Develop a digital strategy

What is a digital strategy?

A digital strategy is a written plan that clarifies your online goals and helps you put the right technology and processes in place to achieve these goals. Your online goals relate to your overall marketing objectives and what you want your business to achieve online.

For example, if one of your online goals is to improve sales from your website, your strategy would cover all aspects of this activity, from the eCommerce platform you use (such as Shopify) to your customer service policies.

Create a marketing plan

Your digital strategy should always be part of an overall marketing plan and tied to your online goals. If you don't have one, our guide will help you get started.

Benefits of a digital strategy

A digital strategy aligns your online activities with your business goals to keep you on track in a changing environment.

A digital strategy will help you:

• stay competitive online
• improve customer service
• increase your customer base
• expand and grow your business
• improve quality control

It can also help you streamline your business by:

• freeing you up from process-driven activities
• improving redundancy as part of disaster recovery
• enabling 24/7 sales
• automating aspects of your staff induction and training

How to set online goals

Define your online goals with clear timeframes and ways that you can measure the success of your digital strategy.

Make your online goals 'SMART' goals:

• Specific – what are your objectives?
• Measurable – what will you use as a measure of success?
• Achievable – are the objectives possible for the business?
• Realistic – do you have the knowledge and resources to achieve your objectives?
• Timely – in what time frame do you want to achieve your objectives?

Example online goals

Your own list of online goals will vary depending on your business and what you're trying to achieve. For example, your goals might be to increase online sales and engagement with your website.

The following online goals are examples of measurable goals:

• Set up a website in 3 months.
• Improve your website – for example, conversion optimisation, mobile friendly.
• Grow online sales by 12%.
• Rank in position 1 to 3 in Google for 5 target keywords.
• Grow your database by 200 subscribers.
• Build 2 new connections with other businesses a week.

Create an action plan

Create an action plan to help turn your goals into reality:

1. List the tasks that must be completed for each goal.
2. Assign the task to a person and set a due date.
3. For each activity or task, write down what you expect it to achieve for your business – this helps you make sure that the activities in your action plan feed directly into improving and growing your business.