Five key steps to digital success

Given that most users are spread across various digital platforms, the need of the hour is towards considering a cross platform approach which requires you to merge the best possible digital tools together to give the maximum and right output

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Having been a part of the digital marketing and research space over the past 12 years, I have witnessed a desire among every brand to be successful on the digital [front] but very few are able to embrace the shift from directly creating a marketing strategy to understanding their audiences in depth. Very few are able to invest and understand that a data-centric approach is the core basis of digital success for brands. Innovation is fuelled by the insights gained, leading to true digital success and achievement of your business objectives.

While your success in the digital (sector) cannot be guaranteed, following these five steps will ensure you are far closer to it:

•    Insights: Before you delve into the objectives of why you are creating a digital outreach, spend time understanding your consumers, market, scale and value through digital. Research what consumers are already saying about you and where, study what your competitors are doing right and wrong, benchmark against pioneers in the space and understand the value you can drive out of the money you invest in digital. Each social network has different audience demographics, so organisations ought to choose which outlets to use in light of their objective clients. Sixty-seven percent of people online use Facebook while the average Twitter user is a 28-year-old woman and an Instagram user is most likely to be between 18 and 29 years old, but does this resonate with your brand? Will you gain success by being on just one platform or many? Are your customers looking for you online already? What is the content that they are looking for? The more you understand about those who speak about you, the higher are your chances of creating a strategy that will be sustained with a successful outreach.

•    Planning: Once you have gained adequate insights on who your consumers are, where they are on digital and what they like doing, you must put down your objectives and the digital marketing tools you desire to achieve them through. Your plan must capture your objectives, expected outreach, return on investment, budgets you wish to allocate and the universe you wish to be present on. Digital allows you to create awareness, sell online, recruit talent and be an excellent form of customer care too; so plan it right and work towards it. Digital tools such as online advertisements, social media, mobile, search engine marketing, optimisation, e-mailers, influencer marketing can be mapped out as per the desired audiences and objectives. Given that most users are spread across various digital platforms, the need of the hour is towards considering a cross platform approach which requires you to merge the best possible digital tools together to give the maximum and right output.

•    Content: Content plays an important role in making a brand’s digital strategy successful or a complete failure. The amount your content gets shared is directly proportionate to your digital success. Your content must be able to convey the right message, be share-worthy, have a call to action and be relevant to your brand messaging at all times. Your insights would be able to give you adequate data on what kind of content engages your audiences, drives them to perform an action and the kind of content that is currently unavailable too, so you may consider filling those gaps. Find a niche for your content strategy and focus on the quality you deliver, ensuring you keep it consistent and contextually relevant at all times. The pros of a digital content strategy is that you get constant feedback on its success or failure, so take advantage of that and replace what doesn’t seem to work for you with new and topical content always.

•    Story telling through visuals: Around 70 percent of all Facebook activities revolve around photographs; with 44 percent users on Facebook stating they draw a higher connect with brands that upload quality photos. Snapchat, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram further reinstate how social networking sites are slanting toward pictures versus words. With an increasing number of brands on social networks, and limited user attention spans, it’s only 30 percent of the content that gets viewed by each user and it is up to brands to innovate through their visuals and constantly stay adept with how they can create a visually appealing story for their brand. The implementation of topical content has been a key success driver by brands such as Oreo, Flipkart, Zomato and Practo.

•    Be available, always: As brands get active on digital, there is greater awareness about their activities which also gives rise to a higher number of people reaching out to them, across their digital outreach channels. When consumers engage with brands, they expect a spontaneous dialogue and interaction, especially when a consumer is discussing a problem area. Hence, it is extremely important for a brand to not only be present, but also constantly active. Brands with quick response timelines within 90 seconds have been proven to gain a higher amount of loyalty across social media. Invest in an Online Reputation Management tool and adequate trainings to ensure speedy and informed responses. While incorporating these tools, ensure you stay away from an automated response management format and adhere to the tonality that your brand follows, and one which the specific post requires.

•    Review & optimise: Everyone from the public to company CEOs not only utilise social media for their personal use but also towards communicating key messaging. Businesses use it to strategise for present and future prospects in their organisation. A large population of businesses is yet to capitalise on the true potential that data on digital has to offer. Businesses must invest time and money into constantly gaining insights into the strategy implemented, understanding what drove success or failure for their campaigns and content and how audience perceptions have shifted through the digital strategies adopted. In order to ensure that your digital objectives are achieved, ensure you review the key performance indicators set at the beginning and revise them constantly to be able to drive a better and sustained digital strategy.

The consumer today is smarter, aware of his needs and has access to a vast amount of online reviews. Brands that understand digital are at the forefront of driving overall business for them and are geared up to cater to a consumer’s ever-increasing needs.

-By Zafar Rais, CEO, Mindshift Interactive