Developing a Digital Strategy for Your Brand: Post 1

INTRODUCTION
This is designed to outline a process for developing a digital strategy or “roadmap” for a brand. It is
centered around five key questions:

1. Why is digital worth your time?
2. Why should you have a special strategic planning process for digital?
3. What are the key components of a digital strategy?
4. By what process should you define objectives and strategies for your digital strategy?
5. What are the key deliverables and process steps for a digital strategy?

Our goal with this document is to combat the tendency for some marketers to approach digital from an executionally centric perspective. Far too many brands approach digital by reacting to what’s new or “hot” in the space, rather than taking a more comprehensive, objectives-based approach. Unfortunately, the result of this practice is that hundreds of millions of dollars – perhaps even billions of dollars – are wasted on tactics that don’t properly align with the overall needs of brands.With that in mind, we offer the following as a starting point towards a more strategically-driven digital planning process.

PART ONE: WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER DIGITAL

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for ten or so years, the meteoric growth of digital media will come as no surprise. In addition, a variety of factors make digital a different sort of media challenge for brands:

1. Media fragmentation has splintered audiences and dramatically increased the complexity of effectively reaching most audiences. Where consumers used to have four of five major media choices (TV, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, and Outdoor), they now have dozens of platforms and literally millions of professional and amateur publishers from which to gather information.
2. The two-way nature of IP-based media (Internet, Mobile, etc.) necessitate that brands stop think as broadcasters and adopt a more collaborative and consultative approach to brand development. This warrants special thought and consideration because the “rules” of collaborative marketing are far different from the “rules” of broadcast-oriented branding.
3. Practically everyone is using digital media. 194 million US consumers are using the Internet. Most of these consumers are spending large amounts of their time with digital media. According to IDC, of the 70.6 hours per week the average consumer (15+) spends with media, 32.7, or 46% of the total hours are spent using the Internet. Further, 52.5% of the total population is using online video.1
4. Digital media are playing an increasingly large role in all purchase decisions. Information on the web influenced almost $500 Billion in offline retail sales in 2007, up 19% versus the year before.
5. Certain target audiences are becoming increasingly difficult to reach WITHOUT digital. For example, Men 18-24 now spend so much time gaming, online, and with their mobile phones that it is increasingly difficult to effectively deliver against this target without digital vehicles.
6. “User generated content” and “citizen journalism” have driven a massive shift in how we receive information about products and services, and what sorts of info we trust. Increasingly, people prefer grass roots sources of information and recommendationsto the so-called professional sources of mainstream media outlets. Even venerable professional journalism organizations like CNN and MSNBC are now routinely airing citizen journalism originated news, video, and other types of information as part of their “professional” offerings.
7. From a practical standpoint, many brands are seeing diminishing effectiveness from traditional “analog” media. Brands need to identify new “on buttons” for their businesses.
8. Again, from a practical standpoint, you’re brand is already being represented to consumers in the digital space, even if you do not have proactive marketing efforts in the space. That is because people –defenders as well as hecklers – are already talking about your brand and product and reaching audiences that are potentially in the millions.

By monitoring and creating brand expressions in the space, you can
influence the discussion in a very positive way. When even TV’s biggest historical “believers” report shifting massive resources away from broadcast and into digital media, it becomes even more apparent that digital media are “must considers”. Most major firms that used to rely heavily on TV are redistributing spend toward digital. Examples include CPG, automakers, and even political campaigns.

In your own category(ies), you are probably witnessing major competitors pursuing digital initiatives in earnest. But you are probably also finding that many of their initiatives don’t appear to be part of a cohesive strategic platform. Again, this is because many companies do not have an objectives based underpinning to their total digital strategy.