Digital is changing everything. Business without a digital strategy are sorely behind the competition who might be using a variety of digital channels and methods to better engage with their audience. What does that mean? Deeper relationships creates more loyal customers who spread the word and drive more sales. Yeah, you need a digital strategy. Thankfully I've come up with a framework and a process that can help you build the dashboard to track how you are using digital to build awareness, develop interaction, manage relationships, and, of course, measure it all.

2. WHAT IS A DIGITAL STRATEGY?
The use of digital and online channels to engage with people as a way to improve
the success of the business.

3. DIGITAL STRATEGY DOESN’T STAND ALONE
Corporate
Strategy
•What is the
company going to
do?
Marketing
Strategy
•How will the
company approach
the market?
Digital
Strategy
•How will digital be
leveraged to
accomplish the
marketing strategy?
Content
Strategy
•What will be
produced to publish
through the digital
strategy?

4. STEPS TO BUILDING YOUR DIGITAL STRATEGY
1. Identify opportunities
2. Identify challenges
3. Take an inventory of digital assets
4. Align assets to opportunities and challenges

5. STEP 1: IDENTIFY THE OPPORTUNITIES
This step is all about identifying opportunities for business success so that you
can tie them to digital channels later as part of your strategy.
Examples:
Demonstrate business effectiveness of product/service by showing results from
using it internally
Generate pipeline by establishing thought-leadership in new market segment
Establish expertise in {your market} subject matter
Gain market share
Increase revenue in underserved markets
Increase customer satisfaction

6. STEP 2: IDENTIFY CHALLENGES
You guessed it. This is the same as step 1.

7. STEP 3: TAKE AN INVENTORY
What are you currently doing digitally?
Examples:
Website
Community
Social Media
Marketing Campaigns
Mobile App

8. STEP 4: ALIGN ASSETS
You have opportunities to capitalize on. You have challenges to overcome.
What digital assets do you have right now that you can use?

10. YOU STILL DON’T HAVE A DIGITAL STRATEGY
You have opportunities
You have challenges
You have some existing things you are doing digitally. Well, maybe.
What are you going to do now?

11. STRATEGY = FRAMEWORK
To build a strategy you need a framework.
Using the framework, you can identify and map projects to
opportunities/challenges.

12. I HAVE A FRAMEWORK FOR YOU
It’s called AIM2

14. AIM2
Awareness
Interaction
Management
Measurement

15. DIGITAL IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
The framework is broken into relationship stages (topped off with analytics)
Awareness
Using digital to get people to pay attention to you
Interaction
Using digital to actually interact with people. Shocking!
Management
Using digital to manage relationships (i.e., like a community)
Measurement
Figuring out if you are doing the other 3 things successfully.

16. HOW AIM2 WORKS WITH A LEAD FUNNEL
Awareness
Search engines
Attractive, relevant
content is the key
driver to develop a
strong digital presence
The target audience
should be engaged
and reached through
relevant customer
touchpoints
Customer engagement
and targeted guidance
throughout the buying
desicion process
Automatic allocation of
leads to the right sales
personnel
Social clicks, content
share rates, download
rates
AdvocacyConvert
Lead
Generation
EngageContent
Social networks
Publishers
Blogs
Website
Interactive
Tools
Community
Sales
Activities
Thrilled customers are
key to social
proof, repeat sales
(upgrade) and referral
Time on
site, Shares, Comment
s, Likes
Fans, Followers, Regis
trations, Permissions,
Leads
Orders, Revenue, Aver
age order value
Lifetime
value, Referrals
CRM
Interaction Management
Measurement

17. AIM2 EXAMPLES
Awareness:
Advertising/sponsorships
Branded content
Interaction:
Social media
Gamification
Community
Personalization
Management:
Targeted outreach
Virtual events
“Members Only”

18. GO BACK TO STEP 1 AND 2
Map opportunities and challenges to AIM2 stages. Where are you today?
Awareness
Interaction
Management

19. MAKE EVERYTHING ACTIONABLE
Convert opportunities and challenges into “digital objectives”

20. TIME FOR THE HEAVY LIFTING
Each stage of the framework has three components you need to identify
Dependencies
What does objective depend on to succeed?
Tactics
How can you achieve the objective?
Success
How will you determine if you are successful in the objective?

21. AWARENESS EXAMPLE
Develop and publish more content through inbound marketing
 Dependencies?
 Better content marketing tools to properly manage content production as it relates to
buyer’s journey and personas
 Defined publishing channels and ability to measure effectiveness
 Tactics
 Create more content around key topics and themes
 Digital presence
 Video
 Performance
 Develop specific programs targeting key industries and personas
 New website features
 Create high-profile, high-visibility digital projects (i.e., transmedia story)
 Success?
 Traffic to website and blog
 Traffic to social channels (and re-sharing)
 Traffic to third-party publishing channels (i.e., slideshare)

22. INTERACTION EXAMPLE
Engage more with users through appropriate channels
 Dependencies?
 Additional website work to better integrate social elements
 Refresh of social channels.
 Facebook—build out specialized tabs/pages.
 LinkedIn—build out specialized tabs/pages. Reboot group.
 Tactics
 Blog—comments/conversations
 Facebook—comments/conversations
 Twitter—comments/conversations
 Success?
 Increased number of engagements per channel per user
 Scheduling appointments with users engaged through channels

23. MANAGEMENT EXAMPLE
Develop specialized content/environment for engaged users. Publicize
specialization to draw additional users.
 Dependencies?
 Ownership of communication and development of content
 Third-party (i.e., for gamification)?
 Tactics
 Newsletter—a newsletter sent to engaged digital users
 Gamification—development of one or more campaigns with prizes
specifically targeted to engaged digital users
 Webinars—hosting of “invite only” webinars
 Success?
 Increased volume of out-bound communication from users to their networks
employing special content

24. MEASUREMENT EXAMPLE
Track success of content and campaigns across AIM
 Dependencies?
 Need system to properly gauge social activity
 Need better way to integrate internal systems data into dashboard for our own use
 Tactics
 Reports—generate weekly reports detailing success of activity cross channel
 Success?
 Based on KPIs for awareness, interaction, and management levels
 Short-term
 Medium-term
 What nurturing is involved to measure success?
 Long-term
 What nurturing is involved to measure success?

25. SO HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET THAT DONE?
Through channels and methods

26. CHANNELS AND METHODS
A variety of different channels for delivering digital experiences that relate to one or more levels of
AIM2
 Corporate websites
 Partner websites
 Dedicated microsites
 Third-party content services (i.e., YouTube, Slideshare, Brighttalk, etc.)
 Emails/Newsletters
 Social sites (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
 Mobile apps
 Games
A variety of different methods for delivering digital experiences
 Short-form content (i.e., website pages, blogs)
 Long-form content (i.e., e-books, whitepapers)
 Video
 Audio (i.e., podcasts)
 Games
 Webinar
 Slideware

27. THE RESULT?
You are building awareness which is driving new opportunities to form
relationships
You are developing new relationships by interacting with your audience
When there is good interaction you are taking steps to manage the relationships

28. GUESS WHAT? YOU HAVE A STRATEGY
You’ve assessed where you are and what you have
You’ve converted the assessment to objectives
You’ve mapped the objectives to stages in the framework
You specified HOW you are going to accomplish the objectives through methods
and channels
You are measuring success for each objective using criteria you set

29. WHAT MIGHT IT LOOK LIKE (I.E., DASHBOARD!)
Objective Project AIM2
Stage
Channel(
s)
Method(s
)
Start
Date
Develop
and
publish
more
content
through
inbound
marketing
“Dummies
Book”
Awarenes
s
E-book Long-form
content
9/1/2013
Same Podcast Awarenes
s
Interaction
Website Audio 8/1/2013

30. ANY LAST WORDS?
1. Create a project list for each AIM2 stage that helps meet objectives
2. Assess your competitors. What are they doing digitally?
3. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Agencies can help.
4. Continue to develop new digital projects
5. Continue to refine objectives, create new objectives, etc.
6. You should have projects covering all AIM2 stages…AT ALL TIMES
7. Getting the hint? The strategy is a living, breathing animal. Keep working on
it.