversion	Medium term;
A4	Reaffirm core brand message of luxury and quality	Broad	Awareness	Long term
A5	Develop an audience around the key message to progress from influenced to advocates	Direct	Awareness	Long term
A6	Consolidate current audiences to allow easier message spread	Direct	Awareness	Long term

Background

Digital strategy cannot live in isolation from the existing activities and history of the brand. Before any meaningful digital strategy can be put in place, the brand must be understood inside and out. Misplaced brand identity within a digital strategy will at best lead to a misfiring campaign, at worst it can lead to long term damage for the brand in question.

The message for any digital strategy must be on brand or at least on brand aspirations as defined in the aims. Whilst a subjective viewpoint is all well and good, living and breathing the brand will open up ideas for digital strategy that will take the brand to the next level. The creative stage and the actualisation stage will require a strong knowledge of offline marketing strategy activities. Fully integrated digital and offline strategies are the most successful.

Understanding the background also helps to establish unrealistic aims and stops the digital strategy promising to deliver more than it is capable of doing. For example, a new start-up company without any great seeding budget aiming to become an industry leader within a few weeks of the strategy commencing. This is highly unrealistic however attractive the proposition of the digital campaign. Take for example the current buzz tool Twitter; this was operating for 2-3 years before it reached general public consciousness.

Audience

One of the core propositions of modern digital strategies is the role reversal of the audience from being a non-participatory group into an engaged and lively medium through which further brand advocacy can take place. Working with the brand audience in a positive engagement through digital marketing techniques can enable brand exposure to snowball, but the flipside to this proposition is that negative experience is also broadcasted to a wider sphere. Audience management is a key factor in the actualisation stage; however to work with the brand audience the first step must be to identify and understand each segment of that audience.

The diagram above shows a simplified message path of a single idea within a digital strategy. The idea is initially seeded through both idea creation and advertising (paid and unpaid). It is likely the idea will be picked up initially (but not exclusively), by existing advocates. Through advocates, the message will spread to those that will be influenced by the idea, namely further advocates and influencers within the market space. When conducted correctly, this can result in a snowball effect, in that an influencer aligning with an idea in a strategy can encourage advocates of that particular influencer to become advocates of the idea and strategy in itself.

The company background should be able to provide a snapshot of the audience taken from pervious marketing activities and brand intelligence. Further insight can be taken from analytics tools that should be in place on all current digital activities.

One area of consideration that should be part of audience selection is that the current audience might not be appropriate for the aims of that particular digital strategy. Evaluation of the audience should consider expansion of the brand message into new audience segments where the digital strategy and brand aims require such outreach, and not be hemmed in my previous assumptions.

Persona Building

Persona Building is a traditional way of segmenting the audience into identifiable groups that can be used for marketing activities. The segmentation of audience into persona should not be limited solely to identify groups, but also to rate the specific groups alignment to the stated aims. "Who is my audience", is in part an irrelevant question when factoring against "who in my audience will be best suited to delivering my aims".

Two sample personas can be seen below:

Existing Customers(Audience A)

• Male / Female 25 to 32
• Higher education
• Technically adept, but not advanced (comfortable online)
• An audience in which to increase awareness and to gain conversion from other brands
• Most likely to be in market regardless looking for the best experience at the best budget
• Will most likely have to foot small additional charges by competitors personally
• Most likely channels are LinkedIn, Business and sports sections of broadsheet papers

Female university student aged 18 – 21 (Audience B)

• Higher education
• Single or in a relationship
• Technically adept, but not advanced comfortable online)
• An audience in which to increase awareness
• Although they are not presently particularly affluent, there is a high chance that they will develop into an independently wealthy and affluent market – they will need a long term relationship built
• Most likely channels are Facebook, MySpace, Google, Fashion Sites and Student Union sites

Finding your audience

One of the benefits of digital strategy is the opportunity to segment activity into different spheres and locations directly targeted to where the audience, or more specifically, the personas that match the digital strategy aim reside. Targeting activities in this way can be used to reduce cost whilst increasing efficiency and message for each of the channels that are based in these locations.

Demographic Segmentation location sourcing

From each of the personas defined it is possible to apply demographic filters to major locations where digital strategy activities can take place – e.g. Social networking sites, blogs, search engines or forums. Often locations are applicable to multiple personas and demographics (e.g. Facebook, which is almost ubiquitous across western consumer audiences).

By looking at the personas, locations suggest themselves. Most locations are happy to provide anonymous statistics of their audience to help promote digital marketing through the channels.

By segmenting personas across interests, niche locations can be identified. Depending upon fiscal return for each aim targeting locations that contain small audience numbers and low barrier to entry can be a viable digital strategy leading to high returns. Location sourcing across interest involves a degree of research using either freely available tools (e.g. Google search), or paid for tools (e.g. Brandwatch).

Certain networks (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn), provide a combination of demographic and interest segmentation that allows for highly personalised campaigns to be developed. Other tools such as Phorm have entered the market that also allow a great degree of segmentation, however these have yet to prove popular with audiences who consider these to be a somewhat big brother approach.

Location Evaluation

To scope the remit of any creative, locations should be evaluated against audience size, barriers to entry and potential for conversion of the digital strategy aims. This will avoid the scenario whereby creative ideas are developed and rated for locations that will not benefit digital strategy. Locations can be evaluated in-line with the following table:

Location	Audience Size	Barrier to Entry	Estimated Uptake	Aims Matched	Audiences
Location A	10,000	Low	Medium	A1, A2, A5, A6	A, B
Location B	1,500	Low	High	A2, A3	B
Location C	50,000	Medium	Medium	A4, A6	A
Location D	50,000	High	Low	A1, A2, A3, A5, A6	A, B

In the above example, although Location D matches most of the aims, it may prove more cost effective and provide better return to concentrate efforts in locations A, B and C.

For example, location D may be the online business section of a national paper, and targeted display ads will hit most of the aims of the digital campaign. However, the cost to advertise (barrier to entry), is restrictive. The other locations may be social networking sites or in the instance of location B, a niche targeted forum. When efforts are spread across three locations rather than just the one the cost barriers are greatly reduced.

Planning Conclusion

At the end of the planning stage of a digital strategy, the below should be clear to all concerned:

• The desired aims of the digital strategy
• The audiences each of the aims are targeted at in order to achieve the best results
• Where to find each of the audiences to achieve the goals

This allows all creativity to be focused directly on achieving the best returns across the digital strategy.

To view the full whitepaper please see the post *Planning and Creating a digital strategy*.
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