How do you define your digital marketing strategy?

Common practice is to define a marketing strategy based on specific goals, targets, a budget and timeframe. We like the simplicity offered by the chart below, that demonstrates the process and metrics used for measuring performance and the channels that work best for specific goals with an online digital strategy.

Digital Strategy

Gravytrain agency provides a useful overview of the digital strategic process. We have found their inforgraphic as a very helpful tool in explainging the common areas for client consideration in digital planning.

How to use the chart:

1. Starting at the top of the chart you define your goals, purpose, ROI timeframe, location target, customer profile and/or device, as required and prompted in the rainbow points 1-6.
2. Once you have defined your overall goals and or targets you can then decide which specific channels they are most suited to. For example, if you require instant results then SEO is not the most suitable channel, however paid search may be suitable. Depending on your demographic and/or product, social paid search or PPC may be suitable. You can refer to the mid-section of the chart, which corresponds to the goals rainbow, to see which channel may be more suited to your targets and goals.
3. Once you have identified which channel you will be using, you should refer to the metrics section to see the possible metrics you can measure channel performance on.
4. Dependant on your demographic, location and goals you can then identify which platform or segments you should use to focus your efforts on.

Helene Hall of Gravytrain says, "I'm aware that this is not a comprehensive plan. I had to stop myself from adding and building upon the chart as I wanted to keep this initial one as top-level as possible, while still being useful.

"In future blog posts I will continue to break down each section further as I am aware that the commonly used channels related to specific goals are not comprehensive e.g. the social goal could be traffic instead of reach etc.

"There may be omissions and (possibly) objections to some of the metrics, channels or even strategy types that I have included, but I intend to expand on these in the future series.

"I hope that you will find this infographic helpful, as this is one of the most enjoyable parts of my job; I love drilling down and creating strategies and I hope this will give some inspiration as regards possible additions to future marketing campaigns."

Author Helene Hall is Digital Marketing Director at Gravytrain and a contributor to Econsultancy. Connect with Helene via Twitter, LinkedIn or Google Plus, or provide recommendations or feedback at Twitter @HeleneHall.

This article was first published as a blog post on Econsultancy, and we acknowledge Econsultancy as the original authors.