20 December 2016

The 6 steps to creating an effective digital strategy

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Having a detailed digital strategy in place will support the long-term growth of your business and help you to make informed decisions that look past any distracting short-term gains and keep your attention firmly focused toward the future.

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When establishing a digital strategy for your business, your first steps should be to fully consider your long-term business goals, take time to thoroughly understand your audience or customer base, and effectively analyse your competition. Once you have done this, you can move on to building a strategy that works for your business and its unique requirements.

1. Define the vision

Think of this as a statement of intent. It should detail exactly how each one of your digital channels will create business and evaluate the digital opportunities that are available for your company. This will likely be a collaborative effort between different departments of your business and should be ambitious yet realistic.

2. Prioritise

Your vision should then be used to look back at your established business goals and question how your digital strategy will help your business to achieve each one of those goals. This will give your strategy some structure and highlight steps that need to be taken to make your goals a reality.

3. Get creative

High-quality digital agencies specialising in web design in South Devon, such as http://www.igoweb.co.uk/igoweb-website-design/website-design, understand that your business needs a digital voice with a consistent tone across your website and other digital platforms when communicating with your customers. It should reflect the core of your business whilst being inspiring enough to prompt individuals to interact with you online.

4. Plan

As this Mashable article details, planning is key to the creation of any successful strategy. Think about how you are going to execute your ideas to drive business and increase your digital reach.

5. Measure

You need to know how your tactics and vision are performing following their implementation. You should avoid accumulating unnecessary data and focus on the numbers that matter.

6. Assign responsibilities

Accountability is important, which is why each team member should thoroughly understand their role and unique responsibilities. This will allow you to clearly see whether your plans are being realised in the time frame you had accounted for.