The short answer: Yes. Yes, it is. We believe that once your business has established its mission and vision, the next step is to begin developing your digital strategy.
Too many companies fail because they are excited and ready to dive into business without considering the strategy it will take to work smarter, not harder and remain in business long-term.
Even if you’re just getting started with your business, creating a working digital strategy, complete with a digital project management plan and consideration for your online marketing, sets your brand up to solve questions and challenges that you didn’t even know existed. It’ll help you get ahead of the game.
In addition to developing a good content mix for your digital channels, the strategy will solve a few other problems according to this Smart Insights article:
Help you to establish brand direction
Ensure you know your online audience and market share
Give insight to how your brand fares against competitors
Create and/or reinforce your unique value and unique selling propositions (UVP and USP)
Establish who your online customers are (and how to best reach them and speak their language)
Disturb your silos – in other words, help you to create a more fluid marketing strategy that allows your audiences to see your brand’s channels work together to tell your story
Inform your budget (for all your resources – not just monetary – this will give you a snapshot of your time, people-power and channel availability)
Cut costs, increase efficiency
Keep your brand agile – allowing it to get ahead and stay ahead of the digital narrative and remain competitive in markets you serve
Without a doubt, we know that if you are here and reading this, it is likely time for your business to roll up its sleeves and lean into digital strategy.
What is Digital Strategy?
Alt text: Black man with glasses and business attire studies data on tablet.
At Digalyne, we focus on helping customers’ small businesses rise and remain authentic, agile and consistent in ways that thrive, even against the test of time. For us, developing digital strategy for clients is a passion, based on data and proven results.
To create a solid digital strategy plan, it’s going to take some work. Take a holistic look at your business, from organizational strategy, your customers, your daily processes and inventory of the challenges that your organization faces. Assess it all to tap into a digital strategy that works best for your business growth.
Digital strategy combines digital marketing plans, project management, acute understanding of digital transformation and how your business intends to apply it. Great digital strategy entails remaining strategic – not trend-focused – and adaptive to how your business is growing and how your customers are gaining value while adding greater value to the world around them because of your products or services.
How Do You Build a Digital Strategy Plan?
We outline it a bit on our digital strategy page, but in short, creating the strategy looks different for each and every business, whether two businesses owned by the same entity or otherwise. Why? Because each business needs a plan that speaks to their industry; their brand voice, tone and mission; their customers and target audience.
There are sure-fire components of digital strategy that are generally constant to improve your business, while other variables are different according to the business. At Digalyne, we lead with our 3-tier model to build your strategy, according to the variables we previously listed and your schedule.
What’s included?
Brand Audit & Management – This solidifies your brand’s positioning, differentiation and competitive advantage. Think: What market is my business in? How do I stand out against my competitors? How do I pitch my product or service in a way that doesn’t sound like everyone else’s?
Digital Analysis – Data matters. It helps you proactively approach your digital presence in a way that focuses on conversions and longevity -- not just hopping on the latest trend – which might cost you valuable resources like time, manpower and money. Your digital analysis assesses the data and informs you of your digital marketing and implementation strategies (what’s working vs. What isn’t). Be careful to avoid these mistakes in your digital marketing.
Digital Roadmapping – Think about where you’d like your business to be in 3 months, a year – 5 years. Solidifying a destination for your business allows for mapping that will help you soundly move from where you are now to where you’d like to be. This is your blueprint that gives you clear directions and milestones to achieve the goal waiting for you at the destination.
Techno-Integration – Here’s where we love to make the technology work for small business. After establishing your goals and plan of action to get there, integrating technology to serve your needs is the next step. Based on these things, we help you decide what technological resources can help increase efficiency, reduce costs and ease processes – both for the customers and the team(s) that are making the magic happen.
Transformation Planning – Digital transformation is a large part of the digital strategy. It incorporates innovation – tapping into artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand the digital landscape and how to navigate it to reach groundbreaking success. Looking for a way to prepare your business for this stage? This Forbes article can help.
Transformation Consulting – Transformation doesn’t just happen once you create the plan. Like anything great, its transformation comes from continuous growth and adaptation. Gain regular assessments and consultations to keep up with the digital landscape and stay relevant at every stage of transformation.
What’s next?
Now it’s time to build your own digital strategy for your small business. Use this article to kickstart your own implementation, or, you can let us get started on the work for you so that you can focus on the rewarding work you do for your business. Digalyne is committed to helping your business rise. To help you find what services make the most sense for you and your organization, click here to book your FREE 30-minute consultation.
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