Digital Marketing Strategy Guide for 2014

DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY GUIDE DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY GUIDE

We released our first digital marketing strategy guide in the summer
of 2013. Now as we’re fast approaching the summer of 2014, we’ve
decided it’s time for an update.
Since that first guide, we have embraced a new planning system
known as S.O.S.T.A.C (situation, objectives, strategy, tactics, actions
and control).
One benefit of S.O.S.T.A.C is that it captures a good digital marketing
strategy as a continuous cycle of planning, testing, monitoring and
adapting.
We hope you find this guide useful.
The Cloudspotting Team.

S = situation, where you are
O = objectives, what you want
S = strategy, how you get there
T = tactics, tools to help you get
there
A = actions, details on how to get
there
C = control, how to measure
performance
IMAGE: http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/capability-performance-review/sostac-marketing-plan-infographic/

http://i.marketingprofs.com/assets/images/daily-chirp/20-captivating-marketing-statistics-that-will-drive-2014-infographic.jpg
Of all marketers
have found a
customer through
Facebook in 2013.
Of all marketers
have found a
customer though
LinkedIn
Inbound marketing
delivers 54% more
leads than
traditional outbound
marketing.

At 89%,customer
testimonials have
the highest
effectiveness rating
for content
marketing.
B2B companies
that blog gain 67%
more leads than
those that don’t.
Videos on landing
pages increase
conversions by
86%

http://www.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/social-digital-mobile-around-the-world-january-2014
http://realbusiness.co.uk/article/19058-40-stats-about-mobile-that-every-ceo-should-know
Globally, mobile
penetration stands
at 93%
By 2017, there will
be 8.6bn mobile
ready devices in
use and global data
traffic will have
increased 13 fold.
The UK downloaded
approximately 275m
apps in February
2013 alone.

http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/search-engine-marketing-what-marketers-need-know-re-2014-seo-trends/1
http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/12/21/5-top-seo-and-online-marketing-trends-for-2014/2/
20% of searches on
Google are related
to location and 56%
of mobile phone
users use their
browser for local
searches.
Organic search
traffic produces
35% higher
conversion rates
than traffic driven
by equivalent paid
search traffic.
75% of search
users are not
clicking past the
first page of search
results.
*S.E.O is the acronym for search engine optimisation

Based on these statistics, it is a given that for any digital marketing strategy
to be effective and successful, you must include a combination of:
1. Great content production
2. Social media marketing
3. Mobile marketing and
4. Search engine marking and S.E.O.
Your digital marketing strategy is just a content plan that is highly tailored to
your audience. That means you provide them with useful, valuable content,
through the channels they want, on the devices the use for the search terms
they enter.
And you inform this content plan (digital marketing strategy) with in-depth
research and data.

SITUATION ANALYSIS
Situation analysis should be the first tactic when planning your digital
marketing strategy. You need to understand your current
performance before you can set attainable and relevant objectives.
Analysing your current situation will give you the benchmark against
which all future progress and achievements can be measured.
This should include looking at:
• The demographics and behaviours of your existing audience
• Traffic referral from and engagement levels on social media
• Traffic from mobile devices and operating systems
• Most popular landing pages, bounce rates and visitor flow
• Performance and tactics of your closest competitors

SITUATION ANALYSIS
S - strengths
W - weaknesses
O - opportunities
T - threats

OBJECTIVES
They are the part of your strategy through which you can measure
success. To increase the likelihood of arriving at your final
destination, set objectives that are attainable and relevant to your
business’ capabilities.
Objectives need to be specific, it’s not enough to simply state where
you want to be at the end of your journey you need to include time
frames indicating when you expect to fulfil these objectives as well.
Setting objectives defines the end destination of
your digital marketing journey so they need to be

STRATEGY
Once you have an understanding of your current situation and have
used that information to inform SMART objectives you can begin
planning your strategy. At this point you should identify:
• New target markets your business could benefit from reaching
• Areas were you can improve your existing strategy e.g.
working to improve landing pages with higher than average
bounce rates.
• The relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you need to
monitor in order to understand any progress you make

STRATEGY
Awareness
Interest
Trust
Action
Complete
Search & Social
“Successful Conversion”
Identifying areas where your existing marketing
strategy and content can be improved AND
identifying new target markets to engage with
are two distinct strands of any good digital
marketing strategy.
Streamlining your conversion funnel by
improving your content and strategy can take
effect quickly where as engaging new
audiences can take more time and effort.
These two strategies are most effective when
they are implemented together.

STRATEGY
TIME
CONVERSIONRATE
Increasing the
effectiveness of the
conversion funnel
by improving any
existing marketing
strategy and
content.
Increasing
traffic to the
website by
engaging new
target markets
Fastest growth
occurs when these
two improvements
coincide

TACTICS
If you think of your initial strategy as a skeleton, developing your
tactics is where you start adding flesh on to those bones. Your
strategy tells you generally how you’re going to achieve your
objectives, your tactics tells you exactly how.
At this point you should be focusing on content:
• What content you will produce and when: plan and schedule
• When you will broadcast content: time of day, weekends etc.
• Where you will share content: social and mobile platforms
• How you will tailor content to suit different audiences
It is here that your initial situation analysis and broad strategy
planning will begin to pay off.

ACTIONS
Planning your actions is the point when you decide who will be
responsible for which aspect of your strategy and when they will be
implemented.
You should outline the systems, processes and tools you will use
throughout the duration of your marketing.
Identify your internal capabilities and capacity for handling your
strategy and tactics and if necessary set up working relationships
with relevant external agencies.

CONTROL
Keeping control is essential for keeping your digital marketing
strategy streamlined and efficient, ensuring it generates the highest
return on investment.
It is important to decide when and how reports will be generated and
assign responsibility for doing so to avoid gaps in data collection.
Processes and tools you will use to collect data should also be
specified to make data sets reliably comparable.
Different measurement tools can differ in their results, to handle this
collect data from several different analytics tools and take an
average.

CONTROL
Things you should include in your performance reporting:
• Consistently and constantly measure all the KPIs relevant to
your objectives. That means taking data snapshots at regular
intervals to allow data comparisons as well as tracking over
time.
• Regularly run user testing on your website and content to
ensure it is providing the best user experience possible.
• Monitor your conversion rates (these should be tied to your
objectives) and make sure this is linked to dates, allowing you
to map cause and effect. This will inform your conversion rate
optimisation (CRO) efforts.

CONTROL
One of the best tools available to help keep control of your digital
marketing strategy is Google Analytics.
This is a completely free resource that only requires the simple
addition of a tracking code to your website in order to enable data
collection.
This platform offers real time tracking, constant tracking and as
recommended, enables data comparison over time.
The amount of data available in Google Analytics is vast so it’s worth
taking the time to ensure you set up your campaign properly. You can
find some useful tips, advice and links on how to use Google
Analytics right here on our blog.

The Met Office needed a way to monitor vast amounts of online data
in order to demonstrate ROI which they measure in terms of reach,
revenue and reputation.
Gathering analytics and data enabled the Met Office to transform its
content marketing strategy through data driven insight, allowing them
to create digital personas and better understand their audience
behaviour and content preferences
With this insight, the Met Office can invest in marketing resources
and provide relevant content that is better aligned with customer
interests, and can syndicate the content to other authority newswires
and syndication partners to attract more relevant traffic to the Met
Office website.
http://www.figarodigital.co.uk/case-study/the-met-office-webtrends.aspx

We provide “data doses” for our retainer clients and when requested
can deliver bespoke digital marketing strategy audits, tailored to
providing the relevant analytics our clients’ need based on their
chosen objectives.
In one case, by providing this tailored digital marketing strategy audit
and identifying key actions points, our client was able to increase
traffic to their site by 60% in a single year.
http://www.figarodigital.co.uk/case-study/the-met-office-webtrends.aspx

+CloudspottingCoUk
/company/cloudspotting
@leedswebagency
info@cloudspotting.co.uk
+44 (0)113 234 1542

Digital Marketing Strategy Guide for 2014

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Digital Marketing Strategy Guide for 2014