Digital Strategy 101

Mark Farmer: 2014-05-02

Strategy 101

Traditional vs Digital vs Social

Facebook,Twitter,

YouTube,Blogs, etc,

Websites

Mediarelations

Mobile

Display

SMS / MMS

Email

Print advertising

Broadcastadvertising

Print collaterals

Directmail

Out of home

MarComm (Marketing Communications)

Digital MarComm

Social media MarComm

Please keep in mind...

Digital Strategy: 2 different ideas

1. Helping an organization become digitalo Organizational changeo Cultural shifto Behavioural shift

2. Marketing / communicating digitallyo Tactics & executiono Marketing campaigns / objectives

Wikipedia says

Digital strategy = specifying an organization’s...

• Vision

• Goals

• Opportunities

• Initiatives

What I says

• Helping an organization communicate better online by helping its people communicate better online

• That usually means finding a way to help you reach your audience more efficiently, more thoroughly and more substantially

What strategy isn’t

• A plan

• Done by experts

• Complete

• A document

The essence of strategy

• Visiono What’s the desired state?o Paint a pictureo Engage people

Digital Strategy’s only one part of the job

1. Helping an organization’s people communicate better online

2. Help your unit achieve its goalsa. Improving and defending reputation

b. Issues & crisis mgmt

c. Developing social media channels

d. Building audience

Strategy is the big picture

• The long gameo Gandhi

• Cultural / organizational / behavioural shiftso Risk toleranceo Innovationo Collaborationo Openness

What that means for you

• Training & supporto Platforms, practices, etc.

• Resourceso Guidelineso Best practiceso Analytics & intelligenceo Industry news

• Strategies for units

• Gathering & sharing marketing intelligence

What that means institutionally

• Active listening

• Messagingo Issues / criseso Campaigns

• Keeping our finger on the pulse of the institution, through its departments and faculties

The steps

• Define the organization’s needs (based on opportunities, problems, etc.)

• Identify the goals you’ll need to reach, to meet those needs

• Define how you’ll measure attainment of those goals

• Attach target numbers (more tactical at this point)

Where the real magic begins

• Coming up with creative ideas & solutions for how you’ll meet those numbers

• Executing them as tactics

Danger: the competitive scan

Winning coaches don’t focus on the competiton

The cycle

• Execute

• Measure

• Learn

• Repeat

• “The Lean Startup”

You can’t predict success

In other terms

• Try something.

• If it works, do more of it.

• If it doesn’t, do less of it.

• Rinse, repeat.

Strategy on a day-to-day basis

• Recognizing opportunities

• Coming up with creative ways to leverage those opportunities

• Being an advocate

• Setting an example (“walk the walk”)

• Innovating

• Exploring new channels & platforms

• Supporting the institution

Some of the tools

• Market intelligence: Radian6

• Collaboration: Confluence & Facebook

• Analytics: SproutSocial

• Customer service: HootSuite and the channels themselves

• Reputation management: Radian6, HootSuite and Sysomos

The vision: bringing it all together

• Social

• Web

• Email

• Mobile

• Display

• SEO (onsite and off)

• Traditional

• Etc.

The holy grail

• An integrated digital & traditional marketing & communications strategy

• Pan-institutional

• Cross-functional

• Including new media & traditional media

The benefits to you & the org

• Network effect

• Economies of scale

• Eliminating the redundancies and lack of sharing cause by siloes

• Don’t have to recreate the wheel

The hope

• Raise the organization’s reputationo Reach more peopleo Engage them better and more efficientlyo Get our messages out thereo Show the world the great things happening where

you work

• Work more efficiently as teams and individuals

How we can do this

• Break down barriers to collaboration

• Demonstrate successful prototypes with discrete projects, that provide examples to others

• Demonstrate transparency

• Apply agile concepts to our workflows

Organizational change: the key

And remember how to eat a whale….