The idea behind “Designing Strategy” isn’t simply about building a slick-looking website with all the latest bells, whistles, and social media plug-ins. Instead, it’s about asking oneself all of the questions that need to be answered when building an online presence, and using those answers to form an outreach, engagement, or marketing game plan.

1. RealignYour Mission and Values
WithYour Digital Presence
Designing
Strategy

2. Introduction

3. Introduction | 3
The fact that Tanya Shaw is a fictional person makes the
point even more perfectly.
In late August 2012, Shaw, ostensibly a young woman
from Columbus, Ohio, “bravely” dined for the first
time at a Thai cafe without having done any research
on the restaurant’s food or service. She didn’t search
for reviews of the restaurant via Google or query her
friends about it on Facebook. She just happened upon
the place and walked right in. “Well, I haven’t pored
over the menu on the restaurant’s website, read the first
20 Yelp ratings, or scanned any online reviews from
blogs or newspapers, but here we go,” Shaw was quoted
as saying. “I’m flying totally blind here.”
Shaw was the subject of a “news” article on the satirical
website The Onion. Not a real person. But an authentic
and believable representation of almost everyone today
– especially those under a certain not-so-young age.

4. Introduction | 4
Why was this an example of “funny-because-it’s-true”?
Because very few Americans today would actually take
this risk. People are increasingly unwilling to patronize
a business unless it has a legitimate online presence.
If a restaurant has negative reviews on Yelp and
Chowhound, what does that say about it? Worse yet,
what if it has zero reviews? We have become a society
in which one’s physical storefront is no more important
than one’s virtual representation – probably less
important, in fact.
That reality is even more true for professional services
businesses. If your business is interior design but your
website looks like it was created in 1998, that won’t
bode well for bringing in new customers. If you do A/C
installation and repair, but a potential customer can’t
easily contact you for an appointment through your site,
that potential customer is likely to go elsewhere.

5. Introduction | 5
The need to thoughtfully present oneself online
is even more acute for those without brick-and-
mortar businesses. Campaigns, causes, non-profits,
movements, celebrities, ideas — all of these desire for
their fans and followers to take action, but often have
little more than their digital presence with which to
make an impact.
But the idea behind “Designing Strategy” isn’t simply
about building a slick-looking website with all the latest
bells, whistles, and social media plug-ins. Instead, it’s
about asking oneself all of the questions that need to be
answered when building an online presence, and using
those answers to form an outreach, engagement, or
marketing game plan. Also, “Designing Strategy” means
aligning your most public, personal and important
touchpoint with target audiences and customers – your
website – with the mission, values, and competitive
advantages your organization offers. Instead of writing
up a business plan or a strategy memo – tools that
suffer a half-life of fifteen whole minutes – build or
redesign your organization’s website first and use the
designing process to determine, hone, or realign your
organization’s strategy.

6. Introduction | 6
Based on many years of working with a wide range of clients, it is our
firm belief that every organization ought to routinely envision its own
target customer – its own fictional Tanya Shaw – and design a strategy
to find, win over, and serve that customer. In this digital age, it’s satire
to think customers will simply walk through your door. But, as we
offer, effective digital communications are not only an imperative but
an opportunity to fully (re)imagine and develop a winning strategy.
Our Definition of Customer - We view customers
as anyone an organization serves.You may
call them a targeted audience, a segment, a
supporter, a constituency, what have you. In our
context it’s anyone who you want to serve, who
wants what you have, or cares about your success.
We believe customer is a good word to use for all
of these because it implies a relationship based
on service - the organization to the customer.

7. We want you to
succeed and
we know digital
is the way

8. We want you to succeed and we know digital is the way | 8
We want your organization to grow or become more
efficient or more profitable or more responsive and
sensitive to customers needs. We believe organizations,
whether big or small or in-between, should recognize
frequent and routine reflection is an essential element
to success. Regularly evaluating one’s path, progress,
metrics, and mission is critical. And we believe that is
true of all organizations. However, the problem at hand
is how most organizations approach that task. The big
ones hire high-dollar consultants. The medium-sized
ones often hold annual retreats, brainstorming sessions,
or employee rallies. Small organizations try to eke out a
few hours every quarter to take stock of where they are,
usually ceding those hours, instead, to the running and
managing of their own core operations.

9. We want you to succeed and we know digital is the way | 9
Our view, based on countless hours consulting for organizations, is that
the traditional way of measuring success, re-benchmarking, and re-
focusing a organizational mission is, well, expensive. It’s also slow, out-
dated, and inefficient.
The purpose herein is to describe a simple, affordable, and effective
way of focusing your business model (whatever type of organization
you are) and keying in to areas for improvement.
In short, we describe why you should scrap the traditional business/
strategy plan approach, and instead design and build a digital platform.
What the EFF is a digital platform? - Well, let’s
consult Wikipedia. It is “an audience-centric
platform across different media and various
business functions.”Think about what that means
in a digital world - it’s you, it’s your organization.
IT’S EVERYTHING.These days,“digital platform”
is just another way of saying “your identity.”

10. Our Experience

11. Our Experience | 11
At IDMLOCO, our business is – to put it in the terms
that our parents can understand – building websites.
And we’ve built a lot of them – for companies national
and local, for political campaigns, for causes, for
individuals, and more. We even once built a website for
a rental service for race cars (one of our passions).

12. Our Experience | 12
But when we say we do “websites,” of course we mean much more than
that. We’re not just graphic designers, HTML coders and Wordpress
experts. There may be other companies out there that approach the
job that way. We don’t. We get that your digital presence is your public
face - and that includes not just your website, but your email blasts,
online advertising and social media profiles. It’s your storefront,
your front office, your organization. It should project to the world
everything you want to say about your organization and everything
potential customers need to hear to believe and support you. So, in
that frame of reference, we don’t just build websites, we develop a full
digital strategy and, perhaps more importantly, we more often than
not consult on core business, outreach and marketing strategy.
Figure 1:
IDMLOCO’s
Integrated
Digital Strategy
Framework
TV
1
2
3
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
ACTIVIST EMAIL
SMSSMS
QR CODE
PHONE/MOBILE
WEBSITE
WEB LANDING
PAGE
WEB LANDING
PAGE
SOCIAL APP MOBILE WEB
RADIO EMAIL
CONTACTENGAGEACTIVATE
SOCIAL ADS
SUPPORTER ACTIONS
MOBILE ADS
WEB &
VIDEO ADS
ACTIVIST
DATABASE
SHAREDONATE PETITION

13. Our Experience | 13
Why do we say that? Because almost every time we are asked to design a
website for a company or provide other digital solutions, we’re called in as
utility workers. Like plumbers or cable repair people – to provide a narrowly
defined service. However, almost every time, we find ourselves assuming
dual roles: both the digital designer and the business strategy consultant.
That’s because in working to develop an online presence, we see a need to
ask organizations questions such as “who is your target audience?” and
“what are your competitors doing that you’re not?” Those are queries that
help us understand an organization, wrap our minds around its goals, and
design an appropriate online public face. They are questions that force an
organization to focus its goals, strategies, and identity.
Forthevastmajorityoforganizations,itbecomescleartousthatit’sthefirst
timethosequestionshavebeenasked.
Stripping away all the MBA jargon, have you
asked yourself these kinds of questions lately?
• What is my business
here to accomplish?
• Who are my customers?
• Why are they my
customers?
• How can I better serve
my customers?
• How will I attract new
customers?
• What are my
competitors doing?
• What is my business
known for?
• What do I want people
to know my
business for?

14. Our Experience | 14
Imagine that: an organization – whether it has been operating for
a decade or is brand new – that has never surveyed its competitors,
asked itself to put a mission statement down on paper, or charted a
path to greater success. We’ve worked with hundreds of them.
From our experience, this deficiency is universal, across the board,
whether an organization is a locally focused business with just a
handful of employees or a statewide political campaign commanding
millions of dollars of expenditures over just a few months.
If you have concise written answer to these
questions that are 100% relevant to your current
situation, you’re way ahead of the curve. In our
experience, most organizations don’t, which is
why it’s so hard to develop great website content
during a redesign.

15. Our Experience | 15
Therefore, let us restate it that way: In our experience,
we’ve consulted for organizations, big and small; we’ve
consulted for political campaigns, causes, celebrities,
and more; we’ve helped companies focus their strategies
– once even for that race car rental service.
And in doing so, we’ve noticed a trend.
A problematic one.
Most organizations have a difficult time articulating
who they are. They can’t deliver an elevator pitch. They
haven’t outlined an identity. They have no mission
statement, no 6-month or 1-year plan.

16. Our Experience | 16
So, that’s when it hit us. We ought to start talking about
designing a website as much more than HTML and
Flash and Wordpress. The process of creating a website
causes one to examine all aspects of one’s business. The
process forces the website-owner to consider and hone
its reason for being and its path forward. Thereby, the
firm developing the website, if it has the experience to
do so, serves as more of a business consultant than a
utility worker providing a product. We ought to start
talking about designing strategies rather than just
designing websites.
For IDMLOCO, that works, because our background
merges years of political campaign consulting services
for some of the largest, most complex campaigns in
history and even more years of prior management
consulting experience with some of the world’s largest
organizations. It’s been said that a management
consultant simply looks at the client’s watch to tell her
what time it is. While it is true that an outside set of
eyes can bring a new perspective, it is also true that
an accurate perspective requires rigorous analysis
combined with strategic techniques.

17. Our Experience | 17
Many organizations might consider it radical to throw
away the business plan or strategy memo, do away with
mission statements, and get rid of the prospectus and
the marketing brochures (you know they’re outdated
anyway) and instead put efforts into building and
refreshing a website. But let us explain why this idea
isn’t so extreme.

18. The Best In The
Business Ensure
Their Mission
AndValues Are
AlignedWith
Their Digital
Presence

19. The Best In The Business Ensure Their Mission And
Values Are Aligned With Their Digital Presence
We all know Google.
It began as a search engine with the goal to organize all
the world’s information. Its corporate ethos from day
one was organized around a unique, but simple, guiding
principle: “Don’t be evil.”
The company’s main mission is to organize the world’s
information in ways that are helpful to people. If you
need directions from your home to the nearest health
care clinic or want to find a recipe for an all-organic
lemon meringue pie, Google is there for you.
That’s one of the reasons its website is famously
stripped down. Type that URL into your web browser
and you’ll see a mostly-white screen with just the
word “Google” and a search bar. The company made a
deliberate decision to focus on its core reason-for-being
­­— search — and resist the urge to clutter its precious
online real estate with anything that would dilute its
persona and, more importantly, risk its users’ trust.
There is not a single thing on the site that conveys
“we’re trying to sell you something” or “we’re trying to
make a political point.”

20. The Best In The Business Ensure Their Mission And
Values Are Aligned With Their Digital Presence
That is, until September 2012.
When Google released its tablet computer, the Nexus
7, to compete with the iPad, a modest announcement
appeared on the page under the search bar. An image
of a small portion of the device was accompanied by the
words “The playground is open. The new $199 tablet
from Google.”
In the grand scheme of things, this was not dramatic.
However, the Internet erupted.

21. The Best In The Business Ensure Their Mission And
Values Are Aligned With Their Digital Presence
Online media immediately began sniping. Bloggers
questioned whether Google had completely abandoned
its long-standing “don’t be evil” tenet. In articles and
opinions, attention was drawn to the recent departure
of an important executive with the company who had
previously had jurisdiction over the homepage. Negative
comments about the Nexus 7 device ensued.
Why did that happen?

22. The Best In The Business Ensure Their Mission And
Values Are Aligned With Their Digital Presence
Google is a company that exists only online. Its website
projects the persona of a company that is here to help
– a friendly, well-meaning company. On a daily basis,
it exhibits a deliberate choice to eschew sales and
proselytizing. If, on one day every six months or a year,
it takes a different approach, it represents a stark choice
to exhibit a different ethos, or to buck or highlight its
ethos. An apt corollary would be a pizza joint that, on
one day, decided to instead serve only udon noodle
bowls. Or, an auto repair shop with a long tradition
of honest service and below-market-rate hourly rates
that, in an instant, tripled its estimates and began
unnecessarily up-selling customers. Or an independent
punk rock group that espouses a do-it-yourself ethic
filing a lawsuit to sue music-lovers who downloaded
their songs without paying for them.

23. The Best In The Business Ensure Their Mission And
Values Are Aligned With Their Digital Presence
The Google example is perhaps more sharply defined
than most, but the lesson for all organizations remains:
stray from your mission, your business model, and
there are consequences. Not only does a well-thought-
out website help to focus on that business model,
but it also serves to remind you of it, daily. Just like
looking in the mirror as you brush your teeth and
ready yourself for each day, a company’s website and
its every digital interface – from its Twitter feed to its
mobile app – outwardly face the public every minute
and make an impression. How you present your
organization, communicate its value, what you say and
do matters. A lot.

24. The Best In The Business Ensure Their Mission And
Values Are Aligned With Their Digital Presence
Just think - Google’s actions online stepped out of alignment with its
mission and values as its customers understood them for a very short
time and paid a heavy price - in terms of earned media, brand loyalty
and sales. What price is your organization paying EVERY DAY by
maintaining a digital presence that might be outdated, difficult to use,
or even ugly - but definitely out of alignment with your stated mission
and values?
Think about it:
• What does a business plan or strategy memo do
that a well-thought-out website doesn’t?
• More importantly, what more does a website
do that a static business plan or strategy memo
could never?

25. StopWasting
Time and Get
OnWith It!

26. Stop Wasting Time and Get On With It! | 26
You’ve heard the saying “you never get a second chance
to make a first impression.” Oscar Wilde wrote that,
or maybe it was Will Rogers – it was definitely in an
American shampoo commercial in the 1980s that
warned of dandruff.
In any case, in our digital world, that saying is no longer
necessarily true. In fact, there are countless avenues
and manners of making multiple impressions at any
given moment. (However, that also means there’s the
possibility of making a number of poor impressions.)
That’s why we advocate for strategies that also live
and breathe and can adapt. In doing so, we’re also
advocating for organizations to view their digital team
as broader business strategists.

27. Stop Wasting Time and Get On With It! | 27
Because the traditional methods of determining an
organization’s path are too abstract and disconnected
from the realities of managing an organization. It’s like
learning math in school, but without the context of a
real world application. With digital platform design,
you start with the application – all the work is done
in pursuit of a real objective that provides immediate
value when achieved. How much more enjoyable would
math class have been if every problem assigned got you
one step closer to building a stronger bridge, or a more
efficient engine? Having a real, tangible asset that does
something to attract new customers and grow your
business at the end of the planning process puts you in
a different mindset – it’s no longer busy work. It’s fun.
It’s approachable. And it makes sense.

28. Digital Strategy
and Execution
San Francisco
Sacramento
Los Angeles
idmlo.co
greetings@idmlo.co