Successful Business Transformation Starts with a Digital Marketing Roadmap

Define and Implement a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy to Meet Your Digital Goals

During the pandemic, many businesses are accepting that the once “nice-to-have” online channel is now the most important channel for their business growth. This acceptance also leaves many with new challenges for their business to adapt to the environment the pandemic has introduced. Virtually everything is virtual! Meetings and conferences, buying and selling, communicating, and surveying, designing and simulating, we could go on and on. But you get the drift…if your business isn’t geared for the digital era, you may soon be in permanent lockdown. While the thought may be scary, the solution really is quite simple. It begins with adopting a digital marketing mindset and creating a roadmap for change.

We don’t want to downplay the process though. Any type of business transformation is complex, and it’s important to recognize that. Businesses during COVID-19 find themselves shifting significant portions of their marketing dollars to digital marketing, with some even moving a nearly 100% of their marketing spend  to digital. For some this is a major shift. In the absence of a defined strategy and a roadmap, many business transformations will fail. In fact, many businesses as we know them are already shutting their doors.

Too often, and not just in the current scenario of the pandemic, digital journeys tend to come to an abrupt halt due to:

• Absence of a holistic view of what digital could mean for the business
• Insufficient clarity on the dynamics and potential of the digital landscape
• Underestimation of the scale, momentum and resources required to achieve a disruptive digital impact.

Has your organization embarked on a digital transformation journey for any or all areas of business? When it comes to the marketing efforts, have you prepared an elaborate digital strategy that optimizes your marketing spends through data and technology-focused initiatives? A successful and sustainable digital marketing journey is one that is backed by a robust and well-developed digital marketing roadmap. The roadmap not only aligns every initiative with your business goals, but also provides clear, achievable, trackable, measurable, predictable, and modifiable action plans to reach the set milestones.

Learn how a comprehensive digital marketing roadmap can support your digital transformation initiatives and bolster your company’s performance and growth.

The A to Z of a Digital Marketing Roadmap

What is a digital marketing roadmap?

Whether it is content marketing initiatives, paid programming, organic search efforts, email marketing campaigns, or social media strategy, a digital roadmap consolidates and visualizes your efforts across all marketing channels in a single document or dashboard. You can define, track, evaluate, predict, and modify your initiatives, while enjoying a near real-time view of where each effort lies within the marketing funnel.

 Why do you need a digital marketing roadmap?

As a high-level blueprint, the digital marketing roadmap acts like a GPS system for your company.

• Where are you going? It establishes a direction of travel by drawing up the key marketing initiatives that will lead you to your digital transformation destination.
• Which route will you take? It provides a clear and accessible path with action plans for each initiative.
• Do you know if there is traffic or obstacles ahead? It sets up a tracking and measurement mechanism to keep you abreast of your present position, as well as where you are heading.
• Can you reach your destination faster or more efficiently? It allows a flexible and nimble approach to reroute initiatives and action plans, especially in the face of technological advances and evolving consumer behaviors and preferences.

It is important to recognize that we are in an environment that experiences ‘constant transition’; there is no room for rigid plans. Hence, you need a realistic digital marketing roadmap—a living, evolving guide that shows you where to go, how to get there, where to change tracks (if need be), which resources to use, how much to invest, and how to ensure return on investment (ROI).

How is a digital marketing roadmap different from a digital marketing strategy?

A digital strategy is the foundation of your business’s digital transformation. However, your digital strategy and digital roadmap need to go hand-in-hand. A strategy without a roadmap lacks direction, and a roadmap without a strategy has no destination.

Creating a digital strategy is about:

• Spelling out the desired outcomes
• Deepening your market understanding
• Assessing your existing digital infrastructure
• Selecting the right digital tools for a sustainable and successful digital marketing journey

Aligning your digital roadmap to your digital strategy entails:

• Gaining stakeholder alignment
• Prioritizing and scheduling your key initiatives
• Defining timelines and tracking mechanisms
• Measuring performance at regular intervals

What are the components of a digital marketing roadmap?

A digital roadmap starts with defining your online objective. While every business wants to increase traffic, brand awareness, and revenue, the roadmap narrows down your outcomes with SMART goals. It’s about replacing “We need to increase our web traffic” with “We need to increase Google organic traffic to the widget page by 10% in 3 months.” Besides goals and objective setting, the digital roadmap comprises:

• Research and evaluation of various aspects of your business, customers, competitors, technology, analytical capabilities.
• Proposals and action plans for:
  • Service design, user experience design, analytics
  • Technology solution architecture and procurement
  • Content building and information architecture
• Mechanisms for redesigning strategies and action plans based on the ongoing analytics
• A detailed project management plan that tracks and measures progress against the set timelines, budget, and resources.

How to successfully implement a digital strategy and roadmap?

A digital marketing roadmap alone cannot guarantee a successful digital transformation. In reality, an organization can drive business value and ROI from the digital roadmap only if it has the right processes, practices and digital culture. Hence, the success of your digital marketing strategy depends on how well you stay the course of your digital roadmap.

• How accurately you define the wildly important goals (WIGs) and accountabilities?
• How often do you measure or review?
• How quick-footed are you in modifying plans?
• How efficiently do you ensure ongoing stakeholder engagement?

These and many other factors influence your organization’s digital marketing journey. It’s important to acknowledge that your team capabilities and technology infrastructure may not always be adequate in addressing your digital vision. Counting on external support and bringing in professional digital marketing experts will help optimize your time, money, and resources, while achieving your digital milestones.

Boost Your Digital Marketing Goals with a Solid Digital Marketing Roadmap

An effective digital roadmap can be a valuable tool in your effort to accomplish digital milestones of varying scale and complexity. From learning more about your customers and campaigns, to testing your assumptions and recalibrating your paths, digital roadmaps give you the opportunity to demonstrate measurable results against the allocated marketing dollars.

At WSI Leap Digital, we combine decades of global internet experience with cutting-edge digital marketing initiatives to help organizations achieve their digital goals. Whether it is digital advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing, or content and email marketing, we support and transform every digital journey through well-developed digital marketing roadmaps.

Let our insights, experiences and tools guide you in your digital marketing journey. Call 416-458-7876 or contact us online to book your live consultation meeting.