The whole world is now on the Internet, and so are the brands. The environment is therefore very competitive in all sectors of activity, so to stand out and attract prospects to your brand and your products, it is necessary to establish an effective and coherent digital strategy. But what is a digital strategy, and how to implement it effectively for your brand?
So, what is a digital strategy?
You want to (re)work on your brand's online presence, but don't know where to start? It's very simple: you need a well thought-out digital strategy adapted to your brand and its objectives. So what is a digital strategy?
Definition
The digital strategy gathers all the communication and marketing actions carried out on the digital media of a brand or a company. Or more simply: it is everything you put in place on the Internet for your brand.
It adapts to the company's marketing and communication strategies to complement them and help achieve the general objectives you have set.
Objectives
The ultimate goal of any strategy is going to be to sell your company's product or service.
However, you will need to set intermediate goals, such as improving your brand image, increasing your reach, or increasing your engagement. These are the types of goals that you will be able to measure most easily and influence most effectively to help your products sell.
This is also how you will be able to measure the effectiveness of your actions and adapt and refine your digital strategy in real time.
Who is it for?
The digital strategy is for everyone who has a product or a service to sell.
Whether it's a brand with hundreds of employees, or handmade products sold by a freelancer. Everyone can benefit from a well thought out digital strategy to expand their audience and support their sales.
Where to find it?
The digital strategy concerns all digital communication tools:
- Social networks
- Website
- Mailing
- Mobile application
- Search engine (SEO and SEA)
How to implement a digital strategy?
Now that we have redefined the term digital strategy, it is time to focus on its implementation.
Indeed, implementing a digital strategy for your brand will require a few steps.
First, look at your pre-existing strategies: marketing strategy, communication strategy, general brand strategy. Your digital strategy should be an extension of these and work in the same direction.
Then, you will have to define, among other things, the following elements
Choose your objectives
For your strategy to be effective, it is important that you define concrete, measurable and attainable objectives.
Some examples of objectives for your brand:
- Improve your brand image
- Increasing brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Improve loyalty
Once you have defined and prioritized your objectives, you can easily lay out the rest of your strategy: how to reach the objectives, with which tools, with which budget, etc.
Establish your targets
It is crucial that you define your targets precisely.
Normally, the marketing strategy of your brand should already contain this information, because this is the heart of the matter: studying and defining the market on which to sell your products. So, take the previously defined targets and make persona sheets.
The persona is the representation of your prospects. Usually, we draw a portrait of a fictitious person who will group together the characteristics of each type of prospect: gender, job, socio-professional category, location, income, interests, etc.
The clearer and more precise your personas are, the easier it will be to attract them by activating the right levers and using the right tools. You will know what to say to them, how to talk to them, and above all, how to make them want to buy your products.
Decide which channels to use
Once you have your targets and objectives in mind, you can then decide on the types of channels to use.
For example: is it a good idea to use Facebook to generate 30-something year old prospects who work in "Marketing Manager" type jobs? It's up to you to do all the research necessary to know why you are using each channel: to talk to whom and for what purpose. You will quickly notice that not all channels are relevant: not for all targets, not for all purposes.
Therefore, it is important that the number of channels you use is in line with your personas and objectives, but you also need to be realistic about your staff and budget. It will always be better to focus your attention and resources on a limited number of channels, rather than having larger eyes than your stomach. In short: choose quality over quantity - unless you have the means to promote both.
You can also define in your digital strategy the positions you intend to recruit, the budget allocated to digital actions, or a retroplanning.
How to follow the statistics of your digital strategy?
Let's now come to the last step in the creation of your digital strategy: how to calculate the impact of each of your actions?
Indeed, it is crucial to establish a statistical follow-up that corresponds to your brand and its objectives. This will allow you to adapt your strategy at any time: you will know very quickly what works or not with your targets, and if it serves your objectives or not.
You can choose to follow some of these statistics for example:
- The opening rate (for your mailings)
- The click rate
- The number of views
- The engagement rate
- The number of subscribers (on your social networks, to your newsletter, etc)
- The position of your site on search engines
Conclusion
Your digital strategy must be well thought out and reflect the ambition of your brand: from the choice of objectives to the choice of statistics to follow, including the choice of content to create.
Calameo will help you set up your digital strategy by offering to host all your content types, enrich them, integrate them into your sites, share them on your social networks, track their statistics... And much more!
Request your free 14-day trial of Calaméo Platinum to test the full scope of our professional digital publishing offer and discover all our tools that are essential to brands and their content marketing strategies.