Does Your Digital Strategy Match Your Business Objectives?

For certain types of businesses that focus on eCommerce, digital marketing strategies are at the heart of their business objectives.

Nevertheless, for many businesses that are older and perhaps more established in traditional markets, then its digital strategy can be a bit of an afterthought. Indeed, for some types of firms it does not exist at all.

Digital Strategy

Where a digital strategy is put in place, it can often be poorly funded and – as a result – poorly maintained. Businesses who might have dipped their toe in the water of social media messages, for example, without keeping on top of how digital followers are responding can often seem to be out of touch with a computer savvy public. And few businesses want to seem behind their competitors.

Even if your business plan is not based around digital growth, a sound digital strategy is essential these days. After all, digital media allows companies to express themselves clearly and relatively cheaply compared with other traditional media outlets, such as television advertising and press releases.

Many marketing strategists know this, but where they tend to go wrong is that their digital marketing strategy is treated as a one-off or special, outside of the rest of the marketing approach. Instead, it should be fully integrated into the plan and – for many businesses – at the centre of it.

Your Business Objectives

In order to reassess your company’s approach to the digital age, it is important to look at all of the possibilities and to try to assess their potential. This does not simply mean what your corporate website should look at, but what your approach to social media is.

• Will your web pages work with tablet and smartphones as well as traditional computers?
• Should you have an open approach to customer comments and allow them to be shown – even when they are negative?

Developing your Digital Strategy

All of these questions need to be answered before you can develop any kind of plan for your digital strategy. How you answer them will inevitably relate to your brand ethos and your business mission statement. However, the answers you come up with have a cost implication that you need to consider as well.

If you opt for an open digital strategy with social media, perhaps launching a corporate Facebook page for instance, then it will need regular updates to be produced and managed – otherwise it will simply wither and die.

Remember that the online world moves fast. You need to check that your digital strategy matches business objectives more than once and to set aside time to check you are still on track year after year.

We are always happy to answer any questions. Contact the team by phone on (01) 808 1301, or email us at info@emarkable.ie