DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

УДК 339.6

Степанов І.А., студент 4 курсу
ХНЕУ ім. С. Кузнеця

Abstract: The article provides the overview of digital marketing strategy development. The main reasons for companies to develop digital marketing strategy are described. After the analysis digital marketing strategy development, some main types of strategic digital marketing initiatives are listed.

Key words: digital marketing, e-commerce, strategy development, digital marketing strategy.

Анотація: Дана стаття містить огляд розробки стратегії цифрового маркетингу. Описано основні причини, за якими компанії розробляють цифрову маркетингову стратегію. Після аналізу розробки стратегії цифрового маркетингу перераховані деякі основні типи стратегічних цифрових маркетингових ініціатив.

Ключові слова: цифровий маркетинг, електронна комерція, розробка стратегії, стратегія цифрового маркетингу.

The Internet, the web and digital media have transformed marketing and business since the first website (http://info.cern.ch) went live in 1991. With over 3 billion people around the world regularly using the web to find products, entertainment and friends, consumer behavior and the way companies market to both consumers and businesses have changed dramatically.

The importance of the Internet to modern business strategy was underlined by Michael Porter (2001), who famously said:

“The key question is not whether to deploy Internet technology – companies have no choice if they want to stay competitive – but how to deploy it.” [1]

Let’s look at a few facts for global e-commerce revenues in 2017:

  1. Number of people purchasing via e-commerce: 1.66 billion;
  2. In 2017, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars [2].

With more than half of the world’s population now online, including billions of people using social platforms, it’s clear that digital and social should be a central part of every brand’s toolkit. The top marketing priority now is to integrate digital marketing and social thinking into everything that brands do, from products and services, to creating more compelling digital communication, and even finding new pricing, distribution, and innovation strategies that take full advantage of our ever-more connected world [3].

A digital marketing strategy is needed to provide consistent direction for an organization’s online marketing activities so that they integrate with its other marketing activities and support its overall business objectives. The digital marketing strategy has many similarities to the typical aims of traditional marketing strategies, in that it will:

  • provide a future direction to digital marketing activities;
  • involve analysis of the organization’s external environment, internal resources and capabilities to inform strategy;
  • define digital marketing objectives that support marketing objectives.

Fig. 1 indicates the context for digital marketing strategy development. The internal influences include business objectives and strategy and these in turn influence marketing strategy that should directly influence the digital marketing strategy. Key external influences include the market structure and demand, competitor strategies and the current and evolving opportunities and threats, in particular those enabled by new digital technologies (e.g. mobile marketing and social TV) and marketing approaches (e.g. search engine marketing and use of social media).

Fig. 1. Internal and external influences on digital marketing strategy

Fig. 1. Internal and external influences on digital marketing strategy

An output from the digital strategy will be a series of strategic digital marketing initiatives in the areas of customer acquisition, conversion or retention such as those shown in tab. 1. These initiatives will typically be prioritized and placed as part of a long-term e-commerce ‘roadmap’ defining required developments over a longer period, say one to three years.

Table 1

Summary of typical focus for main types of strategic digital marketing initiatives

Type of digital marketing strategy initiative Comment Examples
New customer proposition (product and pricing) New site features or other online communications which are directly related to offering new products or services that will generate revenue - Bank – introducing new product requiring different quotations
- Publisher introducing a price comparison service
Customer acquisition or inbound marketing strategic initiatives Strategic projects designed to enhance a site’s capability and deliver different online marketing techniques aimed to attract new customers - Content marketing
- Search engine optimisation (SEO)
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Affiliate marketing
- Aggregators
Enhance marketing capabilities through site infrastructure improvements These typically involve ‘backend or back-office features’ which won’t be evident to users of the site, but will help in the management or administration of the site - CRM or personalisation
- Content management system
- Performance improvement – improve management information, web analytics systems including systems for multivariate and AB testing
- Improve customer feedback facilities

So the focus of digital marketing strategy is decisions about how to use the channel to support existing marketing strategies, how to exploit its strengths and manage its weaknesses, and to use it in conjunction with other channels as part of a multichannel marketing strategy. This multichannel marketing strategy defines how different marketing channels should integrate and support each other in terms of their proposition development and communications based on their relative merits for the customer and the company.

REFERENCES

  1. Chaffey D. Digital Marketing: strategy, implementation and practice / D. Chaffey, F. Ellis. – 6th ed. – NY: Pearson, 2016. – 728 p.

  2. Global number of digital buyers 2014–2021 // Statista website.

  3. Digital in 2017 global overview // World Federation of Advertisers.

Науковий керівник

к.е.н., доц. Котлик А.В.