The 3 Fundaments of Online Strategy

The Online Strategy encompasses those elements of the business- and marketing strategy that must be employed to contribute efficiently and effectively to its goals.

As for all strategies, the Online Strategy should consider the brand, the target audience, products & services and the positioning of the brand. ( read also The Content – Context Diarchy to understand the relation between offer and context in the online landscape )
Be it on an overarching level or on execution level (see the three parts below), consistency is key to achieve brand recognition.
It’s tempting to divert from this focus because the Internet offers lots of possibilities which can be applied, but not neccesarily relevant and this non-relevancy might cause a distanciation of the target audience.

 The online strategy for your business can be divided in three main fundaments:
* Website Strategy
* Internet Strategy
* Social Strategy

Website Strategy
This part of the Online Strategy contains all that regards the website and the portability of the website.
Depending on the goal of the core-website, it can just suffice for conversion, which means other platforms need to be interconnected which contribute to the goal, or the core-website is meant as a complete overview of the company.
Decide what to implement on the corporate site and what not.

In terms of  areas, think of SEO, persuasion architecture, (e-commerce) platform, used languages, usability etcetera.

The website is the online business card of the company, where the target audience comes in touch with the brand and its products and services.
Potential customers have found the website in one way or another, it’s important to engage with the potential customer, no matter what phase of the purchase process he or she is in.
An 80+% of the visitors aren’t in a buying modus when visiting the site. In a pre-purchase phase, the website must be enticing and memorable to win a spot in the consideration set and be eligible to be followed up and an eventual purchase.
The optimum would be to create such an experience that customer loyalty is achieved. The website is a part of the customer loyalty. For instance, the choice of the platform provides the boundaries or opportunities with regard to the level of customization and tactics to retain the customers.

Internet strategy
Here you determine which channels are commited to attract and reach the target audience, the channels where the target audience is ‘confronted’ with the brand.
The advertising channels are the connection between the products and services and your target audience, which are engaged and/or monetized on your website.
Valid tactics can be search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing etcetera.

During the strategic planning, keep in mind factors like:
* Time to achieve goals,
* Budget,
* Level of skills and
* What the tactic contributes to.
(These factors can be applied also on the Website- and Social Strategy)

Ad. Time to achieve goals
Not all channels achieve their goals within the same period of time. Search Engine Advertising is a short-term channel, which is highly effective, dynamic and can achieve goals quickly, SEO on the contrary needs time.
With time I refer to the complete time span which is needed to set in motion a campaign, including preparing the site and other back-end issues.

Ad. Budget
The budget is relative to time. Internet channels should be seen as distribution channels, for conversion focussed goals, there should be no budget untill the goals are meeting the conditions. This new way of ‘budgetting’ has not penetrated yet in the budget-generations and corporates which have a strict framework to follow. The ‘old way’ brings inflexibility along and slower adaptation to the dynamic landscape.

Ad. Level of skills
The level of skills brings along a strategic decision, outsourcing or in-house execution of the Internet Strategy.
The choice is made upon two variables, the importance and the available present skills.

Ad. What the tactic contributes to
The last factor is more of an understanding of every channel in relation to each other and to the Internet strategy.
Email-marketing is a catalyst for further visibility and portability of the subject and plays an important role with regard to retention.
On the other hand Search Engine Marketing is still the lifeblood of the Internet Strategy.

Social strategy
Let me first debunk three general misconceptions.
*Why social media is often placed within the Internet strategy is not clear to me, social media is not a channel in the same context as the channels discussed in the Internet Strategy, because the context and implications of such a definition of channel is too narrow. The implications of social media are wider as will be explained below.
Another difference is the disruptive nature of conventional advertising/marketing and social media.
The analogy here is screaming versus talking to and with your target audience.
*Social media is about people and their interaction, not the technology. The technology only enables interaction.
An anology is that social media is the telephone line and that the communication on the telephone line creates the value. Many discussions are ongoing what the return on investment of social media should be, but the context is incorrect, using old metrics for new ways.
* Social media is not free. Sure, many technologies are free, but the value-adding interaction is created by people.

The new paradigm has preluded a new way of conducting business, where key terms like transparency, co-creation, open collaboration and end-user/open innovation are pioneering this evolution.

Where the Website- and Internet Strategy have pretty defined frameworks, the Social Strategy is less well defined.  Social strategy is interdepartmental, influencing the internal processes and is the overarching fundament.
I wrote about this in Marketing’s fifth P on steroids, Social Strategy can outsource processes and functions and let the ‘prosumers’ co-create along the company.

As I mentioned before, social media is about the interaction, not the technology, social strategies are formed by:
* Target audience,
* Strategy and
* Objectives.
They determine what technologies must be chosen.

Ad. Target audience
Know the so-called Social Technographics profile of your target audience. It’s a method developed by Forrester which analyzes your target audience according their level of participation.
The six levels of participation are: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives.
To understand your target audience in this manner is important for the choice of technology, it would be a loss of money if you create a community but there is no critical mass of creators which can sustain such an effort.

Ad. Strategy
Ask yourself the following question: What is the aim after having implemented the social strategy?

Ad. Objectives
Ask yourself the following question: What do you want to achieve?
You should shape and determine the objective(s) before you go ahead with finding the technologies which suffice the objectives.
Here can be applied the Mindful Approach. Don’t jump the bandwagon because your competitors do so, and don’t because you have the fear to miss out.
The new scarcities are Time and Attention, target audiences aren’t present at networks or won’t employ certain actions if it doesn’t suit their needs.
Choose well-informed, companies need to have resources to employ the efforts for the long-term.

All three fundaments must be tuned in and intertwined to effectuate a holistic presence.

Below I’ll point out to (meta-) prerequisites that impact the online business efforts:

Analytics
Where traditional marketing has to cope with the incapability of measurement, the Internet has created the perfect quantifyable environment. The three fundaments are well-grounded by an analytical system create insight in the business and causalities. Learn as much as possible and adapt the strategy to the new findings to contribute in a more effective way to the business objectives.

Balance between Foundation and Innovation
The Foundation sustains the Innovation, and the Innovation creates the following phase in the (product) portfolio / business cycle, which will then be the Foundation, and so goes the cycle on.
Both strategies and tactics adhere to this balance. Don’t play it too safe, but don’t play it too wild either.
The degree and approach of innovation depends on the Enterprise Personality. Type A, B, C which respectively mean high risk takers, which have the intelligence, moderate risk takers and cautious risk takers.
As described in the article 10 reasons why your CEO should embrace Social Media, transparency, the ‘new’ marketing, creates a new set of challenges, one of them is the “Tipping Point”, which to paraphrase, are “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.” ( The Tipping Point – Wikipedia ).
When not having a complete overview of the landscape, descentralized on several platforms, an attitude towards the brand can be formed that is to late to intervene.
Indeed will little things make a big difference, as Gladwell’s book is called after. Interact with your target audience, understand and learn from their feedback. Realise that the brand is what the target audience perceives, and perception is reality.

Blue Ocean Strategy
The concepts of Blue Ocean Strategy fit perfectly in the Internet age, find Blue Oceans, unknown market spaces where demand is created through Value Innovation.
Utopian niches can be realised on the Internet, reaching the ‘small’ target audiences which will benefit from the particular Blue Oceans.
The costs to create new niches are much lower, which will enforce the testing and creation of the niches. Niches in this context can have massive dimensions.

Strategy and Execution
Strategy is execution, is an often heard phrase, but putting in action the plan is often ommisioned. The execution is critical to the competitive advantage the strategy creates. I’m referring explicit in this article to this aspect, due to the constant hypes and trends entering the online landscape and the focus on speed and the Now. 
Clients don’t want to remain behind, which accelerates in many occassions the execution time which result in poorly executed strategies.
Strategy and execution are symbiotic, as guidance and as result.

Marketing and Innovation
To end this article with the viewpoint by mr. Drucker, Marketing and Innovation are the two basic functions of a business. Marketing creates the competitive advantages expressed through the brand’s uniquenesses. The Internet has become an essential element for all businesses.
Innovations can be exploited more massive, because theoretically, the whole world is your customer.

This article is my understanding and modelling of the online strategy at this point of time, through much practice and gaining experience, theory and many conversations with many unique persons. 
A model is a simplification of the reality, what is your model with regard to the online strategy?
What is your perspective? Do you approach it differently, please share your views!

Related posts:

1. The Content – Context Diarchy
2. Reflection: “A Checklist to Choose Which Internet Marketing Channel is Right for Your Business”
3. Marketing’s fifth P on steroids
4. Reflection: “The consumer decision journey”