A digital strategy establishes the overall direction that your business will follow on a digital level. That is why it is important you execute each step of building the strategy thoughtfully. In step one of a digital strategy: Business Research, we went into great detail about why it is important to take some time to research your business, your competitors and the industry that you play in.
After gathering all the necessary research, you’ll need to analyse it. By doing so, you will discover any gaps in your business strategy that you can address going forward.
1. Analyse Your Observations
After collecting all the information relevant to your business and the assets you currently use, spend some time analysing it in detail. By performing this step, you will develop an understanding of what needs to be improved upon within your products, services, website and social media channels. Some improvements could include altering what you currently offer to your customers, or optimising your website to improve your customers experience and streamline the conversion process.
2. Complete a SWOT or Porter’s Five Forces Assessment
Performing a SWOT analysis on your business and your competitor’s business involves taking all the information you collected in the business research phase, and grouping it into Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This will help you identify focus points going forward.
Completing the Porter’s Five Forces assessment is also valuable at this stage, to analyse any external factors at play on your business. This includes highlighting:
- Threat of New Entrants: how easy it is for new businesses to come in and disrupt what you do? What do the barriers to entry look like and how easy are they to overcome?
- Threat of Substitute: how easy it is for customers to switch to an alternative product or service?
- Competitive Rivalry: how many competitors do you have? What does your industry growth look like? How much market share do you occupy?
- Buyers Power: how many customers do you have? Are they sensitive to price? Are they loyal to brands or switch easily? What are their hurdles to switching?
- Suppliers Power: how much power do your suppliers have? What is their agility like? How unique are their products or services?
Once you have put your research through these assessments, analyse the output and highlight the gaps.
3. Highlight Gaps Within Your Business
At this point, gaps within your business should be showing. Sometimes you’ll find broad-reaching gaps, like issues with your fulfilment process, that impacts many teams. Otherwise, you might discover gaps on your website, such as a poor user-experience, or you may find gaps in your communication plans, such as a disconnect between your business and your audience expectations.
Whatever you find, it’s important to highlight these gaps early in your digital strategy to ensure you have the opportunity to develop a plan to close the gap and resolve any issues.
4. Outline Disruptors That Might Have Been Missed
Throughout this process, it’s easy to miss opportunities – so make sure you double check your research with fresh eyes. By doing so, you can identify potential niches and opportunities that can be tapped into and capitalised on.
By reviewing this section of your research, it allows you and your team to become aware of what to keep your focus on in the short and long-term. By developing this sense of understanding, your business can be a step in-front of any changes that could occur within your sector, giving you time to pivot and test new opportunities. This also means your business remains ahead of your competitors.
This is a vital area to regularly check-in on even once you have completed your digital strategy.
5. Assess and Alter Target Audiences
During your research, you may have discovered that your target audience is no longer responding well to your business’ services, products, or goals.
If this is the case for your business you may need to reflect on your business offerings, alter your target market to fit your company’s current offerings, or you might need to reflect on the way you communicate to your target market. Whatever is the solution for your company, it’s important to keep the customer’s needs front and center.
Reflect on your business offerings in light of the research you have done. Deep dive into the data behind your products and services to ensure they remain relevant. Consider if you need to make adjustments based on the data.
Next, analyse your database and review the people who are actually using your products and services. Do they align with the persona you are targeting? If not, consider updating your persona’s to ensure you’re targeting the best audience for your business.
If you find the persona you’re target is still accurate, but they don’t appear to be responding well to your current marketing activities, it’s worth reviewing the way communicate. The digital space is irrefutably dynamic, with new platforms emerging and communication styles shifting all the time. If your audience stops responding to what you’re doing, you might need to review where they’re showing up online and how they are communicating.
At the end of this process, you should have a better understanding of your persona’s. Regularly reviewing them to ensure you’re targeting the right people in the right way is vital to success in the digital space.
Conclusion:
It is pivotal that you analyse all the research you have gathered from step one of building your digital strategy because it allows you to gain a true understanding of your business and your industry.
Once you have analysed all the collected information, take these considerations and learnings to supplement your digital strategy. The next step to your strategy is to set your business’ objectives and vision – both internally and externally. This will be covered in-depth in our next series blog, step three: setting your objectives.