Working at Grow, one of my main responsibilities has been to align the digital offer with Grow’s over all offer. This article is a walk through  the model that I created to illustrate what goes into a digital strategy and the effects of the possible output.
(You can click on the images to see them larger)

1. Goals and objectives

First we need to start with digital goals and objectives. I strongly believe that a companies digital presence should support it’s brand platform and be a facilitator of it’s business strategy. This might sound like common sense, but so often the main brief from many clients is a need for a graphical facelift or the modernisation of the technical platform. These of course are valid starting points, but any project to redesign a companies web presence should look at the wider opportunities that web can provide as being a central tool for it’s brands communication.

2. Brand culture

After setting the goals and objectives, you next have to look at the relevance for the digital channels not only externally but also, more importantly, internally. Externally you must build an understanding of where your audience is and what they are doing online. Similarly mapping the internal usage of the digital channels can reveal the if the site is relevant internally and if not why not. Also to map out what resources are needed / available to run effective communication.

3. Brand communication

At this stage we need to define where and how a brand should be active online. This needs to be balanced against the findings that came from mapping out the brand culture and more specifically,

• Where the audience is online
• What kind of content will being produced
• The resources available

At this point I think the model needs some explanation.
It is important to note the scale at the bottom right. I have laid out the different channels by level of customer engagement rather than level of importance. This is not to say that a brand needs to be active in all of these channels, rather you need to create a total vision over the total digital footprint.Defining the roles between paid, earned and owned media and how they can feed into each other.

• The main site acts as the digital hub to be a central point where a brand can create deep engagement.
• Mobile apps, are mobile specific applications and not mobile ready sites. The general finding so far is infrequent connection with a brand in the mobile is best done through the main site which goes without saying should be mobile ready. Where as a specific mobile app should provide a deeper engagement to more devoted and frequent customers.
• Blogs and content feeds contains sites that can act as content host providers such as YouTube, Vimeo, tumblr e.t.c. as well as the brands on blog or similar news feed.
• Social networks here include sites such as Facebook, G+, Twitter etc. even though these sites provide great awareness, they rely on micro content and micro interactions, making it hard to drive a deeper engagement.
• Microsites are loosing ground to social media channels but still exist.
• Digital ads are everything from traditional banners to mobile through to padverts.
• Developing a strong SEO and SEM strategy is of course hugely important but in the terms of customer engagement it is quite low, which is why on this model it is out on the edge.

If you look to the left hand side of the model you will see the introduction of Innovation into the goals and objectives. The digital channels are fast moving, and a brand needs to be able to judge if the new platform is right to jump into. You also need a reason to revisit the strategy at regular intervals and innovation, both external and internal, provides the catalysis for the revisit.

4. Digital Brand innovation

Finally through the digital channels a brand has the possibility to move into service design. Here you can explore the possibility of your brand delivering high level of engagement by providing digital services for their customers that are either driven from the core of the brand or taking opportunities from the peripheral edges.

So that is a quick overview of my framework with which to develop a digital strategy. I use this model to describe Grow’s digital offer as well as to provide clients with an understanding of developing a digital strategy.