I used to focus on building digital plans. These were lists of marketing tactics that we would implement over the course of a year that contributed to the achievement of our marketing strategy.

But these were merely the best laid plans.

So, what does a digital strategy look like in a reality when users, platforms and tactics are shifting at an ever-increasing pace? An effective digital strategy requires vision and process.

Vision
The vision is the ideal future state for our organization and ensures that all our efforts, resources and people are aligned to a common goal.

This vision defines what success will look like for your digital marketing environment. These are your business goals and outcomes at the highest of levels, and most specifically how marketing needs to contribute to those goals and outcomes. Your vision also declares who your audience is (and is not). This ensures we are making traction with the people with whom we want to make the best impact.

Process
The process determines how we are going to accurately test, monitor and optimize our digital marketing activities.

Effective processes are the most critical part to success in digital marketing. We have the opportunity to see marketing performance and use data and insights to help inform adjustments to our marketing activities. As a result, it is very important to have systems set up that allow us to have an accurate view of our digital marketing performance and confidently draw insights that inform decision making.

This process typically requires three key pieces:

• Measurement Plan that translates your marketing vision and business goals into the metrics and dimensions that you will use to track success.
• Reporting Technology that accurately tracks users and their behavior as they interact with your digital marketing ecosystem. This includes the technical set up of tracking pixels and conversions, as well as the system that will be used to capture and present the data determined by the measurement plan.
• Internal Capabilities are required in order to draw meaningful insights from the data and then make informed adjustments to marketing activities.

In my experience, this process of capturing insights and using them to inform decisions is often one of the biggest gaps with marketers. To do this effectively, it requires a combination of a strategic and technical mind, and an intense curiosity to hypothesize and understand why users are behaving in a certain way. This is a big reason why I’ve built my Marketing Analytics Program to not only improve reporting technology, but also to “level up” marketers’ understanding of how to manipulate and use data.