Digital strategy

What is a digital strategy?

A digital strategy is a comprehensive plan that defines how your organisation will use digital technologies to achieve its business objectives. Although there are different types, they tend to encompass the following aspects:

Identifying your target audience or customers and understanding their online behaviour.
Developing a strong online presence through your website and social media channels.
Leveraging digital marketing tactics to reach and engage your audiences or customers.
Optimising your online operations for efficiency and effectiveness.
Implementing data-driven approaches to measure success and continuously improve.
Ensuring governance arrangements are clear, outlining who is responsible for various aspects of the digital strategy, decision-making authority and accountability.

Why is a digital strategy important?

In today's digital world, online interactions have become primary. A robust digital strategy empowers you to:

Reach a wider audience: Expand your reach beyond geographical limitations and connect with potential customers globally.
Enhance customer engagement and experience: Foster deeper connections with your audience through interactive online platforms.
Drive brand awareness: Build a strong online presence and establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry.
Optimise operations: Streamline internal processes and workflows for improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Gain valuable insights: Leverage data analytics to gain insights into customer behaviour and preferences, enabling informed decision-making.
Stay ahead of the curve: Adapt to evolving technologies and industry trends to maintain a competitive edge.

By investing in a well-defined digital strategy, you equip your organisation with the tools and roadmap necessary to navigate the ever-changing digital landscape and achieve sustainable success in the long run.

How is a digital strategy developed?

A digital strategy is tailored and relevant to your circumstances, is people first, developed collaboratively and leverages data.

Tailored to you

Because organisations and their digital products and services are at different stages in their lifecycle, no two digital strategies will be exactly the same. For example, compare an organisation at each of the five phases below and their focus:

Establishment phase: This strategy is focused on building a strong online presence for a new organisation or product. It may involve creating a brand or digital identity, website, establishing social media channels, and developing content that engages potential customers.
Growth phase: This strategy is designed to help an organisation expand their reach and acquire new customers. It may involve implementing digital marketing campaigns, optimising website performance, and leveraging social media advertising. An understanding of competitors and partners organisations is important here also.
Optimisation phase: This strategy is focused on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of an organisation's digital operations. It may involve implementing data analytics tools, automating workflows, and enhancing the user experience of a website, app or service. Problems and friction points are removed for end-users and internal stakeholders as the overall digital offering is uplifted.
Transformation phase: This strategy is designed to help organisations make significant changes to their business model or operations through digital technologies. It may involve implementing new digital platforms, developing new or consolidating products or services, or redesigning internal processes. Depending on the brand health or if there has been a shift in audiences and value proposition, it may also involve rebranding.
Legacy migration phase: This strategy is designed to help organisations migrate their legacy digital systems and processes to newer, more modern platforms and technologies. It may involve data migration, system integration, and change management. Phasing the change is crucial here.

Each type of digital strategy has its own unique goals and objectives, and the specific approach will vary depending on an organisation's specific needs and resources.

People first

Ideally a digital strategy puts the needs of customers and users at the forefront of decision-making. This means understanding their pain-points, identifying their met and unmet needs, goals and preferences, and designing solutions that are tailored to their experiences.

When organisations adopt human-centred approaches, they are more likely to create digital products and services that are:

Usable: Users can easily understand and use the product or service.
Useful: The product or service meets the needs of users and solves their problems.
Desirable: Users enjoy using the product or service and find it valuable.

By putting customers first, organisations can create digital products and services that are more successful and have a greater impact on the world.

Using methods from human centred design, such as incorporating CX/UX research, creating personas, and developing prototypes to test with users or leveraging co-design can ensure the voices of customers are not only heard but reflected in the end strategy.

Collaborative

Many of us have experienced situations when an external consultant has been bought into an organisation to deliver a strategy which in reality is not implementable. In these cases, a strategy was developed in isolation of the key stakeholders at different levels of an organisation and its users.

Collaboration is a remedy to this.

There are many frameworks that aid a collaborative approach such as, design thinking (a problem-solving process that emphasises empathy, creativity, and prototyping) and co-design (collaborative design process that involves users and stakeholders in the design of products and services).

Regardless of the method, at the heart of a collaborative approach to digital strategy development is the act of bringing together people with diverse backgrounds, skills, and experiences. This ensures that all aspects of the strategy are considered. The collaborative approach fosters increased creativity, leading to more innovative solutions, and it improves decision-making through informed input from multiple stakeholders. Additionally, collaboration increases buy-in, as those involved in the development are more likely to be committed to the strategy's implementation.

Data, evidence and insights

There are a variety of data sources that can be used to inform a digital strategy such as web analytics, social media analytics, customer relationship management (CRM) data, market research and trends, etc.

This can be used to inform a digital strategy in a variety of ways, such as:

Creating a case for change: Usually part of the business case, data and other evidence contribute to the overall rationale for the digital strategy, telling the story of not what just is to be achieved, but what negative consequences are avoided if the strategy is successfully implemented.
Identifying gaps and problems: Be it gaps in performance, quality, service offering, content, etc.
Identifying strengths and opportunities: Those things which are currently working well, organisational advantages and opportunities for growth.
Identifying target audience: Data can be used to identify the demographics, interests, and online behaviour of the target audience and what the gaps are.
Understanding the competitive landscape: Data can be used to assess the strengths and weaknesses of competitors and identify opportunities for differentiation.
Establishing a baseline: existing data can be used as the baseline to measure the performance of the new digital strategy, once implemented.

In addition to using data, strategies can also be evidence creating. This is especially important when there is no current evidence base. For example, an organisation may develop a new digital marketing campaign, or a low-fidelity version of a product as a data gathering experiment, and use data to support the direction of future strategies.

Other types of digital strategies

This article intended to provide a general overview of digital strategies. There are other types of digital strategies which may have more of a narrow focus. Some of these are listed below:

Digital brand strategy
Content strategy
Measurement strategy
Syndication and partnerships strategy
Service or product specific, such as a product or service strategy
Channel specific, such as social media strategy
Audience specific, such as a regional digital customer acquisition strategy
Capability specific, such as an organisational digital literacy strategy
Lifecycle specific, such as website consolidation and archiving strategy.