10 reasons why you need digital marketing strategy in 2017

Posted by PNB Media
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1. You're directionless

I find that the companies without a digital strategy (and many that do) don't have clear strategic goal for what they want to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones. And if you have goal you don't put enough resources to reach the goals and you don't evaluate through analytics whether achieving those goals.


2. You won't know you're online market share

Customer demand for online services may be underestimated if you haven't researched this. Perhaps, more importantly, you won't understand your online marketplace, the dynamics will be different to different channels with different types of customer profile and behavior, competitors, proposition and options for marketing communications.


3. Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share

If you're not devoting enough resources to digital marketing or you're using an ad-hoc  approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will eat your digital lunch.

4. You don't have a powerful online value proposition

A clearly defined online customer value proposition will help you differentiate your online service encouraging existing and new customers to engage initially and stay loyal.

5. You don't know your online customers well enough

It's often said that digital is the "most measurable medium ever". But Google Analytics and similar will only tell you volumes of visits, not the sentiment of visitors, what they think. You need to use other forms of website user feedback tool to identify your weak points and then address them


6. You're not integrated ("disintegrated")

It's all too common for digital marketing activities to be completed in silos whether that's a specialist digital marketer, sitting in IT or a separate digital agency. It's easier that way to package digital marketing into a convenient chunk. But of course, its less effective. Everyone agrees that digital media works best when integrated with traditional media and response channels.

7. Digital doesn't have enough people/budget given its importance

Insufficient resources will be devoted to both planning and executing e-marketing and there is likely to be lack of specific specialist e-marketing skills which will make it difficult to respond to competitive threats effectively.

8. You're wasting time and money through duplication

Even if you do have sufficient resources, it may be wasted. This is particularly the case in larger companies where you see the different parts of marketing organization purchasing different tools or using different agencies for performing similar online marketing tasks.


9. You're not agile enough to catch up or stay ahead

If you look at the top online brands such as Amazon, Dell, Google, Tesco, they're all dynamic - trailing new approaches to gain or keep their online audiences.

10. You're not optimizing 

Every company with a website will have analytics, but many senior managers don't ensure that their teams make or have the time to review or act on them. Once a strategy enables you to get the basics right, then you can progress to continuous improvements of the key aspects like search marketing, site user experience, emails and social media marketing. So that our top 10 can be avoided with a well thought through strategy.