A company’s vision and views are regularly overlooked within a business, however, without a clear vision, a company can struggle to reach its potential in the digital space. That is why it’s pivotal you review and set your company’s vision early on when developing your digital strategy; and ensure that it aligns with your company’s overall business strategy.

Find Your Digital Marketing “Why”

When setting your vision for your business, you need to remember the initial reason as to why you have decided to move into the digital space. The initial reasoning will help form your vision for your company and its digital strategy.

When brainstorming ideas for your business’ digital vision there are several questions you should answer. These are:

• “What do we want to be the authority in?”
• “What are we currently famous for?”
• “What do we want to be famous for/in?”
• “What conversation do we want to own in our channel?”
• “What is the best medium to tell our story?”
• “Do we have an interesting story to tell?”
• “What are the key strengths of our products/services?”
• “Who needs to hear what we have to say?”

While answering these questions, you will need to think of the services your business currently offers and what you are best known for within the industry and to your clients. This step presents an opportunity for you to look into the future and to set a goal as to where your business wants to grow.

During this step, ensure you reflect on both internal and external views. You should be able to answer “why do we need to do it?” And “why do our customers need us to do it?”. This could result in a range of answers. Is it because your competitors are doing it well, is it because you offer a digital service to your clients and customers, is it because your target audience has a digital presence on a platform you’re not on, is it because it represents an opportunity to drive more leads and sales, or others?

By the end of this review, you should have a broad picture of “why are we doing it?” which should clearly highlight the reasons as to why it’s pivotal to invest time and money into digital.

Building Your Digital Vision

Once you have answered the above questions in detail, it will validate that your business strategy and digital strategy are aligned. By developing this knowledge, it will give meaning as to why you have decided to focus more on digital marketing and how you want to flourish in the digital space.

Along with justifying the value of strengthening your digital presence, it will also act as a motivator within your company. It will influence your company to strive to reach the wanted objective and goal.

A digital strategy vision could be: “We will become an authority in _________. Our business’ digital strategy is to create brand awareness that will establish a valuable asset through our audience creation. This will then translate to the generation of leads and conversions to increase sales.”

By setting your vision, as well as your internal and external view early on in your digital strategy, it will provide guidance to your business throughout the execution. While providing you with guidance, it will also provide reassurance as to why your business has decided to invest in digital and how it will drive a return in sales and asset development.

Once you have set your digital vision, it’s time to dig into your keyword research. Discover more in Step 5 of a Digital Strategy: Perform Keyword Research.