When Evolution Point starts a relationship with a new client, we execute a simple brand discovery exercise. One of the reasons for this exercise is to recognize where the client is in their digital marketing strategy and efforts. Often, we find that they don’t have a formalized digital marketing strategy. Why do every company need a clear digital marketing strategy and direction? The reasons are many –
You want a clear path to success. I find that companies without a digital strategy (and many that do) don’t have clear strategic goals for what they want to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones. And if you don’t have goals you likely don’t put enough resources to reach the goals and you don’t evaluate through analytics whether you’re achieving those goals.
You want to increase your online market share. Customer demand for online services may be underestimated if you haven”t researched this. Perhaps more importantly you won’t understand your online marketplace: the dynamics will be different to traditional channels with different types of customer profile and behaviour, competitors, propositions and options for marketing communications. See online marketplace methodology post.
You want to compete effectively. If you’re not devoting enough resources to digital marketing or you’re using an ad-hoc approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will beat you without much effort.
You want a powerful online value proposition. A clearly defined online customer value proposition will help you differentiate your online service encouraging existing and new customers to engage initially and stay loyal.
You want to know your online customers. It’s often said that digital is the “most measureable medium ever”. But Google Analytics and similar will only tell you volumes not sentiment. You need to use other forms of website user feedback tools to identify your weakpoints and then address them. Knowing your online customers also helps you know what is your customers’ needs are and allow you to respond to their needs.
Your marketing strategy is not integrated enough on all channels. It’s all too common for digital to be completed in silos whether that’s a specialist digital marketer, sitting in IT or a separate digital agency. It’s easier that way to package digital marketing into a convenient chunk. But of course it’s less effective. Everyone agrees that digital media work best when integrated with traditional media and response channels.
Your marketing strategy does not have enough emphasis on the digital strategy. Insufficient resource will be devoted to both planning and executing e-marketing and there is likely to be a lack of specific specialist e-marketing skills which will make it difficult to respond to competitive threats effectively.
You don’t want to waste resources. Even if you do have sufficient resource it may be wasted. This is particularly the case in larger companies where you see different parts of the marketing organization purchasing different tools or using different agencies for performing similar online marketing tasks.
You want to stay agile enough to be ahead of the game. If you look at the top online brands like Amazon, Dell, Google, Tesco, Zappos, they’re all dynamic – trialing new approaches to gain or keep their online audiences.
You recognize the importance of search optimization and page rankings. Every company with a website will have analytics, but many senior managers don’t ensure that their teams make or have the time to review and act on them. Once a strategy enables you to get the basics right, then you can strive for continuous improvement of key aspects like search marketing, site user experience, email and social media marketing.
If any one of these reasons describe you, contact Evolution Point and discover how we can assist you with your marketing success.