As a student myself currently studying Communication Management and Public Relations, it is vital that I keep up with the ever changing and fast paced environment that this involves. That now involves an effective digital strategy. Times have changed and everything/everyone is online now. In my opinion, businesses shouldn’t wait a minute longer in regards to digital advancement unless they want to get left behind in mediocracy.
To answer the question for those who aren’t aware, digital strategy is basically about moving more marketing campaigns online, organising your business in the virtual world and setting up different types of platforms where businesses can reach consumers. Although in today’s society there are many different ways people are going to view what a digital strategy is, Joe McKendrick (2016) a blogger for Forbes would argue that “A marketing executive will see a digital strategy as social media and web channels. An IT person will see a digital strategy as Cloud. An operation executive will see it as data analytics and an R&D executive will see it as online products.” This is one of the major problems as to why businesses still aren’t using the digital media strategy.
If you are a student or business owner currently reading this and haven’t already considered the importance of using digital strategy, I’m going to tell you the three main reasons why!
1:Target Audiences:
· An important note to begin with that is key to any and every business is that they know who its target audience/s are. According to 2018 figures from Ofcom, nine in ten UK adults are online, that’s 88% of the public, that leaves a lot of potential for some worthwhile marketing campaigns. From that, then 77% of the public have in the past and are currently retaining information through a social media profile, and to finish off 62% of those internet users agree that any disadvantages of the internet are outweighed by the advantages.
· In today’s society people want the easiest shopping experience possible. This affects the majority of target audiences according to Offcom. If basically everyone is online, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you where your audience is!
· According to Chaffety and Smith (2013, p.171) “Online customers, quite reasonably expect things to work” this then backed up by Ryan (2017, p.27) “..They demand instant gratification and a flawless customer experience” This instant and express shopping exerience that consumers crave is more easily produced through a successful digital media strategy, links, webpages and sponsorship deals can be set up so that the customer can have what they want in a matter of one click.
2: Customer retention:
· Retention, retention, retention. Sure it’s easy to define who your customers are and through good deals and promotions in fact most businesses experience a initial surge of customers. But how do you keep them? Majority of business owners don’t focus on this and it can be an early killer for a start-up businesses.
· Like I have said earlier it’s clear that consumers have changed and the modern online shopper is no different. According to Chaffety and Smith (2013) they believe that visitors are visiting fewer websites, but in doing so they are spending more on the websites that they do frequently use. These companies through an effective digital marketing strategy are able to keep customers via relevant material and on-going help to the customer, this in turn prompts the customer to spend more on their site.
· It is also interesting to note that time could be an aiding factor in this. A report from Collusion (2019) found that one in 15 purchases are made between 6am and midnight. It is good to consider timing in retention as, in order to formulate the most effective digital strategy your website needs to be constantly updated and available 24 hours a day.
3: Cost effective:
· Now, if the previous two reasons put you off slightly, due to the hard work that it entails, then you’ll be glad to see that an effective digital marketing strategy can be used to help you save some cash! Business owner or not who doesn’t want to know away to save money. Just think, instead of using your hard earned cash on extensive and expensive print media campaign everything online can be done cheap and effectively. The only price you will pay is for your staff.
I am hoping at this point I have at least got you considering the bright side of adopting a digital marketing startegy into your business, and I know that for someone (like myself) who isn’t very tech savy the whole process can be very daunting, I myself have just about mastered using Microsoft (bit dramatic). But the point is that you don’t need to be Steve Jobs in order to adopt a successful digital strategy into your work place.
It is all about finding what is right for your business, like Dorner K and Edelman, D. (2015) states “Everyone wants to go digital. The first step is to understand what that means for your organisation”. There are three ways you can adopt this into your business, it can be as gradual as you like. This can be done according to Denovati Digital, through digitisation, digital engagement and digital transformation. Digitisation involves using your businesses current practices and adopting digital equivalents. Digital enagement involves moving beyond the one-way communications externally and internally, and digital transformation is kind of like the final step (if you like), it involves a change at a strategic level by redefining the business model via innovation.
This sounds complicated but a lot of it is about having a good social media platform and effective website campaigns. There are also a number of different social media campaigns you can use. Wilson (2011) kindly categorised them for you to understand. For example, if you are a small scale organisation you could use “Predictive Practitioners” approach this is where you, as a business design for predictable outcomes and this would provide incremental improvement to existing practices. Or in order to gain more information about the certainty of how your business is doing you could use the “Creative Experimenters” this is formulated to learn from the unexpected in discreet areas of the business and allows businesses’ to innovate practices or customer models.
If you are a larger scale business you could use the “Social Champions” approach, this is formulated to create predictable enhancements to existing systems, communications, or organisation-wide processes and again to gain more certainty you could use the “Social Transformers” approach which allows a business to continuously learn from the unexpected across the business as well as how to innovate strategy, decision-making, operations andproducts.
Well that kind of wraps up the word vomit for today, I know it can be initially hard to process all this information but don’t give up digital strategy can be used by everyone for everyone, just give yourself time! Thanks for reading! 😊