Digital Strategy Roadmap

Benefits of Following a Digital Strategy Roadmap

In a digitally-driven economy, a business that makes effective use of the available technology to attract the attention and engage the interest of their target audience can generate more leads and sales. Not doing so could result in them struggling to compete in a fast moving online environment.

Step 1: Define Your Vision, Objectives and Goals

Your digital strategy should serve your overall business goals. Begin with objectives such as:

• Increase customer engagement and retention.
• Attract 500 new customer leads each month.
• Increase your B2B customer sales by thirty percent.

Step 2: Identify Current Digital Assets

Before building a digital strategy roadmap, identify current assets, resources and skills. Ask questions including:

• Do you have a website? Is it mobile and SEO optimised?
• Are you engaging with your target audience on social media?
• Are you using marketing automation software, such as a CRM?
• Do you know how to track website visitors and their user journeys.
• Can you measure content marketing metrics, such as traffic and conversions?

Analytics Tools Examples: Google Analytics or Hotjar.

SWOT Analysis: Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.

Step 3: Identify Customer Characteristics

Rather than unfocused messaging, content marketing directed towards your target audience should be designed to attract their attention and engage their interest. Understanding customer preferences and behaviour patterns will help you to create customer personas. The Five Factor Model provides a framework that can assist in the process of persona creation, enabling messaging to be more targeted.

Collect customer data:

• Market research to collect customer data.
• Demographic data; age, gender, income, location.
• Customer behaviour, preferences and buying decisions.

Tools: Google Trends, customer marketing surveys and Facebook Audience Insights.

Step 4: Select Your Digital Channels

Select digital marketing channels where your target audience spend time. Align content messaging with your business goals and target customer preferences:

• Content and SEO: Increase organic traffic by learning how to create a content marketing strategy.
• Social Media: Engagement and branding designed to increase audience awareness.
• Email: Learn how to build an email list using lead magnets, such as newsletters and eBooks.
• PPC: Understand how to use paid search and how to write a landing page that converts.

Step 5: Prioritise and Plan

To manage the process, break your digital strategy roadmap into four phases:

• Phase 1: Identify your business goals, audience and available resources.
• Phase 2: Website and social media content to dive organic traffic.
• Phase 3: Email automation, paid advertising and blog content.
• Phase 4: A/B testing, analytics, CRM integration and iterative improvement.

Step 6: Platforms and Tools

Step 7: Select KPIs and Measure Results

Define KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and use analytics to measure results:

• Website traffic, leads and conversion rates.
• Email open, click-through and bounce rates.
• Social media engagement and conversion.
• Advertising ROI and sales conversion rates.

Step 8: Aligning Goals and Adapting To Change

Include business management, staff and customer research feedback in the process of planning your digital strategy roadmap. This can help to increase internal communication and alignment within a business towards achieving goals. Build a system that receives input from departments such as operations, marketing, sales and customer services to identify and address potential issues at an early stage. Develop strategies that can be adapted to changing conditions.

Conclusions

A well planned and delivered digital strategy roadmap can help a business grow and compete more effectively. Having clearly defined business goals, understanding your target audience and creating content that increases customer engagement can generate more leads and sales. Selecting appropriate tools and using resources effectively can help you to manage the process effectively.