Digital Marketing Strategy

A practical guide

Weirdly enough, digital marketing strategy in mature companies with multi-million media budgets per month toss the creation of their digital media strategy, or even worse their digital marketing strategy, to their agency in charge. The agency often has a superficial understanding of the business and most often little to no connection to key executing departments in the eCom/broader marketing space: buying, planning, trading, CRO, UX/UI, creative production, offline media buying - to name a few. The agency is also often times not briefed on the overarching business vision and are too far from the short term financial view (the almighty P&L & cash-flow) to understand when to pivot. Or when they are about to get fired.

And I found this practice bizarre as most senior digital marketers are capable - or at least coachable to work an a strategy that articulates the holistic business goals. In fact, this should be responsibility outlined in the job specs. Outlining an approach I have refined over the last few years; it can be adapted to any industry or level of complexity.

STEP 0

Get an intimate understanding of the business strategy for the next 1-5 years. Yes, this means minimally understanding the top and bottom line ambition but most importantly getting familiar with the key levers and projects that will contribute to the respective goals. It’s essential that this picture is framed by the industry headwinds and tailwinds, how competitors are moving in the landscape and key consumer insights that impact the strategy. Plug this in to your digital strategy as the starting point and make sure it is presented to and understood by any external vendors.

STEP 1

Score yourself on the digital maturity benchmark from BCG here. If feasible, score or ask suppliers to score your competitors so you can paint a relative picture of the digital maturity industry. It’s useful to know how good or very good looks like in your own line of business. Broadly speaking, the digital evolutionary process is rather linear: you cannot skip phases 2 and 3 to get to 4. It is also unreasonable to expect to evolve from Nascent to Multimoment in 1 year unless you dispose of endless resources. This calibration is useful as often times it allows you to break down long-term ambitions such as CLTV-based media buying in bite-size pieces that get done.

STEP 2

Review the previous period’s performance and highlight the learnings that are most relevant for further exploration. Don’t fall in the trap of including tens of slides of insights; instead present an overarching picture of performance that include acquisition (new customers, CAC) and retention metrics (RFM, CLTV) and a bullet point list of insights per marketing funnel & key enabler area (team, data, technology & processes) with key action points that can materially improve the picture. Map dependencies so that you can later on connect with your stakeholders to secure buy-in.

STEP 3

is often the step that takes most time as I like to draft the key multi-year ambitions before I break them down for the year in question. It is also the single most important slide of the deck that should encapsulate the entire narrative. I always create a BIG HAIRY GOAL at the top to inspire the team but also excite the business about the digital marketing area. Often a side-thought, core enablers will simply make or break the plan that you want to deliver. Make sure you are sponsored at the most relevant senior level, that you are sufficiently resources and supported by key departments like Technology, Analytics and Creative. If the plan is not bought into by the entire business, it falls to pieces.

STEP 4

This section supports STEP 3: it is a visualization of milestones on a 3-5 years timeline. It duplicates some of the content in the previous section with the added value of drafting key milestiones for each year between year 1 and 5 and highlighting how the different projects follow a logical sequence. This picture will change as the business goals, the industry and the macro-economic climate evolve but is a useful tool to create awareness on how the digital maturity journey will look like in your organization.

STEP 5

Create a cross-channel project roadmap for 12 months that spans across all stages of the marketing funnel and includes core enablers. Because it typically sits with different department(s), CRO/UX/UI is more often than not left out from this picture although it is absolutely essential to the success of both acquisition and retention of customers. Use this framework to connect with other department and define the projects that are impacting the digital marketing area. Make sure you highlight any relevant key business milestones on the timeline at the top to ensure you roadmap aligns to deliver them.

If you work together with an external vendor you will want to work together on this step, making sure you are fully aligned on feasibility of implementation and cross-checking the magnitude & sequencing of the opportunities.

STEP 6

Year after year, I like to reserve a full section for quick wins. These can often be forgotten about as they don’t quite qualify as projects and more often than not are not contributing to the strategic direction. Call them short-term optimizations that can secure a great start early in the year. As a leader, I am violently allergic to micro-management so simply use the quick-wins as a checklist to ensure performance benefits that ensure credibility and perhaps can be used to secure further resources.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The 6 sequences will ensure a harmonious digital marketing strategy that enables, that clearly articulates the overarching company strategy. It will enable you to communicate with ease to senior management and adjacent departments alike, to secure the sponsorship and resources you need to success. It is however not a comprehensive or even sufficient view. The second stage entails further detailing the macro plan in individual marketing channels strategies and roadmaps with their own outside-in and inside-out insights. This will often lead to a second calibration of the cross-channel roadmap new opportunities or call-points emerge. It goes without saying, there is a certain level of flexibility that needs to be retained. Particularly with more and more companies adopting agile ways of working, you will have to take the learnings and adapt where need be.