This article is the first in a series of three articles I began writing in January 2022 while preparing one of the Digital Marketing and Social Media courses I teach for ForModena Carpi. It’s the third I drafted, but everything begins with strategy, in my opinion—and “digital marketing strategy” remains one of the phrases I hear most frequently from clients I meet at the agency. So let’s start here.
What do we mean when we write and say “digital marketing strategy”?
Mostly, we use this sentence to refer to the set of answers to the questions “what to publish?”, “where?” and “when?” online. Best case scenario, those who define it also attempt to answer “why?” and “who do we want to reach?”—objectives and target audience.
But a “strategy” in marketing assumes three fundamental elements:
- A broad perspective transcending logics of channel, platform, and tactics—one that in a way goes beyond ‘digital’ to encompass the entire landscape of marketing actions and decisions
- A medium to long-term perspective; yet with digital, this breadth of vision isn’t possible without significant risk, considering that everything changes continuously and the only realistic predictions about platform behavior are those within a three-month timeframe
- An attempt to identify a sustainable competitive advantage over the competition—again, something that shouldn’t be limited to digital if, as we’ve now established, customer and consumer experiences are omnichannel, increasingly bordering between physical and digital with incursions into one or the other depending on circumstances
A marketing strategy may have digital applications, but it can never apply exclusively to digital marketing. If it does, we are making one of two mistakes:
- Calling short-term tactics a ‘strategy’
- Underestimating the true complexity of the user experience
What lies behind the term ‘strategy’?
Anyone who specializes in, becomes passionate about, or practices a subject for a long time develops pet peeves or soon launches in crusades. Mine is against the inappropriate use of the term ‘strategy’, if that wasn’t clear.
No, any decision-making framework is not a strategy. Strategy, by definition, is the “awareness with which, in a given context, an individual decides their choices and actions.” Awareness is the key word here because, regardless of how deeply it might be, it assumes a phase of analysis and examination of identity and context.
When we talk about business, it’s the same.
For a marketing framework to be called a ‘strategy,’ it must be rooted in careful analysis of the company, the brand, the offering, and the context in which the company operates and the offering is presented and received by the market.
This implies that drafting a marketing strategy for a business involves a substantial period of studying:
- Brand identity
- Target audience (customers and users)
- Positioning
- Offering
- Competitive context
- Markets in which you operate
- Emerging trends
- Available internal resources
- Operational feasibility
The information acquired during this study period will determine not only planning but especially the ability to make deliberate choices—for example, what will not be done. All of this to address contingencies while simultaneously anticipating as much as possible the management of changes.
Definition guiding behavior
My guiding light in sociolinguistics, Vera Gheno, often repeats that every living language is intrinsically constantly evolving, growing and restructuring with use, in part to describe the reality it’s called upon to represent.
It makes sense that the habit of living through continual epochal changes over the last thirty years has reduced our perspective to what’s here, today, before our eyes—the contingent.
But without vision and forward-thinking considerations of identity, on what basis can we make short-term decisions? Or rather, on what basis can we make short-term decisions without risking long-term consequences?
To provide a simple example: if your company hasn’t asked itself where it wants to be in three years and what crises it might face, how can you decide whether to keep comments open on your Facebook page or which social channel is sensible to invest your energies in?
A digital marketing plan, instead
When a client company arrives at the agency and asks for a ‘digital marketing strategy,’ an honest approach should start by verifying whether the company has a marketing strategy.
If it does, the brief is simple to assemble. The account manager can follow a checklist we’ve prepared to gather information even if it hasn’t been formalized in a single document (rare in SMEs).
With that information, which I typically certify and deepen, we structure a digital marketing plan that incorporates strategic coordinates. The plan must describe:
- How planned digital activities contribute to objectives
- Which medium-term scenarios are reasonable to consider
- What is sustainable and how to deploy it
Even though the digital context appears to be moving lightning-fast, it takes months and months to build a digital presence capable of delivering value, and a plan can facilitate this.
Strategy before planning
When the client company comes in without ever having undertaken a marketing strategy, I get to work. It’s a service the agency sells because its output remains with the company as a valid tool for at least the next two to three years and is useful for making decisions that go beyond digital marketing.
This is why I’m wary of agencies that give away strategy or make it a freebie add-on to tools. A serious strategy requires days and days of work (yes, even now that generative AI exists), and I can see only two scenarios: either you’re losing money by giving a strategy away, or you’re simply not doing it properly. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
The risk of simplification
When we use the term ‘digital marketing strategy,’ we’re not making a harmless linguistic simplification. On the contrary, we are:
- Artificially creating silos that limit our effectiveness and ignore the omnichannel reality of user experiences
- Unlearning to be intentionally aware of identity and context
The true challenge of contemporary marketing posed by digital, in my view, isn’t mastering Instagram’s latest algorithm or TikTok’s features.
It’s maintaining a visionary approach that allows orchestrating meaningful and coherent experiences across all channels, creating real and lasting value for customers and the business. We can do that while closely observing digital developments.
Photo by Denis Sebastian Tamas from Unsplash.
