Digital Strategist – by Silu Modi

This one’s an oldie, but a goodie. Seth Godin (Marketing Guru Extraordinaire) gives a simple 10 point plan on how to create a great website. I can’t argue with any one of his points. Some of my favourite points:

1. Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. I completely agree. I’ve found that the more people involved in creating (or strategizing) a website, the more watered-down the ideas become and the more ‘standard’ the website looks and feels. If you’re trying to generate interest, buzz or Google Juice, you’re not going to do it by taking a consensus of dozens of different opinions.
2. Get the best people possible. He makes a great point that’s been made over and over again. Ten mediocre people can’t do the job of one great ‘rock-star’.
3. One Voice. One Vision. Similar to point 1. One person needs to lead it with their vision, and have final say.
4. Don’t Settle. You get one chance. Every details matters. Every detail.

See also: How to create a Good Enough website.

Lee Huang wrote a post on centralizing the Web Marketing function in a company. He describes the things that he feels need to be taken into account when centralizing this function:

1. The “What’s in it for me” questions that will inevitably arise from the business units that were used to owning and controlling the direction of their individual web presence. He’s nailed it when he says that getting the buy in early from the affected business units is key to succeeding.
2. Being responsive. One of the worst things that can happen (and I speak from experience) is taking the web marketing function away from the business units, and then bogging down all requests with slow processes and high dollar amounts. They key is to show value-add early with quick wins and high-value consultation into more than just the mechanics of web marketing.
3. Prioritization of projects. Transparent prioritization may not be a big issue early on, but needs to be in place early on. Again, from experience, at the beginning, work will be simple and trickle in at a pace that can be easily handled. However, if you do things right and are successful in your strategy and campaigns (you do have a Digital Strategy, right?), the requests will start flooding in. At that point, the key stakeholders from the various business units need to be a large part of prioritizing your team’s resources and budget. Favouritism will come back to bit swiftly

The point that Lee doesn’t make, but I have found just as important is “What skills are you going to staff this department with?”

Are you going to transfer the “web” people from the other business units? The pros to this approach are getting the business knowledge that comes with these people. But the big con is that there will always be some loyalty to the previous business unit and it will be hard to prioritize without undue influence.

Are you going to hire people to do the work in-house? Or out-source the execution and just have strategy kept internally? Out-source to your internal IT team, or completely outsource? Again, three different approaches, each with its pros and cons.

Having a one-stop shop in-house allows you to get work done quickly and control the team that works on it. However, you are “stuck” with the skillset you you in house. If you have all Java developers, everything is an enterprise Java solution. Also, you’re at the mercy of internal policies on how quickly you can get work done.

In-sourcing the development to your internal IT team has the advantage of keeping you arms length from the execution, while still having the internal influence and power derived from the relationships normally formed by people in close proximity, and by the normal management interactions. However, IT has processes that may not work at the speed of web development, and when major corporate initiatives occur, your “silly little web projects” can take a back seat to the “really important work.”

Outsourcing the execution usually gives the most control over execution. You can pick and choose different agencies for different executions based on expertise and workload. You can get more work done faster by spreading the work around. But you are at the mercy of hard dollars instead of soft, internal dollars. You are also at the mercy of an agency where the only true relationship you have is with the Account Manager. And we all know that Account Managers say “yes, of course we can do it,” to everything, right? You lose the day to day, looking over a shoulder to see how it’s going. And again, that can come back to bite hard.

If you are thinking of centralizing your Web Marketing function, think about how you’re going to set it up, how you’re going to sell it internally, and how you’re going to handle the fire hose when you succeed!

I just love this image. It says it so well.

The most difficult part of formulating your Digital Strategy is staring at that blank screen and blinking cursor, trying to figure out where to start. What helps is starting with a “Cheat Sheet.” The basics that need to be flushed out before you can even call it a Digital Strategy. I’ve put together several Digital Strategies for various different brands. Through lots of trial and error, Google searches, and standing on the shoulders of giants, I’ve finally put together a basic template I use when I start. It consists of six headings with the questions I have to have answered before I can even claim to have a basic strategy.

OBJECTIVE:
When this Digital Strategy is completed and executed successfully, what will be the outcome? What are you trying to achieve? Increased brand awareness? A 5% reduction in calls to the call centre? A 2% increase in sales in your North East market? Or as simple as getting 10,000 followers on Twitter? Perhaps it’s a better connection with your audience by answering 100 questions per month via online channels? You have to know why you are putting together the strategy and how you will know if you’ve executed is successfully.

Another part of the objectives is the constraints. As much as we’d all love to hear, “Take as much time and money you need to reach the objectives,” chances are you have constraints. This is where you also lay out the timelines and budget as you understand them, as well as any assumptions you are making in the rest of the strategy

AUDIENCE FOOTPRINT:
Who is your audience? What are their demographics? Are they even digital people? If so, where do they congregate? Are they primarily email users only? Do they read blogs, or do they only read “real” news sites like CNN or New York Times? Are they actively engaged in social media sites? Are they Facebook / Twitter users? Would they actually subscribe to Fan Pages? You have to have a very good idea of where your audience is, how they interact in the digital world, and what they would find relevant and engaging.

AUDIT:
OK, so now you know where your audience is and what you want to achieve. Where are you starting? Start with an audit of the digital assets you already have on hand. Domain names, logos, videos, websites (active and old “cobweb-sites”), social media profiles, etc. What are your building blocks?

Next phase of the audit is to understand how your brand is already perceived and being talked about in the digital world. Start with Google searches on your brand names, your product or service sphere and your competitors’. Set up Google Alerts to notify you when you are mentioned. Look at your existing web properties and analyse the incoming links. Where are your visitors coming from? Monitor your search engine logs to see what they’re looking for. Consider using a free or paid social media monitoring tool to dig even deeper. I’ve used Trendrr and YackTrack on the free side with varying degrees of success, though your mileage may vary. On the paid side, you could look at VoxTrot, BuzzMetrics or Cymfony.

Now is also a great time to do a competitive audit. What are you competitors doing? What’s working for them? What sort of commitment are they putting into their Digital Strategy? Do all of the above for your competitors and gauge where you stack up in your market.

ROADMAP:
The $1,000,000 question. Now that you know what you hope to acheive, what’s already out there, what assets you have on hand, and what your audience wants, what are you going to do? In your audit, you may have found some low hanging fruit. Quick executions to start building some momentum with low cost and quick wins to put the wind in everyone’s sails.

First, look at your existing websites. Are they relevant? Do they even provide the basics? Do they speak to your targetted audience? Or to your shareholders? Or to new recruits? Maybe you want to look at a complete overhaul in one fell swoop, but often time, the existing brand sites may benefit from a phased execution. Do you need special sites  targetted to special segments of your audience or specific campaigns (also know as micro-sites). Is the content on your sites current? Are they optimized for Search Engines?

Second, look at your audience profile to help determine if and how you want to engage your audience. Does the CEO need a blog? Or the heads of various business or product units? What information will you share? Who will write the blogs? Your PR or Marketing group? Or the person in charge? What Legal sign-offs are required? How often will the blogs be updated? Do you need a support forum? Do you have Frequently Asked Questions that could be found in an FAQ on your site? What about connecting via Social Media platforms? Is your audience active there? Do you want to have one (or many) Twitter accounts? What about front-line employees? How engaged do you want them to be in your connections with your audience? These are just a few of the questions that come from the audience profile.

Third, look outside your own assets. Should you be getting engaged on other sites? Sites that specialize in your product or service area. Will you monitor the forums and respond to questions about topics about your product or brand? Will you comment on other blogs about topics in your area? In short, how engaged will you be in the so-called blogosphere?

And the final question… what can you accomplish in the time and budget you have, and what part of the roadmap is for future consideration for the elusive Phase II.

(I will write further about the execution of the strategy when I post about 2MCE)

COMMITMENT:
Wouldn’t it be nice if you put together a plan, executed it, and then were done? Sadly, it’s just the beginning. The Digital Strategy needs to outline what the ongoing commitment to the strategy will entail. If you are relaunching your main sites, who’s responsible for making sure that content is fresh, updated and relevant? Who’s responsible for answering email queries about products and services? Who is responsible for monitoring the web and tracking mentions of your company, your brand and your key people? What will they do with that information? Who will be monitoring the blogs for mentions of your sphere and be able to answer questions, complaint and concerns in the comments in a professional manner? Who will monitor your own Social Media properties and put a human, social “face” behind your brand? This is an on-going operational cost, not a project cost. If you can’t get a commitment on the commitment, it’s time to rethink your Digital Strategy.

MEASUREMENT:
How will you know if you succeded? There is a post coming soon about how to measure ROI on the web, but suffice for now to say that it’s not easy to find quanititive measures. What are your measures of success? Is it site visitors? Press mentions? Blog mentions? Followers on Twitter? Fans on your Facebook page? Or something more subtle such as level of engagement by your evangelistic base? Blog mentions vs. your baseline? Google PageRank? Revenue in the North East territory? Call volumes? Go back to your Objectives and bring it full circle by showing how what you measure will prove (or disprove) your success against your objectives.

There you have it. The 6 basic pillars of a Digital Strategy. Of course, you could have more (lots more), and in the coming weeks and months, I’ll elaborate on the Digital Strategy and discuss other pillars to a strong Strategy. But if you think through these basics, you’ll be well on your way to online success!

Monica Harrington makes a great point about Product Strategy:

Consumers don’t care about strategy. Corporate customers do because if they’re investing big dollars over many years in a product, they want to know that it will continue to evolve in ways that are beneficial to the organization. In the corporate market, selling a vision is huge. By contrast, selling a vision to consumers is pointless. The key question they want answered is, “Does it make my life better today?” (BTW, I suspect Bob 3.0 had potential to be great.)

Monica worked on Microsoft Bob and shares some great lessons about product strategy and product teams.

Previously, I wrote about how checking the “Zero” results in your search engine can provide useful insights into what users were linking your brand to in their minds, and how you can take advantage of that.

The other thing Search Engine Stats can provide you is with a better search experience for your users using the concept of Folksonomies. This is the corollary to Taxonomies. In a taxonomy, someone on the web team (usually an Information Architect, or a User Experience Expert) will try to order your content in a logical, human way.

In a Folksonomy, you let the actual actions of your users dictate which content is most relevant. Digg would be a classic example of Folksonomies in action.

But back to Search Engines. Tuning your Engine to look at search results returned to users and the click through that follows can give great insight into what users are linking certain terms to with your brand, and it will help provide a better search experience.

For example: A user searches for the term “Widget” on your site. On the search results page, they click on item number 7 on the page. OK… the engine needs to log that and remember. The next user that searches for widgets will see that previously clicked result at item number 5 on the search results list. If that user clicks on link 5, the next time a user searches for “Widget”, that same result will be higher and higher until it “automatically” becomes to top search result whenever anyone searches for it.

This not only provides a better experience for the user, but now you, as the brand owner, will know what content on your site is most relevant to the “Widget” audience and can take advantage of that knowledge next time you’re looking to launch a “Widget” campaign.

This is a tough sell. I occasionally keep my mouth shut when others are talking about “how to get our users interacting with our brand.” But I often lose that battle, throw out the following bit of experience, and watch as all eyes turn to me like I have two heads.

People don’t want to interact with your brand. People want to interact with people behind your brand. That’s the SOCIAL part of social media!

… more to come

UPDATE: I swear I didn’t see it before I posted this, but THIS says it better than I just did.

The search engine on your site can provide some meaningful brand insights, if you look at the stats in the right way.

There are the standard sets of data that web site managers pull off as a matter of course:

1. How many searches were performed
2. What % of users use the search engine
3. The top searched terms
4. Whether any results were clicked through

But dig a little deeper and some interesting data appears. For example, pull a report on which search terms were entered that returned exactly ZERO results. What does this tell you? It means that someone typed in the URL for your brand. In their mind, your brand = what they were looking for. And your search engine told them to go elsewhere. There is some incredible insight there! What if you looked at all the “Zero” returns and provided a page or a redirect that gave the user what they wanted from your brand?

A real-life example of this is in one of my previous lives at a financial company. When we examined the search engine logs, we found several users had typed in the search term “Wrap Products.” (For those that don’t know the Canadian Mutual Fund industry, a wrap product is a specific type of mutual fund that consists of other mutual funds).

My client didn’t offer Wrap Products, so there were no results. The company essentially said, “We know you came to us wanting a Wrap Product, but go away!”

A slight tweak to our search engine and the addition of a single page, and now the search term “Wrap Product” brought you to a page that explained why we didn’t offer Wrap Products, and pointed you to some of our products that competed with the Wrap market. Now we were saying, “We know you wanted a Wrap Product from our brand, but we have something better for you!”

A 0.1% tweak to our search engine, an 110% improvement in user experience and the user’s perception of our brand.

I see it more often than I should. Flash games where they should not exist. A Twitter account from a major company or brand that hasn’t tweet’d for the last six months. A corporate web page that has outdated promos talking about an event that happened months ago.

At the company I work for, there are several examples of frills and functionality added to applications and sites that are added on the principle of BYC… “Because You Can.”

Before any new initiative or update takes place, think about this…

Is what I am going to do going to help my customer / client / user do something that they “want” to do or “need” to do? Does it move my brand forward? Does it add real value? Is my / our effort better spent elsewhere?

Because, just because you “can” add that game, or chart, or step, doesn’t mean you “should”