‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail’ – Benjamin Franklin. The planning phase is responsible for setting the foundations of your strategy. It involves understanding your current presence online, your resources and who will be responsible.

 

In this article, I want to look at how to organise an effective digital strategy. Follow me as we are going to look at that in this article. 

 

During planning we focus on determining the number of key factors:

• Purpose: What are we using digital to achieve or hope to achieve?
• SuccessOutcomes: How will the success of your digital activity manifest for your business so that you can clearly identify progress?
• ExistingChannels: What already exists so that you don’t duplicate channels but also know what you have already?
• Resources: What Time, Money and People do you have at your disposal?

Planning is crucial to gather as much information as possible and to set you up for success from the outset.

 

The purpose of the planning phase is to establish the foundations of your strategy, its requirements, your current activity, expectations, resources and internal ownership.

 

 

Planning gives you control early on but also creates flexibility in later stages because of how detailed your understanding of your strategy is.

 

Business performance is an important expectation because it is often misguided in solely looking at direct sales. Outside of just focusing on sales, it is important to understand success can also be measured in leads and engagement.