Managing your digital strategy doesn’t have to be a cat-herding experience. Here are several tips—pulled from a digital marketing event at Mightybytes—for staying on top of your goals.

Mightybytes is rigorously focused on helping organizations improve their digital strategies. To do this, we often host events where we give clients ‘marketing makeovers’. These events feature panels of several digital marketing experts plus representatives from client organizations.

In one such event, Alliance for the Great Lakes and Bright Endeavors took their turn in the “hot seat,” where our panelists assessed their digital strategies and found opportunities to improve them.

The event was filled with great tips and advice, but what particularly resonated with audience and participants alike were panelist recommendations about integrating digital marketing efforts across platforms. Here are five of them.

1. Break Down Silos

It is all too common for organizations to silo teams or individuals into specific areas of focus. While siloing disciplines can ensure that each platform regularly gets attention, it can also disconnect individuals or small teams from an organization’s overall digital strategy.

Staying connected to other’s activities and aligning critical components like messaging, process, deadlines, and goals is a must for continued success. Tear down those silos and say hello to a more integrated digital strategy.

Try this: Schedule a regular meeting (weekly) specifically focused on gaining alignment between teams.

2. Create Reusable Content

Content creators often get overwhelmed by the sheer number of platforms that need regular updates. From websites and blogs to social media and email, it can feel never-ending. Instead of creating one unique piece of content per platform, consider ways to reuse content for multiple purposes. For example:

• Blog posts can form the basis for guest posts on other platforms, image-based social media posts, email newsletters, and so on.
• Several blog posts on similar topics can be strung together for a white paper or other downloadable content. Don’t stop there though…these posts can be incorporated into larger content, like books, as well.
• Client questions answered via email make great blog posts.
• Research done for blog posts can form the basis for infographics, videos, or other content.
• Similarly, project case studies can inform tutorials, how-to posts, or training manuals.

Taking the time upfront to plan how you’ll use your content will help you get the most out of it in the long-run.

Try this: Run a content audit to see what you currently have that can be reused, repurposed, or re-imagined.

3. Always Give Users Priority

Teams are often hard-wired for organizational myopia. They don’t mean to be, but with a constant barrage of organizational goals, targets, objectives, key performance indicators, yada yada yada, it can be easy to lose sight of who’s most important: your target audience.

Everything you do in digital marketing should revolve around how to improve a user’s experience with your brand. This includes page load speed, website usability, accessibility, content strategy, social media posts, customer service, everything.

Make sure you don’t lose sight of that. Get to know your users and how they engage with you online—not just on your website—then make sure you respond accordingly. Create user advocates within your organization. Helping users have better experiences will help you achieve digital marketing goals.

Try this: Not sure what your users want? Try these 5 simple user research tactics.

4. Measure and Take Action

Every good digital strategy has measurable goals. Every great digital strategy is flexible enough to change based on things learned when trying to achieve those goals. Most organizations will set long-term digital marketing goals and many will diligently track progress over months or years.

While a step in the right direction, organizations also need to know when to shift strategies as they learn from their efforts. If metrics aren’t showing acceptable improvements over time, reassess your strategy to see what changes might offer better results. It’s the digital equivalent of a butterfly effect: minor tweaks can have big impact over time, so don’t be afraid to adjust and measure accordingly. This is a more agile approach.

Try this: Don’t know what to measure? Define five marketing metrics that matter. Then track and measure one that is relevant to your digital marketing efforts.

5. Always Consider Retention

A successful digital campaign will always have a next step, a more compelling offer, or a better way to engage. The best ones act in the interests of both users and organizations. Consider carefully what you want someone to do after they’ve completed a specific goal and, more importantly, why they should care. If there is no next step that both parties care about then consider how to change that. Think of the user journey as a cycle rather than a path with a finish line.

Try this: Use a tool like SocialRank or Amplitude to find your most engaged users then decipher what they’re looking for. Create unique campaigns specifically for their needs.

Improve Your Digital Strategy

We hope these tips can help you improve your organization’s digital strategy to great effect. Responsible, ethical, and more sustainable digital marketing practices change on a near-daily basis, so it can be difficult to keep up.

If we can help in any way, feel free to contact us.