In my time working in digital marketing, I’ve learnt a great deal about what can make or break a digital strategy.
In fact, I’ve narrowed it down to 2 simple things that often get overlooked.
What makes them even more interesting is that they don’t discriminate – they affect everyone equally no matter your budget, target market or whether you’re outsourcing or getting it done in house.
If you forget these 2 important ideas when it comes to formulating your digital strategy, it is headed towards failure.
Be consistent
Consistency is vitally important for the success of a digital strategy and it applies across all channels in your marketing mix. And this doesn’t just mean having the same colours and logos – it reflects everything including:
– tone of voice
– use of imagery
– calls to action
– overall message in your copy
– design elements
Now granted, you may need to adjust elements of your strategy to suit segments of your audience but the idea is that you should still be consistent with your approach.
Your message needs to be the same and should be clear without causing confusion.
In Dubai, advertising and signage is mostly bilingual (English and Arabic) and whilst translations may vary slightly (to suit each target audience), the core message is the same.
I particularly like it when brands go the extra mile to get their English logos designed in Arabic in the same sort of style. I wrote about clever Dubai logos in Arabic to highlight this point.
Stuff like that really makes a difference because it shows far more consistency and breeds a great level of familiarity and trust with your target market which is what helps keep it all together.
Which brings me to my next point…
Be cohesive
Everything in your digital strategy has to come together as one and work as a complete unit.
Similar to being consistent, the idea is that everything you have in your marketing arsenal to help execute your digital strategy should complement each other.
Your logo is a good starting point which also influences the design styles of your website and marketing collateral.
A little deviation for a specific purpose is actually ok – for example if you’ve always used light hues but need to go a bit dark for an event promotion or product launch invite ,then that’s ok – provided you haven’t gone and used a different logo, font or tone of voice.
Think about using a billboard to promote a product or service – do you have a number for people to call? a landing page for people to visit?
I’ve lost count of the number of billboards I’ve seen in Dubai where there’s no call to action or where people are simply sent to the homepage where there’s no mention of anything from that billboard.
Ideally you should create a dedicated landing page but let’s say in your situation it’s not possible – you should have some sort of guide on the homepage that relates to that billboard message.
My bank is Emirates NBD and one of their bridge banners states that my phone is now my credit card.
Great.
No landing page to go to and when I go to the Emirates NBD website, there’s nothing on there that promotes this new feature or hints at it.
To me, that’s a wasted opportunity because the billboard and website haven’t worked together to achieve the end result which I would imagine would be to get people to enable card payments via their phone.
So when you’re reviewing your current digital strategy or putting together a new one, keep in mind the consistency of your message and how cohesive everything is.
When your digital strategy is consistent and cohesive and aligned towards the same goals, you’re more likely to improve your brand awareness, customer trust and ultimately your bottom line.
