Module 5

Digital Marketing Strategy

 Digital Marketing Strategy

A digital marketing strategy is a plan that

outlines how your business will achieve
its marketing goals via online channels
like search and social media. 
 Digital Marketing Strategy
A digital marketing strategy is needed to provide consistent
direction for an organization's online marketing activities
so that they integrate with its other marketing activities
and support its overall business objectives. The digital
marketing strategy has many similarities to the typical aims
of traditional marketing strategies, in that it will:

● provide a future direction to digital marketing activities;

● involve analysis of the organization's external environment,
internal resources and capabilities to inform strategy;
● define digital marketing objectives that support marketing
objectives;
● involve selection of strategic options to achieve digital
marketing objectives and create sustainable differential
competitive advantage
Slide 2-*
 Digital Marketing Strategy

● include strategy formulation to address typical

marketing strategy options such as target markets,
positioning and specification of the marketing mix
● help identify which strategies NOT to pursue and
which marketing tactics are not suitable to implement
● specify how resources will be deployed and how
the organization will be structured to achieve the
strategy.
 Digital Marketing Strategy
Multichannel marketing strategy- Defines how different marketing
channels should integrate and support each other in terms of their
proposition development and communications based on their
relative merits for the customer and the company.

In today’s modern marketing era, there are many channels a

business can take advantage of in order to reach potential
customers. These channels include:
Retail storefronts
Online advertising
Website (including content marketing/blogging)
Direct mail
Email marketing
Mobile marketing
The Need for an Integrated Digital Marketing
Strategy

The scope of digital marketing is widening and

becoming increasingly pervasive, yet the integration of
a digital marketing strategy into business and
marketing strategies often represents a significant
challenge for many organization.

Ultimately, it is important for organizations to

integrate all of their strategic plans and it is important
to understand clearly how and where the digital
marketing strategy fits into the organization's overall
business plan.
 The Need for an Integrated
Digital Marketing Strategy

The figure suggests that a digital marketing plan may

be useful to improve the planning and execution of e-
campaign components, which refers to online
communications tools such as online advertising or
email marketing and continuous or ‘always-on’ digital
marketing activities which may be conducted
throughout the year to achieve awareness or
engagement on a website or social media presence –
e.g. affiliate, search engine or social media marketing
 The Need for an Integrated
Digital Marketing Strategy
Failure to plan how to manage digital channels can lead to a number of
problems:
●Customer demand for online services will be underestimated if this has
not been researched and it is under-resourced, and no or unrealistic
objectives are set to achieve online marketing share.
● Existing and startup competitors will gain market share if insufficient
resources are devoted to digital marketing and no clear strategies are
defined.
● Duplication of resources can occur, e.g. different parts of the marketing
organization purchasing different tools or different agencies for performing
similar online marketing tasks.
●Insufficient resources will be devoted to planning and executing e-
marketing and there is likely to be a lack of specific specialist e-marketing
skills, making it difficult to respond to competitive threats effectively.
● Insufficient customer data are collected online as part of relationship
building and these data are not integrated well with existing systems
The Need for an Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy

●Efficiencies available through online marketing will be missed, e.g. lower

communications costs and enhanced conversion rates in customer
acquisition and retention campaigns.
●Opportunities for applying online marketing tools, such as search
marketing or email marketing, will be missed or the execution may be
inefficient if the wrong resources are used or marketers don’t have the right
tools.
● Changes required to internal IT systems by different groups will not be
prioritized accordingly.
●The results of online marketing are not tracked adequately on a detailed
or high-level basis.
●Senior management support of e-marketing is inadequate to drive what
often needs to be a major strategic initiative.
 How to create a digital marketing plan
1)Define your digital marketing goals and business
objectives
Clear, measurable, and attainable digital
marketing plan objectives help you define
exactly what you want to achieve and
measure. When setting these goals, be as
concrete as possible. Include specific numbers
and timeframes that can serve as benchmarks
for your progress.
 How to create a digital marketing plan

A much better goal is to double organic search

traffic in the next 12 months. This provides you
with a deadline, a framework for setting
milestone goals, and specific actions to take
(optimize your site, create amazing content,
and conduct strategic outreach for SEO, etc.).
 How to create a digital marketing plan

Smart goals (Specific, Measurable,

Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) give
you clarity on the actions you need to
take to achieve those things.
 How to create a digital marketing plan
2)Situation analysis
Collection and review of information about an
organization's internal processes and resources
and external marketplace factors in order to
inform strategy definition
 TOWS Analysis
A TOWS Analysis is an extension of the SWOT
Analysis framework that identifies your Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats but then
goes further in looking to match up the Strengths
with Opportunities and the Threats with
Weaknesses. It’s a great next step
after completing your SWOT and allows for you to
take action from the analysis.
 What is the difference between SWOT and TOWS?
Strengths to Opportunities:
The S-O focuses around how you can exploit your strengths in order
to respond to the potential opportunities in the market.
Strengths to Threats:
The S-T examines how strengths can be used to mitigate or remove
the threats to the business, and in some cases look at how threats
can be transformed to opportunities.
Weaknesses to Opportunities:
The W-O can be the hardest consideration, as it doesn’t always come
naturally. Consider how your opportunities can remove your
weaknesses.
Weaknesses to Threats:
The W-T highlights how weaknesses can play into, develop or
enhance the threats of the business.
 How to create a digital marketing plan
3) Define the marketing strategy
Personalization is becoming increasingly important
in digital marketing. Therefore, when it comes to
defining your strategy for carrying out your plan,
keep these factors in mind:
Segmenting your target audience: Know who you
want to address, what their tastes, needs, or
preferences are, where are you looking to meet
their expectations, etc.
 How to create a digital marketing plan

Positioning: To achieve proper positioning, it’s

crucial that you are very clear (and reach your
audience in the same way) about what your value
proposition is and what it entails. In short, it’s why
the consumer should choose you and not the
competition. You need to know how you’re going
to communicate your unique value proposition
and how to do so appropriately in the channels
where your audience is present (social media,
blogs, email marketing, and more).
 How to create a digital marketing plan

Content strategy: This is important for

creating, distributing, and managing original
content that attracts users and positions the
brand as referential in users’ top of mind.
Besides, you also have to map out a specific
communications plan (content marketing) for
every channel.
 How to create a digital marketing plan
4) Develop your digital marketing strategies and
tactics
For example, if you’re going to focus on search
engine optimization, you need to determine the
keywords you’re going to target and how you’re
going to target them. You may decide to create a
comprehensive content hub, online courses, SEO
topic clusters, or a series of online tools. Or you
may decide to provide more detailed, superior how-
to information, or to deliver insights on upcoming
trends, or to deliver content featuring celebrities
 How to create a digital marketing plan
• LEGO created an online, interactive
community with more than 300,000 in monthly
organic traffic.
https://ideas.lego.com/

• Tableau offered a free online tool and garnered

backlinks from more than 56,000 websites.
https://public.tableau.com/s/
 How to create a digital marketing plan
5) Digital Marketing Plan Budget
The amount you budget for digital marketing will vary based
on a number of factors, including:
●Revenue
●Position within the industry
●Previous results
●Goals
●Location
●Profitability of a strategy, tactic, or campaign
 How to create a digital marketing plan
6) Measure the results and KPIs of your digital marketing plan
The final step in creating a digital marketing plan and
strategy is to measure your results through the
definition of metrics and key performance indicators
(KPIs). You need to compare the outcomes of your
marketing efforts to the baseline as well as original
goals. If the results are underwhelming, adjust and
optimize, and then measure again.
Be sure to measure each channel so that you, as a
marketer, can identify what’s working most
successfully for your brand, and what may need to be
cut.