Although digital marketing is not now a new discipline, it is evolving fast as the mega platforms like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn used by consumers and businesses offer new ways to engage their users and improve their monetisation .
But are you and your business keeping up? For a large number of businesses of different size, the challenges presented by online marketing are holding them back since they don't have a strategy. Falling behind with your digital strategy or not having a strategy at all means losing competitive advantage—something that no company can afford to do in today's fast-moving markets. So what can you do to improve the situation? How can you ensure that your online marketing activities are aligning with your strategic goals?
As a starting point, I recommend auditing your digital marketing capabilities on a simple 5 point scale, so you can focus on the digital marketing activities you most need to improve.
If you're a member of Smart Insights you may know about our RACE Planning framework which I will be using to structure my Driving Digital Marketing Success webinar in May. This gives a practical way to review all your digital marketing activities across the customer lifecycle, which is particularly relevant to the B2B sector since the stages are Plan > Reach > Act < Convert and Engage your audiences. To get you started quickly we have a free interactive benchmarking tool. Sharing some of the results anonymously - we can see how businesses compare. You can see that on average across our member levels, there is great potential for improvement, but capabilities are surprisingly low.
To help members improve their capabilities we give specific recommendations in our benchmarking tool and guides, but in May, there is another format available to get advice.
In May, in Digital Week, which we're co-hosting with SuccessFlow, you can learn and how to get to the next level in two webinars I'll be giving:
In the webinars, I'll explain how to develop a defined digital strategy that will deliver measurable results. Identifying targets and evolving your online marketing activities to meet these targets is the only way to manage the challenges ahead.
But it's not as complicated as it sounds. It can be broken down into these simple stages:
If you're interested in making real improvements to your digital marketing, attend SuccessFlow's Digital Week between 16 and 20 May 2016? Digital Week is an exclusive five-day presentation of webinars, guides and workshops, specially curated by leading digital marketing professionals. You'll learn everything there is to know about B2B digital marketing—and more!
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By Dave Chaffey
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.
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