A digital strategy is a part of a business strategy in which a company seeks to gain an edge over the competition by taking advantage of developments in IT. Often, it answers the question, how are we going to become a digital enterprise? An interesting feature of this plan is that if it is successful, the company has a digital strategy very similar to its business strategy. A subset of digital strategy is digital marketing and communications:
- Digital marketing begins with a plan that answers three questions: where you are now, where do you want to be, and what tools are available. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are set up, along with benchmarks. Existing tools are inventoried and new ones investigated. For a nonprofit these KPIs typically involve new donors and email acquisition, and the digital marketing tools available are often put in four buckets: Search, Email, Social Media, and Site/User Experience. Digital marketing typically seeks to become integrated with marketing in general, especially in terms of messaging and content.
- Digital communications is related to digital marketing, but is a work-area typically emphasized by nonprofits. For many nonprofits “digital communication” means digital political communication. Digital communication takes advantage of developments in IT for a competitive advantage over competing political actors. The political communication strategy of a nonprofit often revolves around campaigns which are themselves part of a path to long-term end-states. Digital communication seeks to integrate itself with the political communication strategy, but it often also transforms it. We have seen this at Ploughshares Fund. Here a strategy that involves petitions and fostering a grassroots movement are examples of this, although not determined by it. Digital communication goals are typically directed at three audiences: the grassroots, who we try to move up the ladder of engagement, generally moving people from online to offline action; the grass-tops, who we support; and targets, who we try to influence for policy outcomes through petitions, etc.
Digital marketing and communications are dominated by a focus on tactics, not strategy, because the developments in IT that impact marketing and communications are relatively clear: digital marketing KPIs are typically email acquisition and donations; and digital communication is typically measured by people at events, news coverage and policy outcomes. A small company does not typically spend much time thinking about digital marketing and communications strategy, although planning is very important. Knowing your target audience and knowing your campaign strategy are very important in planning, but this is not a very complex task.
Digital Marketing and Communications Tactics
This is where the complexity lies: issue framing, graphic design, branding, Google AdWords, SEO, database and data management, voice as a writing/communication concept, marketing funnel, open graph, twitter cards, video content, web development, integrated marketing, blog management, photo curation, email design, landing pages, metrics, social media community management, content marketing, list building, etc. Fortunately, all of this can be measured, and communicated through outcomes. In FY 16/17:
- Our Email, Twitter and Facebook audiences have increased 312%, 75% and 173% respectively.
- This year we received online donations from many people who had never previously given, a 684% growth rate. We received many small donations from these people this fiscal year, a 837% growth rate.
- M+R benchmarks http://www.mrss.com/lab/benchmarks2017/ for nonprofits: online revenue grew by 14% in 2016, with email revenue growing at a whopping 24%; online audiences increased: web traffic was up 4%, email list sizes grew by 10%, Facebook fans increased 23%, Twitter 50%. We beat all of these.