Digital strategy is the application of digital technologies to business models to form new differentiating business capabilities.
In the future, all business strategy will integrate digital strategy.
Digital strategy focuses on using technology to improve business performance, whether that means creating new products or reimagining current processes.
It specifies the direction an organization will take to create new competitive advantages with technology, as well as the tactics it will use to achieve these changes.
This usually includes changes to business models, as digital technologies make it possible for companies willing to be innovative to provide services that weren’t previously possible.
In today's organization, there are many ideas of what constitutes a digital strategy.
Digital is a Gamechanger. This means that Business will not be the same ever again.
This brings a global transformation called Digital Transformation.
From i-scoop.eu I found the most interesting definition:
Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers.
It's also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.
There are so many interesting ideas in this definition:
When talking about Digital Marketing, many people focus on SEO and Social Media. And sometimes, only on one of these two.
Digital Marketing is way bigger than that. It is an element in the Marketing strategy.
Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.
Digital marketing refers to any type of marketing activity that applies any forms of digital technology.
Digital marketing activities include conducting market research using digital marketing research tools, analysing marketing performance using digital analytics software, and launching digital display ads using digital advertising platforms.
Compared to traditional advertising methods such as print, billboards, and TV, digital marketing is primarily data-driven.
Many popular digital advertising platforms today provide access to campaign reports for comprehensive data analysis.
It is difficult to make an exhaustive list of all the tools/channels that are available in Digital Marketing, but here you can find a first list that it is worth while looking at:
Wikipedia gives the best definition:
Call to action (CTA) is a marketing term used extensively in advertising and selling.
It refers to any device designed to prompt an immediate response or encourage an immediate sale. A CTA most often refers to the use of words or phrases that can be incorporated into sales scripts, advertising messages or web pages that encourage consumers to take prompt action.
You are generating traffic to your website, to your Social Media pages, ... to all your own-channels.
The question is:
What do you expect these visitors to do?
For every visitor, the action to be undertaken must be extremely clear, without any confusion.
This is the CTA - Call To Action.
Unlike other forms of marketing, in digital marketing activities are conveniently broken into three categories - Paid, Owned and Earned Media - POE Media.
The various digital marketing tools (online public relations, content marketing etc) can neatly fit within one or multiple categories. The difference between each category can be described as:
It is not about chosing one or the other.
Whilst using each individual type of media has its rewards, the combination or integration of paid, owned and earned media can facilitate more leads, generate word of mouth marketing and ultimately improve profits for your business.
When using social media, which can be both Owned and Paid, a new "media" becomes increasingly important:
SHARED
Social media plays a large role in “shared” media. There’s a big opportunity to reach your customers where they spend a lot of their time. Through well-crafted social posts and digital strategies, many potential customers will begin to like, comment and share your posts. This leads to more potential customers seeing the posts and sharing as well. They are helping you execute your strategy! Also, reaching out to influential bloggers and guest posting will help with shared media.
Remarketing:
The term remarketing applies to any tactics used to engage a customer after an initial interaction.
Retargeting:
Retargeting refers to the specific strategy of using cookies and display ads to promote products and services to people who have previously visited a site, as well as users who exhibit similar behaviors online.
Again, it is not about chosing one or the other.
If you’re deciding whether your brand should leverage remarketing vs retargeting, it may surprise you that the two strategies go hand in hand.
Retargeting is a specific piece of remarketing that almost explicitly involves display advertising.
The way this works is that when a customer visits your website, perhaps certain pages of your website or looks into specific products or services, it leaves cookies behind in their browser history.
Remarketing is an essential element of an integrated marketing strategy, because it leverages multiple touchpoints to appeal to an audience. At a strategic level, remarketing supports a brand’s primary sales objectives by recapturing potentially valuable leads. Without a remarketing plan, quality leads are more likely to slip through the cracks.
The customer interaction essential goal is to regain the customer’s interest.
Remember that a maximum of 2% of your visitors will take action on your website.
If you don't want to lose the 98%, then you need a strategy about Remarketing.
From Smart Insights:
Programmatic marketing is automated bidding on advertising inventory in real time, for the opportunity to show an ad to a specific customer, in a specific context.
It is a technical subject, but becoming so important.
When anyone clicks on a web page that has advertising space that is configured for programmatic advertising, the publisher of the page puts up an ad impression for auction in an ad marketplace.
The ad marketplace then runs an auction among advertisers interested in displaying an ad to that specific customer that just click on the page.
There may be many advertisers competing in this auction, and whichever one ultimately is willing to bid the most wins the auction and then their ad is displayed to the customer when the page loads.
Because the process is automated and the maximum price each advertiser is willing to bid for the impression has already been programmed in, the auction can be completed within the milliseconds it takes for the page to load.
On this very specific topic, I am using the information from Smart Insights.
As Peter Druker said:
"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well, the product and service fits him and sells itself".
As soon as you have identified who is your customer and what target group are you going to focus on, then you must use profiling techniques to make sure your messages will reach the right audience.
Interesting elements:
On Social Media, people talk, post, share, like, dislike, comment, click, explore, ...
All this create an incredible amount of information that feed their profile.
Look at what facebook knows about you.
When starting a marketing campaign on Social Media, the first step is to decide the audience who will receive the message.
With all the information the different Social Media have on each of their members, it is possible to build a very qualified target audience.
As a consequence, the hit rate will be way better and the cost will be lower.
Profiling and building an audience a key when using Social Media for Digital Marketing.
On Bloomberg:
We Are Social Ltd., a global conversation agency, provides social media marketing and communications services to organizations worldwide.
The company helps clients to listen, understand, and engage in conversations in social media relevant to their brand, products, services, competitors, and sector. It provides consultancy services, including social media strategies development, training provision, helping to specify and recruit for social media roles, designing and implementing listening and responding programs, advising on crisis planning, and providing ad-hoc social media consultancy and advice; research and insight services, which include conversation audits, influencer research, and social media monitoring; and engagement through influencer campaigns, conversation platforms, advocacy programs, community building and management, social applications, conversation response, and reputation management.
Several things are exteremely interesting with We are Social: