Digital Marketing Strategy Development

About this short course

The way people shop is changing due to the interventions of digital technologies and social media. Consumer decision making has become more complex as consumers are faced with new digital media such as social mentions and comparison sites. This means that businesses can no longer ignore digital channels. When people think about online strategies, many often believe that creating a website is enough, but this is no longer the case. Marketers need to think about partnering with other online intermediaries and using other digital media channels such as email, mobile apps, pay-per-click, SEO and online PR to connect with our customers.

Using a digital marketing strategy provides an organisation with direction for its online marketing activities so that they are integrated with all other marketing activities. This in turn allows for a consistent message to be communicated, and supports overall business objectives, including; getting new customers and retaining and growing current customers. But Digital Marketing Strategy can be complex. Many digital marketers have adopted the PR Smith SOSTAC® strategy process model to guide them in their digital strategy development. This model is a framework that provides a logical sequence to follow to ensure inclusion of all key activities of strategy development and implementation.

PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Planning framework is described as follows:

S stands for Situation Analysis – which means where are we now?

O stands for Objectives which means where do we want to go?

S stands for Strategy which summarises how we are going to get there.

T stands for Tactics which are the details of strategy.

A is for Action or implementation – putting the plan to work, AND

C is for Control which means measurement, monitoring, reviewing, updating and modifying.

In this course we take you through the SOSTAC strategic planning process in detail, then guide you through a series of nine key decisions you need to make when formulating your digital strategy, along with the tools you can use to guide your strategic decision-making process.

You will learn about: