Digital — Execution

Very often marketers are building cyber assets — websites, blogs, Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles, YouTube brand channels and so on — only because everyone seems to be doing so. Not much thought goes into the strategy or the execution. The outcome is a collection of disconnected properties that diffuse and disorient their brand, and confuse customers.

It is crucially important that before you implement anything on the internet, you have a cohesive strategy that integrates all offline and online brand assets, such that all the elements play well-co-ordinated, yet distinct roles. The brand’s communication and imagery remains intact as customers move across the media platforms, yet each channel contributes incremental value to the brand.

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Digital Marketing Plan

The building blocks of an effective marketing strategy are the same as they always used to be. You segment your market, target customers, differentiate, and execute. In a multi-media world, it is important too that you have clearly defined digital marketing goals and roles for your online assets.

Once it is chalked out, you need to execute on the strategy, and this requires a well-constructed execution plan. Your plan should comprise of the following key steps:

1. Build Website (or enhance it)

2. Add Content

3. Listen

4. Promote on Social Media

5. Advertise

6. Convert and Manage

7. Monitor

Serving as a systematic guide to developing and executing digital marketing plans, this chapter outlines the relevant methods and processes that each of the above steps entail.

Digital Marketing Exercise

Evaluate the PropLog property portal or your company’s website in the context of the site’s objectives, its target audience, and its content, structure and design.

Objectives

• What are your organization’s key digital marketing objectives? (What do you think they ought to be?)
• What role does the website play in achieving these objective?

Target audience

• What are your company’s key market segments and customer groups?
• Describe the profile of one or two key customer groups.
• What customer profiles or personas does the website target? (What customer profiles or personas do you think it should target?)

Website Grading

Use a website grading facility such as HubSpot’s Website Grader (https://website.grader.com/) to grade your site.

Personalization

• Choose two distinct personas (customer profiles). What information are these customers most interested in? What are the 5 most common question asked by them?
• Does your company’s website personalize your customers’ experiences?
• Are there different landing pages and content pages for each of the personas?
• Are these pages tailored to address the distinct information needs to each of the targeted customer profiles?
• Does the site answer the most frequently asked customers’ questions?

Content and Design

• Is the content engaging, simple, crisp and easy to read?
• Does the content differ distinctly from the company’s printed brochures or media advertisements, or is it brochureware?
• Is the site’s flow multidirectional? How well does it link to related, relevant pages within and outside your web site?
• To what extent is the web site effectively using multi-media including videos, images, apps and so on?
• In what ways can the site be more effective in generating leads?
• What training materials such as how-to videos, webinars etc. are found on the website?
• What call-to-action triggers are located on the website?
• Which social media platforms does your company use to engage with customers? How effective is it in using these platforms? How does content differ across the platforms?
• Briefly list out the features that help to optimize the web site for search engines (SEO).

Competition Benchmarking

Compare, contrast and rate your company’s digital marketing strategy to that of one of your competitors, in terms:

• Targeting customers
• Personalization
• Content
• Design

Recommendation: What should your company do to improve their web site?

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