To sustain profitability in today’s competitive market space, a digital marketing strategy plays an extremely crucial role. But it is equally critical to establish a successful digital marketing plan to stay a step ahead of your peers. Many big organizations’ leaders lack clarity on what “digital” means for their strategy. They underrate the degree of digital disruption to the economic underpinnings of their businesses. They also don’t give much importance to the speed with which digital ecosystems are blurring the boundaries of any industry and this is the reason why their digital marketing strategy fails. Therefore, the only way for leaders to cut through inertia and improve is to take tough steps on four fronts: ignorance, fear, guesswork, and diffusion of effort.
In this article, we have discussed how an organization can improve overcoming inertia while building confidence about how to design an appropriate digital marketing strategy and master the new economics of going digital. This can give your digital marketing strategy a jolt and accelerate the shift of your digital marketing plan as a whole –
In an organization, many senior executives are not fully fluent in what their digital marketing plan is and how it can change the way their businesses operate or the competitive context. They tend to invest in cool digital technologies, which might not be relevant to their business. This is due to the lack of a clear understanding of whether such technologies can generate value for their business. They are also more likely to make overlapping, fragmented, or subscale digital investments. Ignorance, ultimately, slows down the pace at which a business deploys new digital technologies. This can be improved by raising the technology IQ and overcoming competitive blind spots. It can also help in formulating a digital marketing strategy more effectively.
An effective digital marketing plan requires focus but responding to digital technologies inevitably risks diffusion of effort. Most companies we know are struggling and trying to do two things simultaneously: creating innovative new digital businesses and reinventing the core by digitizing and automating some of its key elements. This poses an acute challenge because of the unsteady pace of digital change and uncertainties surrounding the adoption of advanced technologies. Therefore, in such a condition, you can improve in two ways. One is analyzing the portfolio of initiatives of your company at different stages like nurturing, seeding, growing, or pruning. The other is embracing the necessity of big moves like sustained capital investment, dramatic reallocation of resources, and radical productivity improvements.