How to Write Digital Strategy

All content copyright © 2015 Ravi Prasad. Contact [email protected] This is a pre-publication draft of the book ‘How to write digital strategy’ circulated for review and feedback purposes on Slideshare only. All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored or transmitted by any means without the prior permission of the author.

1

How to write digital strategy A ‘how to guide’ to creating, writing and thinking about digital strategy and strategy in general. Ravi D. Prasad.


2

I write strategy for a living, it’s what I’ve done for over a decade. The questions I am most often asked are ‘how do I write a digital strategy’ and ‘what does a digital strategy look like’. They’re good questions. And the purpose of this book is to answer them.


3

Let’s define strategy Before we talk about strategy, it’s important that we define it. The dictionary will provide definitions like this: a plan of action designed to achieve a long-‐term or overall aim. For the purposes of this book. consider that a strategy is an answer to a problem. Strategy documents can be full of stuff, data, analysis, implementation, execution, lots of things like this can be in there. This stuff serves to validate your strategy or give it context or make it actionable. The important thing in a strategy document is the answer to the problem.


4

How to write digital strategy

This book doesn’t contain everything; it contains just enough so that you can develop a strategy that works. Bear in mind there are many different ways to write a strategy, this is just one that I use. This book contains four parts: 1. A context for digital strategy. Your strategy has to work out there in the real world. So it’s important to understand how that world works. We all know that things have changed; the way people interact with and consume media has changed, the way they are connected to each other through social media has changed. This section describes those changes, why they are important and how they provide the context for framing a digital strategy. 2. Finding your campaign idea. A changed context means the big campaign or advertising idea you need to find has changed too. This section examines what the big idea needs to look like now – and how to find it. 3. An ecosystem for the campaign. If you are not looking for a campaign idea and if you understand the changed context, then you could start your reading with this chapter. An ecosystem describes the channels we need to use and how they relate to each other; it describes a user journey. The changed context means we need to look anew at how we create this user journey and use our channels.


5

4. A template for writing a digital strategy. Now that we have a context for our strategy, know how to find our big idea, and have a grasp of what the ecosystem for a campaign should look like, we can look at a template for writing a digital strategy document. If you just want to know what a digital strategy looks like and how to write one, this is the chapter you want. This book is a guide for writing a digital strategy for advertising, marketing and communications campaigns. A lot of it is applicable to social media strategy too. It’s short and it’s simple. Even if you’ve never written a strategy or digital strategy before, in about an hour from now you’ll be able to write one. And it will be one that you can use. We want to keep things simple. So we’re not looking at the theory, we’re not looking at individual channels, or everything you can or should include. We’re looking at putting together the bones of a strategy that will work. This book is just comprehensive enough so that even if you include nothing else, you’ll have a strategy that will do the job. Everything here has been tried and tested and tested and tested again. It’s been made as simple as possible, but no simpler. It’s not guesswork, it’s not theory; it is practical and proven. I write strategy for a living, it’s what I’ve done for over a decade. The questions I am most often asked is ‘how do I write a digital strategy’ and ‘what does a digital strategy look like’. They’re good questions. And the purpose of this book is to answer them.


6

Part 1. A context for digital strategy.

Everything has changed. As we mentioned at the beginning, our strategy has to work in the real world, so it’s important to understand how the world works. It makes this section more important than you’d think. Let’s start by stating what should be obvious about the world today; we all know that technology, digital media, social media, the convergence and interconnectedness of channels and platforms and the growing connectedness of the consumer -‐ it’s changed everything. Everything and every one is connected. And it’s changed the rules for developing strategy with it. This ‘new connectedness’ means that we can’t just write a ‘digital’ strategy. It means we have to write digital into your overall strategy. In other words, we can’t just do a digital strategy in ‘isolation’. We have to write digital into everything. It’s the same with social media strategy. Of course the reality is sometimes you’ll need to do a strategy that is focused on digital only. And what you’ll find here can be applied. It’s just that by looking at digital in isolation we’re not realising the potential of all the other channels in the mix. And this is what digital can do so well -‐ maximise the efficiency, effectiveness, potential and ROI of all channels and campaign activities. Just as we can’t just do a digital strategy in ‘isolation’, the same is true for social media strategy. Your digital strategy and your social


7

media strategy should ideally be integrated to the point that they are the same. It’s also worth mentioning that what you’ll find in this book can be applied to any communications or brand or advertising campaign using any media or channels. For these reasons, instead of repeating the words ‘digital strategy’ throughout, we’ll just use the word ‘strategy’. The context for strategy comprises four ideas about the media landscape we inhabit – the world as it is today. We’ll refer to these as Media Ideas. Again, these Media Ideas should be obvious, but given their importance they’re worth spelling out. You’ll probably know them. What may not be self evident is their central relationship to the way we now need to formulate strategy -‐ after their introduction we’ll look at that relationship. Media Idea 1. The consumer is the channel. The connectedness of consumers means that they are effectively a channel. Using digital channels and platforms, they share things, they exchange. Ideas and massages get passed around – they are broadcasting to each other.

The consumer is the channel. They always have been; it’s ‘word of mouth’. Digital and social channels mean that it’s now taken on a new scale and significance. More powerful than any media channel, more persuasive than any advertising are the things one consumer says, shares or exchanges with another. Data tells us that peer review and recommendation are the number one influence on consumer buying behaviour. So we don’t just want to talk to consumers. We want them to talk about us and to us. To do this we need to be part of a conversation. Media Idea 2. The message is the medium. If peer review and recommendation are the number one influence on consumer buying behaviour and if consumers are a channel, then clearly the message is everything. If the message is everything, we need a new way to look at and identify the propositions that define our messages. They now must be highly and naturally communicable.


8

Media Idea 3. The conversation is the proposition Consumers are not going to talk about how white we make their shirts, or how fresh we make their breath, or how dogs think it’s delicious or how it’s conveniently packaged, these are simply not the kind of conversations they naturally have with each other. Propositions now have to be ideas for conversations. But so often our USPs (unique selling propositions) are based around these kind of rational benefits. If you want consumers to talk, you need to find the natural conversation. It may be one they are already having. Your brand and your campaign proposition are in that conversation. Which means, for a digital campaign to work, for it to be effective in social channels, we must understand what conversations are natural to the consumer – what conversation they are having with each other – then we need to understand how to find our place in those natural conversations that they want to have. Given that most advertising is now elective, or optional – consumers can now very easily filter out advertising – then identifying the conversation is even more important. Identifying the conversation is often the most important thing our strategy needs to provide. We’ll talk about how to identify the conversation further a little later.

Media Idea 4. Media works differently now. Media channels are now interrelated in ways that never existed before. Technology and mobile devices allows the seamless migration from one digital execution to another. You can move effortlessly from an e-‐mail to an on-‐line video, to a website, to a game to a community space. Technology connects all media to digital media. You can move from a press ad to a video or a website. You can move from a television commercial to an app. From a billboard to a sound file. Different digital and social channels and platforms support different kinds of engagement. Some channels are great for text, some images, some for a game, some for exchanging information with other people. From channel to channel, from platform to platform, it can be a very different experience each time This is the world we live in today. This changes everything.


9

The context for strategy -‐Our four Media Ideas Media Idea 1.The consumer is the channel. Media Idea 2. The message is the medium. Media Idea 3.The conversation is the proposition Media Idea 4. Media works differently now. If we accept that the four Media Ideas are obvious, then it changes the kind of big advertising, communications, or big creative idea we need to be looking for.


10

Part 2. Finding your campaign idea.

About Big ideas Traditionally we look for a ‘big idea’ that forms the center of a campaign. If we accept that the four Media Ideas that form the context for strategy, then it’s clear we need more than just another big advertising idea. We need to update what the big idea means because to work in the world we live in now our big adverting idea needs to be a little bit bigger than they’ve been before. We’ve already seen this happening, and we’ve all heard of the concept of ‘media neutrality’ and if you look at some of the more successful campaigns of the last few years you can see the trend. So let’s define what this new bigger idea is. However, rather than simply redefining the ‘big advertising’ “big strategic’ or ‘big creative idea’, let’s give it a new name, one that’s more appropriate to the job it has to do and one that enables us to make a break with how we’ve thought about those big ideas in the past -‐ let’s call it an ‘Idea Story’. An Idea Story has 5 defining characteristics: 1. Like a story it must be one around which a natural conversation can be had with the consumer. One that consumers will share with each other. One that people are already having conversations about.


11

2. Like a story it needs to unfold over time, and in real time, and take us on a journey. 3. It needs to have dimensions. For example it ideally needs to work as well as a game as it would as a TVC. 4. Each element should lead you to, build upon, or support another – we’ll discuss this further in a little while. 5. It must provide ‘value’. You can define value in many ways. For example, it may provide some extrinsic or intrinsic reward, it may increase the consumers status, it may provide valuable information, or it just may be entertaining. We need to be relevant to the way people interact with media and each other today. So, if we conceive our big advertising or campaign idea with these 5 characteristics in mind, we’re creating something larger more adaptable and more flexible that can work across digital and social channels and platforms we need to use. In conceiving of our big advertising or campaign idea as an Idea Story we can resolve our four Media Ideas into a new way of formulating brand, advertising and communications campaigns. Let’s now look at how we find and identify our new big advertising or campaign ideas-‐ our Idea Stories.

Finding your campaign idea, your ‘Idea Story’. A USP is a simple, single minded thing – ‘we’ll make your shirts whiter’. This proposition, like many, is generally a rational benefit – or the emotional expression of a rational benefit. An Idea Story requires finding a conversation idea that emotionally and intellectually engages the consumer -‐ because people naturally talk about the things they are emotionally and intellectually engaged with. So, while people may want white shirts, it’s not a great conversation starter. The key to finding the conversations is to look for that which is emotionally and intellectually engaging for the consumer, that which is the subject of natural conversations -‐ yet still directly relevant to the rational and emotional benefits of your product. There is a process for identifying these conversations.


12

Conversation identification: Propositions are an answer to a question, the fulfilment of a need or the satisfaction of a desire. This means the consumer’s wants and needs, define the proposition -‐ we do not. Customers don’t care about what we think. They will use the product or service for their own reasons. So the process begins with listening to the consumer. The conversations you’re looking for don’t necessarily revolve around benefits or features of your product or service. The conversations can revolve around the things in people’s lives that they are emotionally or intellectually engaged with that are linked to you product, often called emotional and intellectual or rational drivers we’ll look at this in more detail in a moment. Consider why people do what they do with your product. What does it mean to them as an individual, what does using your product say about them, how does it fit into their pastimes, hobbies, status, ambitions, feelings about themselves or relationships with other people. We’re looking for broader things; we’re looking at consumers lives. We’re looking for ideas and conversations that are natural to the consumer and already alive and being had in the real world. Consider the proposition ‘gets your shirts whiter’. This is not a conversation. But what a white shirt means to a consumer may be a conversation.

For example a cleaner shirt may mean they are confident that they look their best, for a job interview, on a date, or making a good first impression. Job interviews, first dates, first impressions; these are natural conversations – people talk about them, think about them and are emotionally and intellectually engaged with them. So forget talking to people about white shirts, have a conversation with them about that job interview or first date. Have a conversation about confidence and what it means to them So the question is what is the natural conversation that your brand, product or service is relevant to? We’ll still tell people our USP, but it now becomes part of a conversation. A broader, natural, more meaningful, more emotionally and intellectually engaging conversation. Your laundry powder now fits into conversation about every aspect of when and where and how good impressions need to be made and about confidence. Natural ideas change everything. Natural ideas.


13

Advertising campaigns fail to generate word of mouth because often the conversation you try to have with the consumer is not natural, they don’t want to have it. So when you stop talking, the conversation dies out. Your conversation should be one that is natural. Our challenge is to understand how we can participate in that natural conversation. If you don’t have data, there’s a host of social media listening tools to help provide you with an understanding of the natural conversations. Find your natural idea it becomes your Idea Story. The Idea Story – a definition The Idea Story – a conversation idea that is natural to your target market, that is also relevant to your USP, that is used in place of the USP for campaign and communications activity. The Idea Story check list As we talked about before, if you look at some of the more successful campaigns of the last few years you can see that a different way to define the big idea is emerging, so let’s define what

this new bigger idea is by looking at what they ideally have in common: -‐It should ideally work as well in press as it does as a game. -‐It should ideally must work as well as video content as it does a TV commercial. -‐It should ideally work as well as an event as it does as a sales promotion. -‐It must work as well in social media application as it does in a ‘community space’ or forum. -‐From a mobile phone to brand theatre, it must work in all these ways and more. Even if you don’t need your idea to work in a specific channel, as a thought experiment consider how it could. Testing your idea this way is a good way to validate it.


14

Part 3. An ecosystem for the campaign.

The Idea Story Ecosystem Our strategy has to work in the real world, in the channels that people are really using. So it’s important to understand the way channels are now related. Again, it makes this section reasonably important. As we talked about before, media channels are now interrelated in ways that never existed before. Technology allows the seamless migration from one digital execution to another, you can move effortlessly from bill board to video, from a press advertisement to a website, a game or an app. It’s mobile world. Our devices are mobile ones. We can now migrate from one channel or platform to another effortlessly. This is the world we live in today. This is how we consume media and entertainment and the way we interact with technology and media in the course of our daily life – it’s a journey. This journey suggests a new way of thinking about campaign ecosystems. We’ve all see these ecosystems; they describe how a consumer moves from when they first encounter your campaign through to when they complete your campaign objectives. So let’s look at the three defining characteristics of an ecosystem for an idea story campaign.


15

1. The journey There is one important characteristic of an Idea Story that makes the approach distinct: Each element should lead you to another. Each manifestation, on each channel or platform, should allow consumers to discover different dimensions, becoming more engaged each time. This is a defining principle of an Idea Story. The reality is that in the real world budgets can mean you only have one or two channels to work with. Also, whether this journey is necessary or not is a decision you need to make, however it’s important to remember that this journey leads to a deeper engagement, and deep engagement leads to consideration. For example, a web movie could lead you to the site, the site to the game, the game to a promotion. Even if people don’t move, we need to make sure they have the choice and that’s important because we can’t always anticipate where people will encounter or enter our campaign -‐ and because some digital channels don’t support the provision of much information or interaction, we need to create campaigns where users can flow fluidly from place to place -‐ and want to do so. While we need to ensure each encounter or experience of our campaign is capable of achieving our objectives, we seek to maximize the number, duration, depth and texture of that

experience in order to increase the likelihood that we will achieve the desired outcome. The benefits of such an approach are clear. It builds engagement and it can create an ongoing relationship with our brand. And this is not just confined to digital channels; traditional channels are also are part of this journey. As we’ve said before: your digital strategy is your strategy. 2. Sharing (propagation) The consumer is the channel. So, at each and every point of contact with a consumer we must create mechanisms that allow them to share your campaign -‐ your Idea Story, or content -‐ with a friend, family member or someone in their digital or social network. We call this propagation; to achieve propagation we must make it easy and natural for people to act as a ‘channel’ and create the willingness to do so. So we incentivise that sharing by providing an intrinsic or extrinsic benefit or value. The question we need to ask is: how do we create value at every step and in every interaction? Essentially, propagation (sharing) requires creating: 1. Value -‐ content or an experience that consumers will want to share. 2. An intrinsic or extrinsic motivation a reward for sharing -‐ ‘what’s in it for me’. 3. Mechanisms that enable that sharing.


16

Our propagation strategy is in integrated into our Idea Story campaign strategy. The key challenge for us is to create value in sharing, what do people get for sharing -‐ an enhanced status? A chance to win? A fun content experience? We need to create this value at every point of our campaign. 3. Cross channel, cross platform Different channels support different kinds of engagement and experiences so we need to provide consumers with very different, but congruous, experiences of the same Idea Story in different channels. If they experience the Idea Story as a game, it is a satisfying, self contained experience -‐it makes sense, all by itself, in isolation from any other element. If they experience an Idea Story on Facebook, it too is a satisfying self contained experience that’s coherent with all the others. It may not always possible, but we should strive for each element to be capable of achieving your objectives all by itself, in isolation from any other element. However you can experience multiple elements and you will find that each one builds upon the other to provide a deeper more involving story. Unlike conventional campaigns where activity drives one big ‘spike’ of activity before trailing away, the Idea Story can keep the campaign alive, in different channels and over a longer period of

time. This effectively increases the efficiency of you campaign. Or allows you to do more with less.


17

What an Idea Story Ecosystem looks like – A journey map.

It’s interesting to note that unlike most of the campaign ecosystems we’ve seen, the big campaign idea is no longer in the centre – your consumer is.

Your consumer

Press

Website

Game

Facebook

Forum Web video

Tweet

Outdoor

Blog post

Consumers can enter the Idea Story campaign at any point.

At any and every point they can share content with another consumer.

Your consumer’s friends, family, social and digital network

Each element is a self contained experience, but should lead you to another element.


18

Part 4. A template for writing a digital strategy.

How to write a strategy document This is a template for a strategy document. However, in reality, there is no real template for how a strategy document looks. A strategy document looks the way it has to look to do the job it has to do. For example you may need to achieve a specific objective, whether it be collecting data or permission to market. Or obtaining quantitative and qualitative insights. You may require a timeline. You may need to know what you will do with the data once it has been obtained. You may need to link to a previous or future activity. This template therefore is just a guide. A framework that can be modified. Some of it will be of no use to you, discard what you don’t need. This template should be added to, or subtracted from to meet its purpose. Cut, paste, delete, modify as required. Strategy, a structure A strategy document is useless if it cannot be acted upon. Your document should be purposeful actionable and brevity is always desirable. It should read like an instruction manual. It should be succinct. It should not contain adjectives. It should be pragmatic and emotionless. Forget sentences, forget adjectives, write bullet points if you prefer. The shorter the document the better.


19

There are 8 components to this strategy model: 1. A summary introduction 2. Target market identification and segmentation 3. Objectives 4. Outcomes 5. The challenge What is the problem we’re addressing. Your discussion of the challenge should be structured like this: A: The insight: what insight can be drawn from the information we have? B. Implication: What useful conclusions can be drawn from this data? C. Recommendation: From these insights and our conclusions, what action needs to be taken? D. The strategy. What is the specific strategy to address this specific challenge? 6. The Idea Story – our big advertising or campaign idea. Optional and only if required. 7. Summary of key recommendations.

8. Channels. Optional and only if required. Let’s look at each of these 8 components in slightly more detail Again, remember, some of this will be of no use to you, discard what you don’t need, cut, paste, delete or modify as required. 1. Summary introduction Clarity and simplicity are the defining characteristics of strategy. It’s why we begin with a Summary Introduction. The summary introduction is a very, very, short paragraph summerising our strategy. We need to be able to communicate exactly what we propose to do, why, and what we propose to achieve in no more than about 100 words. We do this last, but then add it to the beginning of our document This is quite important. Strategy is purposeful. That purpose must be clear. A short summary compels us to think carefully and be absolutely clear about what we’re doing and why. There’s also another reason for the summary. Most people are not going to be able to hold all the detail of your strategy in their heads. To align all stakeholders and to ensure everyone understand what we propose, we need a simple, easy to understand, easy to communicate summary. It can be the most important thing that we do. Think of this as a ‘sound bite’ or the ‘elevator pitch’ that crystalises our strategy in the clearest, simplest and most concise language


20

possible. We summarise then go into the details beginning with our target market. Use plain English where possible. No jargon, no marketing or technical terms. A paucity of ideas and a lack of good thinking can often be hidden behind jargon and buzz words. Writing without them provides greater integrity. 2. Target market identification and segmentation Who are we talking to? Be precise, use demographic or behavioral data or data appropriate for the task. It’s important. You have to know who we are talking to before we say anything. 3. Objectives Effective strategy requires clarity of purpose. What are our business objectives? .Why are we talking to them? What do we want them to do? What do we need to achieve? 4. Outcomes: What is the end result? What are our metrics? What is our ROI? What can we measure? 5. The challenge What lies between our objectives and our outcomes -‐ what is the specific challenge we face in getting people to do what we want, for example the barriers to consideration or purchase? Why would they do what we want them to do and what stops them? What is the underlying nature of that challenge, its cause?

With respect to each specific challenge include;

A: The insight What do we know about the consumer? What specific, useful and valuable insights do you have to work with that sheds light on our challenge? What does the data tell us?

B. Implication What does this insight mean? What are its implications? What useful conclusions can be drawn from this data?

C. Recommendation From these insights and our conclusions, what action needs to be taken? What do we need to do or say to get people to do what we want? How do we achieve a specific outcome? Here is where we make our strategy actionable – your ‘action item‘. We need to express this in a way that essentially says ‘we have to do this…’

D. The strategy Your recommendation is essentially your strategy. It is the thing you are going to do. You need to distill it to make it as clear and simple as you can, then express it in one sentence. Everything else in a strategy document is there to fame your analysis of the problem and to validate your thinking. The strategy is what you are going to do to solve that problem.

6. The Idea Story – our big advertising or campaign idea As we’ve talked about before, this is optional depending on the purpose of your strategy. Now we know what we need to do, what conversation can we have with the consumer that will enable this to


21

happen? Identify opportunities for the conversation – the ideas and conversations that are natural to the consumer and already alive and being had in the real world. Taking into account our challenge or challenges with the data, the insight we have and knowing who we are talking to, what is the natural conversation that they are interested in that we can also be part of? Is there data or evidence that supports this identification? 7. Key recommendation summary A strategy document should be as succinct as you can make it, however they may still be lengthy. This is why it’s important to summarise at the end. As we’ve discussed, a strategy should be actionable, so the recommendation summary should be your action plan. It should list each of your key recommendations and what needs to be done and in what order they need to be done. 8. Channels: Again, as we’ve talked about before, this is option depending on the purpose of your strategy. Identifying the channels and how they are used can be optional, so make a case by case assessment based on your requirements. You also may be working with a media planner who can offer data that is unavailable to us, such as media typology.

However, if you need to establish the channels of your ‘media plan’ this can be used as a guide. It can also be used as a guide for the implementation or execution of any media plan supplied to you. Here we use the Idea Story Ecosystem, the diagram we looked at earlier, as a ‘map’ to outline our channel selection. For each channel: A. Define the purpose of the channel, why we have chosen it, its role in the campaign and its reach. Support this with data if you can. B. Define the objective for the channel -‐ what will we achieve by using it. C. Content and engagement -‐ what is the content to be ‘deployed’ in this channel and how will people interact with this content. D. Identify inbound links to the channel -‐ where traffic is coming from. E. Specify what other channel each individual channel links to – where it directs traffic to. F. Response -‐ identify the calls to action in each channel. G. Sharing – identify how people can share this content or channel.


22

On writing our strategy I once heard a quote that went something like this: “Profound insight should sound like simple common sense” I think it may have been Abraham Lincoln, but I’m not sure and have not been able to find the original quote. The quote is interesting because it applies to strategy. What we do strategically should sound like the self evidently right and ‘natural’ thing to do. Even if the outcome of the strategic process produces something that may at first seem counter intuitive, it should make sense – and it should be expressed in a way that makes sense to anyone, not just a marketer. This is what I’ve tried to do with this little book – to put together what I think is a rational system for doing things and some sensible things to consider. I hope this is useful, let me know what you think. This book is also in constant evolution, I hope to publish this next year, so if you have tips, ideas insights or that may improve my next draft, please let me know. Thank you. Ravi Prasad [email protected]

Marketing

How to Write Digital Strategy