Red Ant: Digital Strategy Whitepaper 2011

planning and managing a

digital
strategy

www.redant.com

Planning and managing a digital strategy www.redant.com

About Red Ant
Established in 1999, Red Ant has had one clear aim – to provide clients with all the expertise, talent and intelligence they need to
engage effectively to their customers through digital.

With a focus on strategy and delivering measurable ROI, Red Ant’s team of in-house experts has a reputation for excellence when
it comes to planning, creating and delivering world-class digital campaigns.

To find out more, visit www.redant.com

Key Ants
Dan Mortimer – CEO
With over 11 years’ experience in the digital industry, my knowledge of the online space enables me to
think creatively and challenge briefs. My passion is strategy and showing how digital can open new
opportunities for clients. I love working with the team to come up with ideas to push brands for maximum
exposure and return through digital communication and engagement, utilising the correct tools for the
campaigns.

Richard Conyard - CIO
I have been working with and developing for the web since an internship in the USA in the summer of
1994, not quite the commercial beginning, but not far off. Since those days I have held a number of
different positions and worked with a number of different companies and brands, including the AA, Airfix,
Andrex, Barclays, British Gas, Cattles, Filofax, The FT, Goldfish, Lonely Planet, MHRA, MTV, Scalextric, Sony,
Symantec, Volkswagen and more.

Paul Bidder – Commercial Director
I'm focused on delivering return on investment solutions to meet clients’ business objectives and campaign
aims. My background in IT management and consultancy gives me a solid understanding of businesses who
want to get the best from digital communications and eCommerce. I’ve worked with a number of leading
brands to develop robust, long-term strategies which deliver measurable ROI.

Dan Hartveld – Director of Mobile
In the emerging field of mobile commerce, I am a knowledgeable and trusted expert and advisor with a
proven track record in real-world business. From 2007-2009, I led the online grocer Ocado’s Mobile Devices
team. Originally developing custom internal applications for deliveries and stock control, from 2008 I
managed the design, implementation and support of the UK's first grocery shopping application, "Ocado
on the Go" for iPhone.

Alex Estrella – Director of Film and TV
I have more than 15 years’ experience working with some of the world's biggest brands, including Disney,
Virgin, Nokia, BT and Caterpillar. I’m also one of the UK's leading directors in Musion, a ground-breaking
3D animation technique, and my work on Toyota Auris won the IVCA award for innovation. I’ve been
instrumental in productions for Sky, BBC and Channel 4, and I’m a lecturer in film at the National School
of Film and Television.

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Editors note
Red Ant released the first white paper ‘Planning and creating a digital strategy’ in September 2009, with an expected follow up on
how to run a digital strategy. We are happy to note that there have been thousands of downloads of the whitepaper - it has been
used for research and education purposes by a wide variety of organisations (most of it attributed under our creative commons
release), and it has led to a growth of the concept of digital strategy as a whole.

Back in 2009 we noted that digital was the fastest growing area of marketing, customer retention and engagement, and a year
later the same is still true. Media devices, smart phones for the masses and experiential/digital mash-ups have made our
exposure to digital channels almost ubiquitous. We can engage in a plethora of different ways and, unfortunately in some
instances (especially in cities with geo-location channels), enter into an electronic miasma of competing messages - not quite as
bad as envisaged in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, but still potentially alarming and confusing.

With the increased uptake of digital engagement, we find that the development of a robust digital strategy is more important
than ever. The lessons we have learnt since the first paper are numerous, and the feedback we have received has been invaluable.
If you have read the first edition then I hope you find this second one to be a valuable update, and core to your digital success.

Richard Conyard - CIO

Introduction
In 2009, the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) predicted that internet advertising – just one small part of a digital strategy - would
overtake TV advertising by the end of the year. This was inaccurate – according to the IAB’s own figures, internet ad spend
outstripped TV ad spend a good three months before the end of 2009. The UK is now the world’s first major economy to spend
more on online advertising than on TV – currently, the internet takes 23% of all advertising spend, compared with 21.9% for TV.
And, according to analysis by business consultants Price Waterhouse Coopers, over the last 12 months most digital media
categories grew by more than originally forecast, despite a challenging economic climate which frequently had a devastating
effect on other, more traditional marketing activities. Digital is clearly still the fastest growing area of marketing, customer
retention and engagement. Inevitably, digital channels and engagement through digital channels are now not only an expected
part of audience experience when connecting with a brand - they are often at the core of an audience member’s engagement
with a brand. Audience expectation has increased to such a level when considering brand engagement that:

• it is no longer acceptable for a brand to wait for the audience to visit
• brands must actively communicate to prosper
• positive engagement snowballs, arrogance creates stagnancy

What is digital?
Process definition

In short, digital is about finding the best way of achieving goals, normally promoting a brand or service, through electronic
connected media. This could be online on the web, through specialist Internet applications, or through mobile phone
applications (both network and Bluetooth connections). Digital consultancy can also tie into traditional media outlets, either as
traditional first (bringing an audience into a digital campaign), or traditional last (by using an existing digital audience as content
generators).

Digital can also be used to extend the process into a company’s/brand’s inner workings; improving the supply chain, gaining
direct consumer or business insight through greater transparency and movement of the underlying data.

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Emotive definition

Digital is the great equaliser and relationship builder. Humans by their very nature are communicative and inquisitive, and digital
channels allow brands to interact with their audience on both levels. The level of involvement required by the audience to engage
with a brand, in many cases a simple click of the mouse, shrinks the gulf between interaction and offline brand perception.

The greatest benefit of digital lies in its ability to forge individual relationships with the audience. Unlike any other broadcast
medium, digital channels allow direct engagement with each member of the audience.

Definition by difference

Digital offers brands new opportunities that traditional methods cannot easily match:

• Digital does not obey the line • Digital should be cost efficient
• Digital can be broadcast and personalised • Digital should always prove returns
• Digital can be reactive as well as proactive

Industry changing
Digital strategy offers brands and companies new, unique ways of engaging with their customers and audiences to a far higher
level than has been previously possible. Initial faltering steps in digital marketing such as PPC and SEO are the tip of the iceberg
as to what is possible.

Well-conceived digital strategies and campaigns will push brands ever forward in the consciousness of their audience and lead to
lasting adoption, advocacy and, over time, increase expectation from industries as a whole. From an audience perspective, digital
allows the model to change from being a monologue to a dialogue.

Sample Digital Strategy
(Drive to Retail) (Awareness, Traffic)
PR, Display Advertising Online/Offline

(Communication, Assets, Data Capture)
(Affiliate Drive to Retail, Drive to Portal)

(Communication + Assets + Data Capture)

Offline (Drive to
(Communication)
Experiential
Retail)
Store Marketing
+ Word of Mouth

(Communication + Assets)

(Communication)

(Assets)
Mobile
Online
Store
(Communication + Assets)

(Drive to
Retail)

(Assets)
Social
Consumer Networks
(Affiliate Drive to Retail)

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Building a digital strategy
There are four core stages to building and running a digital strategy:

Each of these stages runs into the next to deliver a coherent digital campaign. Combined, they deliver an ongoing digital strategy
as the audience and brand perception evolves.

Planning Creation Actualisation Evaluation

The planning of a digital The creation stage is purely The actualisation focuses on The evaluation of a digital
strategy involves analysing focused around campaign the delivery of the campaign, strategy is imperative to learn
the following: formalisation. This involves: including: the lessons of the campaign,
including:
• The initial aims and • Planning campaign • Building the engagement
expected returns elements based upon timeline • Evaluating KPIs and fiscal
• The background of the previous analysis • Engaging with the achievement
brand, present positioning • Creating key performance audience through the • Reviewing engagement and
and perception indicators per channel and engagement loop unexpected longer term
• The audience (broken down estimating expected return • Sampling progress through benefits
into key segments) per channel a campaign and optimising • Taking lessons on board to
• Audience locations and • Design and build of the campaign message build stronger future
value of each audience campaign elements / • Recording salient campaigns
segment against initial channels information through each • Scoring the strategy and
aims • Planning and establishing campaign step for the benefits that it has
actualisation routes, evaluation given
The planning stage deals communication flows and
purely in the analysis and expectations The actualisation stage runs Evaluation improves the
identification of focus areas. as a microcosm of the effectiveness of future
The creation stage for each strategy as a whole and relies campaigns and strategies by
channel finishes on the on rapid responses to tune becoming the key building
launch of each channel. the strategy. block in planning them.

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The lifetime and focus of a digital strategy

The lifetime of a digital strategy is a frequently debated subject. Given the different approaches, aims and strategies employed,
there is very rarely a ‘one size fits all’ answer to questions concerning the length and lifecycle of the digital strategy. Shiv Singh,
Director of digital marketing and social media at PepsiCo, and author of social media marketing for dummies states:

“Digital strategy means something that will change my bottom line in 3-6 months.”

This has a very definite lifetime. Pushed further, he goes on to explain that the timescales are technology based - so who knows
what will be in vogue and / or available technologically six months from now?

Whilst Shiv Singh has a point, certainly when it comes to the bottom line, this does pose a further question; should digital
strategy be constrained by a technological stand point? The definitions of a digital strategy in this paper, whilst embracing digital
as an enabler, do not focus on digital at the centre of the strategy; rather, central to the strategies put forward in this paper is a
clear focus on aims and audiences.

Caught by the buzz
It is all too easy for a digital strategy to get caught in – and be moulded by - the excitement and buzz of a trending technology.
Those in digital marketing in 2008 and 2009 were often confronted by the statement: “I would like an iPhone app”. The nature
and aims of the app became secondary to an often ill-considered desire to be seen as keeping up with the latest trending
technology. For summer 2010 this has changed to: “I would like an iPad app”, still with little thought given to the aims and goals
of that app. This approach misses out on some key precepts of digital strategy:

• Digital strategy should prove return
• Self aggrandisement of a company’s marketing team does not always lead to improved bottom line
• The trendiest strategies are not always the best strategies for either audience or aims

This paper does not focus on trending technology. Audiences, whether they are businesses or consumers, and their interaction to
deliver the aims of the strategy are the most important part, since they contribute directly to the bottom line.

Digital lifecycle
Digital strategies do not have lifetimes. Campaigns within a digital strategy are likely to have a set lifetime, but the strategy
continues with evaluated aims and successes from previous campaigns taken into account and expanded upon. This is why the
visual representation of a digital strategy is circular, each campaign building and growing into the next. Businesses and brands
keep their core underlying aims for more than the 3 to 6 month window (there are, of course, exceptions). However, by cycling
through short campaigns, strategies build and deliver against those aims, ready to move to the next set of brand-based
challenges.

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send
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bora
colla
collaborate
deploy

Stage 1:

Planning

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Aims

Aims are the foundation of any digital strategy. They should be generic rather than specific at the planning stage, so as not to
overload with detail. The detail behind the aims of a digital strategy will be defined by the digital strategy process. Concentrating
on specific aims from the outset runs the risk of missing potential opportunities and channels of a digital strategy. Generic goals
normally include increased awareness, building an audience and / or educating that audience, increasing reputation, and
ultimately making the conversion. Limitations generally consist of conflict of interest with existing business practices and / or
outlets, initial perception (both audience and reputation), and budget. Working with these goals and limitations, digital
consultants can start to build clear strategies to meet these aims.

Whilst each brand will have its own specific aims and objectives, they can normally be aligned to one of these four main groups:

• Consumer awareness and demand creation
• Direct consumer drive to retail and purchase
• Education and incentive within the retail space
• Process improvement through streamlined communications

Each of these groups will have mirrored activities offline and it is imperative that any existing brand activities are covered within
the background.

Positioning aims

Aims can be further clarified by ranking against:

• Focus: Aims can have a very direct and specific focus that can be achieved in few ways, or a broad focus that can be achieved in
many different ways
• Process: Aims can require the audience to handle few or many steps (e.g. awareness as opposed to conversion)
• Length of engagement: Aims may have a short term turnaround or be long term engagements / relationships

Process
Awareness

Focus Engagement
Broad
Short Term

Engagement
Long Term Focus
Direct

Process
Conversion

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Sample aims can be seen in the following table:

Reference Aim Focus Process Engagement
A1 Increased awareness of core brand products Broad Awareness Short term
A2 Target audience groups likely to become long term consumers Direct Conversion Medium term
with below the line offline promotion
A3 Capture details of potential consumers for future campaigns Direct Conversion Medium term
A4 Reaffirm core brand message of luxury and quality Broad Awareness Long term
A5 Develop an audience around the key message to progress from Direct Conversion Long term
influenced to advocates
A6 Consolidate current audiences to allow easier message spread Direct Awareness Long term

Background

Digital strategy cannot live in isolation from the existing activities and history of the brand. Before any meaningful digital strategy
can be put in place, the brand must be understood inside and out. Misplaced brand identity within a digital strategy will at best
lead to a misfiring campaign - at worst it can lead to long term damage for the brand in question.

The message for any digital strategy must be on brand or at least on brand aspirations, as defined in the aims. Whilst a subjective
viewpoint is all well and good, living and breathing the brand will open up ideas for digital strategy that will take the brand to
the next level. The creative stage and the actualisation stage will require a strong knowledge of offline marketing strategy
activities. The most successful strategies have fully integrated digital and offline strands.

Understanding the background also helps to expose unrealistic aims and stops the digital strategy promising to deliver more than
it is capable of doing. For example, a new product launch without any great seeding budget aiming to become a household name
within a few weeks of the strategy commencing is highly unrealistic, regardless of the proposition of the digital campaign.

Audience

One of the core propositions of modern digital strategies is the
Key: role reversal of the audience from being a non-participatory group
Seed into an engaged and lively medium through which further brand
Influencers
advocacy can take place. Working with the brand audience in a
positive engagement through digital marketing techniques can
Advocates
enable brand exposure to snowball, but the flipside to this
Influenced
proposition is that negative experience is also broadcast to a wider
sphere. Audience management is a key factor in the actualisation
stage; however, to work with the brand audience the first step
must be to identify and understand each of its segments.

The diagram to the left shows a simplified message path of a
single idea within a digital strategy. The idea is initially seeded
through both idea creation and advertising (paid and unpaid). It is
likely the idea will be picked up initially (but not exclusively) by
existing advocates. Through them, the message will spread to
those that will be influenced by the idea, namely further
advocates and influencers within the market space. When
conducted correctly, this can result in a snowball effect - an
influencer aligns with an idea in a strategy and in turn encourages
support from their own advocates, who go on to become
ambassadors for the idea themselves.

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The company background should be able to provide a snapshot of the audience taken from previous marketing activities, previous
campaigns within an existing digital strategy and brand intelligence. Further insight can be taken from analytics tools that should
be in place on all current digital activities.

One area of consideration that should be part of audience selection is that the current audience might not be appropriate for the
aims of that particular digital strategy. Audience evaluation should consider expansion of the brand message into new segments
where the digital strategy and brand aims require such outreach, and should not be hemmed in by previous assumptions.

Identifying your audience

An established brand should have a good idea of its audience through previous traditional marketing efforts. Digital and the
audiences that it can reach should be used as an opportunity to re-evaluate the audience. Digital allows niche markets and
subcultures of existing audiences to be targeted at a comparatively reduced overhead. Whilst the success of a digital strategy
is not inversely proportional to audience segmentation and targeting, a balance should be reached where the message of a
campaign within a strategy is focused enough to be relevant, but wide enough to engage with the correct size population to
deliver returns without being too reliant on a small subset of people.

Subcultures and urban tribes
A subculture can be defined across standard demographic tranches (age, gender, ethnicity, education, class, location, etc.), but
also - though not exclusively - by style, mannerisms and behaviours and argot. Once a digital footprint has been established for a
brand, further identification of these interacting and engaging subcultures can be derived through analytical tools and regression
techniques. For those brands without digital footprint, offline research should be conducted to evaluate patterns and trends in
purchasing habits, audience snapshots, crossover into other established brands and metaphors of style. Through each of these
techniques and others a subculture can be derived and used to build a digital persona.

Urban tribes, as coined by the French sociologist Michel Maffesoli and American journalist Ethan Watters, are a continuation of
the subculture theme, often prized in B2C due to their movement away from traditional family structures to social interaction
with urban groups with common interests; according to Watters, they are aged between 25 to 45 years old and have never
married. In short, groups with if not significant then relevant amounts of disposable income.

As these self-selecting urban tribes move away from familial support structures and question or replace traditional parental
hierarchies, the bonds of commonality become more pronounced. The argot, style and mannerisms of such brand aligned groups
can be used both for audience identification and creation - something that the fashion industry has not been slow to recognise
and that can (dependent on brand) be a driver in building engagement.

Persona building

Once audiences have been identified, they need to be brought into the structure of the digital strategy. The segmentation of
audience into personas should not be limited solely to the identification of groups, but also to rate specific groups’ alignment to
the stated aims. “Who is my audience?” is in part an irrelevant question when factoring against “who in my audience will be best
suited to delivering my aims?”.

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Two sample personas can be seen below:

Existing customers ( Audience A) Targeted customers - First time car buyers (Audience B )
• Male/Female 18 to 32 • Male 18 to 24
• Full-time worker • Higher education
• Single or married • Single or in a relationship
• Technically adept, comfortable online, but not advanced • Technically adept and highly active on social networking sites
• Homeowner or renting • Still living at home

relation to aims relation to aims
• An audience in which to increase awareness, and • An audience in which to tap into and gain Awareness
maintain top-of-mind positioning • First time car buyers with low disposable income that will
• Most likely to be in the market regardless and as only be able to afford used cars
experienced consumers they are looking for the best • Most likely channels are Facebook, Twitter, MySpace,
experience at the best cost Google and Autotrader
• Most likely channels are LinkedIn, Friends re-united, • Establishing brand relationship at a young audience.
business magazines &broadsheet newspapers More likely to return when they are older.

Finding your audience

One of the benefits of digital strategy is the opportunity to segment activity into different spheres and places directly targeted to
the location of the audience - or more specifically the personas matching the aims of the digital strategy. Targeting activities in
this way can be used to reduce cost whilst increasing efficiency and message for each of the channels based in these locations.

Demographic segmentation location sourcing
From each of the personas defined it is possible to apply demographic filters to major locations where digital strategy activities
can take place – e.g. social networking sites, blogs, search engines or forums. Often locations are applicable to multiple personas
and demographics (e.g. Facebook, which is almost ubiquitous across western consumer audiences).

Mobile
Internet

657 million* 600 million* 593 million* 530 million* 500 million*

Mobile

smartphones ebay Facebook Mobile twitter Orkut Friendster LinkedIn MySpace Bebo Blackberry
270 million* 223 million* 150 million* 105 million* 100 million* 75 million* 70 million* 66 million* 52 million* 50 million*

Flickr Viadeo iPhone Tablet Devices Xing Ping
40 million* 30 million* 29 million* 19 million* 10 million* 2 million*

* Users per month - approximate Figures

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By looking at the personas, locations suggest themselves. Most locations are happy to provide anonymous audience statistics to
help promote digital marketing through their channels.

By segmenting personas across interests, niche locations can be identified. Depending upon fiscal return for each aim, targeting
locations that contain small audience numbers and low barrier to entry can be a viable digital strategy leading to high returns.
Location sourcing across interest involves a degree of research using either freely available tools (e.g. Google search), or paid for
tools (e.g. Buzzwatcher from AT Internet).

Certain networks (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) provide a combination of demographic and interest segmentation that allows the
development of highly personalised campaigns. Other tools, such as Phorm, have entered the market that also allow a great
degree of segmentation, however these have yet to prove popular with audiences, who consider them to have a somewhat ‘big
brother’ approach.

Location evaluation

To scope the remit of any creative, locations should be evaluated against audience size, barriers to entry and potential for
conversion of the digital strategy aims. This will avoid the scenario where creative ideas are developed and rated for locations that
will not benefit digital strategy. Locations can be evaluated in line with the following table:

Location Audience Size Barrier to Entry Estimated Uptake Aims Matched Audiences
Location A 10,000 Low Medium A1, A2, A5, A6 A, B
Location B 1,500 Low High A2, A3 B
Location C 50,000 Medium Medium A4, A6 A
Location D 50,000 High Low A1, A2, A3, A5, A6 A, B

In the above example, although Location D matches most of the aims, it may prove more cost effective and provide better returns
to concentrate efforts in locations A, B and C.

For example, location D may be the online business section of a national paper, and targeted display ads will hit most of the aims
of the digital campaign. However, the cost to advertise (barrier to entry), is restrictive. The other locations may be social
networking sites or, in the instance of location B, a niche targeted forum. When efforts are spread across three locations rather
than just one, the cost barriers are greatly reduced.

Engaging the audience

Already highlighted in the approach to digital strategy is the shift away from monologue to dialogue, the movement into
engaging directly with audiences. But what should you engage over, what is there to talk about? With all of the background
information in planning, audience location and persona building, in theory it should be a relatively simple task. In practice,
however, it is normally far tougher.

Before any ideas can be created, thought needs to be given to how to best maximise engagement across each channel. This falls
into two specific considerations:

• the style of the audience within the channel
• the style of the message and aims that need to be delivered through the channel

To a large degree, the first starts to frame the second - but not entirely. Whether business to business or business to consumer,
the way we engage with others is multi-faceted, and there is room to mix the message a little and still achieve success.

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Research
The easiest step to take in planning how to talk to the audience is to conduct research; how do they currently speak in each of the
locations? e.g.:

• Tone, phrase and linguistics
• What has previously got them talking and where does that align with the digital strategy?
• What are competitors doing successfully, and what does not appear to be working?

In addition, some research across potential key influencers would highlight common user generated content patterns, e.g.:

• How personal is the communication between the members of the audience?
• How much do they share (how influential could they be for your campaign)?
• What is the common level of engagement?

The common goal of the research is to identify what messages have been considered to have worth through each of the locations,
and how do audiences communicate that?

Social styles – Merrill and Reid
Psychologists Merrill and Reid defined a measurement to quantify how people best communicate with their definition of social
styles. Built across the axis of assertiveness and responsiveness, the four precepts of social styles and how they group people are:

Task
Analytical Driver
Cool, independent Risk taker
Guarded Strong opinions
Disciplined about time Takes social initiative
Measured opinions and actions Makes statements
Use facts
Ask Tell
Amiable Expressive
Supportive Warm, approachable
Lets others take social initiative Emotional decision making
Moderate opinions Communicative
Go along attitude Dramatic opinions and actions
Risk avoider Easy to get to know

Emotion

Audiences fall across different groups which are mediated by persona and by the channels they are using, time of the message /
action that is being performed and the experience with the campaign. What is clear from studies by Merrill and Reid is that people
tend to engage better within their mix of social styles, and work with those directly adjacent (e.g. ‘amiable’ works with ‘expressive’);
however, diagonal competing styles stifle engagement through lack of empathy (e.g. ‘amiable’ is likely to clash with ‘driver’).

To achieve aims across the digital strategy, it is likely that people will be involved in each of the four social styles. However, it is
exceptionally difficult to engage each of these styles through a single channel and any attempt to do so is likely to result in a
mishmash of competing styles that confuse the audience. As each audience member becomes more familiar with the campaign,
there will be additional leniency as to what is on and off message (provided that the core message remains). However, competing
styles (especially those at the diagonal) will either need to come through different channels or through influencers within a
community of practice.

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Communication
Potential message routes and styles of communication can be brought together to provide a reference framework for the creation
of ideas and message, and how they tie back to the aim:

Aim Community Persona Locations Social Style
Increase Brand Student interest First time car buyers. Facebook fan Trend-setter and
Awareness communities. For Low disposable pages, groups and risk taker, with
example Student income, 18 – 24, Still Ads. Twitter strong opinions
Unions, Student living at home. Uses Student Twibes, and statements.
Voucher Pages, Social Networking sites groups and lists. Young and open
Student Bars & NUS You Tube
pages

Planning conclusion

At the end of the planning stage of a digital strategy, all concerned should be clear about:

• The desired aims of the digital strategy
• The audiences each of the aims are targeted at in order to achieve the best results
• Where to find each of the audiences to achieve the goals
• Best communication methods of engaging with the audience

This allows all creativity to be focused directly on achieving the best returns across the digital strategy.

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Stage 2:

Creation

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Ideas
Ideas, creation and creativity are the elements of digital strategy that get the most attention. The temptation is to always start at
the point of creation and to neglect the planning phase. As long as there is an implicit understanding of a brand, not all ideas
that are derived without suitable planning will be poor. However, the general product will be poorer for not having that rounded
understanding.

This paper segments creation into two specific areas - ideas and the evaluation of ideas, and building those ideas and the factors
that should be considered. The melting pot that is idea creation is crucial to digital strategy:

• if an idea doesn’t engage the audience, the strategy will underperform or fail
• if an idea requires too much maintenance, channels of engagement will clog and the strategy will underperform or fail
• if an idea is too removed from the aims or audience, the strategy will underperform or fail

Evaluation of ideas (from both an engagement and a fiscal perspective) through formalised methods helps to mitigate the risk of
“bad” ideas and stop them entering into the strategy. However, in essence few focused ideas are truly bad - what makes a “bad”
idea for one campaign might work for a subsequent campaign.

As a subject, building ideas could form a whitepaper all of its own, for each of the different disciplines involved within the
channels of a campaign and strategy. It is not practical to evaluate all the differing requirements of a potential build here, but this
paper gives an overview of broad brush areas that should be considered.

Brainstorm

There is no single way to run the perfect brainstorming session; the combination of the people involved, company culture and the
aims of the digital strategy will make certain approaches more productive than others. The following are a few suggestions on
how to get the most out of brainstorming sessions:

Nominate a chair
Nominate one person to collate all participants, to run the meeting and to circulate resultant ideas from the brainstorming
session.

Get the right mix of people
Participants from similar backgrounds will come up with similar ideas and
result in a stifled brainstorming session and limited creativity. Also, the
balance of participant characters helps; they should have the correct mix of
experience, creativity and enthusiasm to pitch their ideas.

Brainstorming groups should be between five and seven people: fewer than
five and the number of ideas will be limited; more than seven and the
sessions are likely to be unwieldy.

Preparation is king
Pass all materials out before the brainstorming session and inform
participants that they are expected to enter into the joint session with
ideas. Isolated brainstorming sessions have been shown to contribute some
of the best initial ideas, but running both isolated and joint brainstorming
sessions can allow these ideas to be nurtured.

Set out the rules
All participants should be given the chance to contribute to the session (hence the prior preparation). Participants should be
actively encouraged to announce ideas as they have them. The purpose of the brainstorming session is quantity not quality;
piggybacking off of others’ ideas to combine or extend should be encouraged (whilst still allowing everyone to participate).

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No criticism
During the ideas gathering stage there are no such things as bad ideas. Criticism encourages participants to retreat from ideas
and stifles creativity.

Note all ideas down
Ideas should be recorded, ideally to a flipchart or whiteboard. This will allow all ideas to be reviewed by all participants. This also
shows the ideas route, how they evolved and upon review may result in further combinations and extension of ideas.

Once all ideas have been generated, each should be evaluated in terms of brief pros and cons, costs and benefits, feasibility etc.
These will determine which ideas are pushed for a formal evaluation against both the merits of the idea and the aims of the
digital strategy in terms of engagement and cost.

Locations and areas for ideas

By the time this paper is released the locations and areas for ideas will already be out of date, given the shifting nature of
technology and new opportunities that are open for digital strategy. The following graphic will hopefully inspire some ideas that
can be tailored to other digital strategies.

Orkut
TV Commercials
LinkedIn
Online Gaming

iGoogle Videos/Show-reels TubeMogul Reddit
Mobile website Augmented Reality QQ Forums

Point of sale
Viral Games
Offline

Facebook Yahoo Google Base
Geocaching Email Marketing
Foursquare
Twitter Blogs Vimeo
Website
Mobile applications

Google Buzz

MSN homepage applications
Google Reader

WiFi / Bluetooth
YouTube
q
q

Microsite
del.ic.ios

PPC
Content syndication

ebay
Spotify

MS Live chat
QR Codes Banner Ads
Viadeo

Xing Page TakeOvers
Kelkoo
Digg Google News
Direct Mail
SEO

17


Engagement evaluation

There are two parts to the evaluation of any idea to determine whether it should be proposed as a channel for use in a digital
strategy. The most obvious is fiscal feasibility, based upon cost and expected return; but it is also important to remember the
engagement evaluation.

To build a digital strategy there are often multiple composite ideas that form a distinct channel (user journey). Each of these ideas
needs to be rated as follows:

• How does the idea match the needs of the audience?
• Which audience groups does the idea touch upon?
• Where do the ideas sit on the engagement path?
• How do the ideas interconnect (if required) to route the audience through to the final step of the engagement path?

The value of the ideas themselves and a coherent picture of how users move through different ideas in a channel can then be
evaluated.

Transposing Maslow’s needs hierarchy
From his work as a clinical psychologist, Abraham Maslow devised a model for explaining the essential needs for healthy
psychological development. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is used in building motivational routes by a number of different
disciplines.

Physiological Needs Functional Needs

Deficiency Needs Safety Needs Safety Needs

Social Needs User Experience Needs

Esteem Needs Esteem Needs

Growth Needs

Self Actualisation Needs Engagement Needs

Maslow’s needs hierarchy can be translated into digital terms to rate the engagement of each idea from the brainstorming
session. Each particular idea may only reach a certain level within the hierarchy of needs when based against the audience
requirement.

Deficiency needs
Deficiency needs are those that must be satisfied to ensure the idea’s (or individual’s) existence and security. Unless the idea
comprises a very small part of a channel, the deficiency needs must be met for the idea to be even moderately successful.

Physiological / functional needs
Physiological needs are elements such as food, water and air - the most basic of all needs for a human to survive. These have their
corresponding needs when evaluating ideas - do they meet the aims or part of the aims of the digital strategy? If these functional
needs are unsatisfied, an individual’s actions will be dominated by attempts to fulfil them, opening up a second set of needs or
more often than not causing the individual to move on.

18


An example of a functional need would be having the ability to browse a site created for the campaign, the speed of the site,
compatibility with the user’s computer or just plain whether it actually works!

Safety needs
In Maslow’s hierarchy, these needs relate to obtaining a secure environment in which an individual is free from threats. When
transposing these into digital ideas there is a direct parallel in security, but there is also the factor of the barriers to entry to
consider. Does the idea make the audience jump through a number of hoops and assumptions before getting to the value?

These digital safety needs are most often unmet when the idea is closely aligned to internal brand perception as opposed to the
audience.

Social / user experience needs
Social needs cover friendship and interaction within the physical world. In the digital world these are mirrored initially by user
experience, rather than the more obvious parallel of social media networks. This is due to the role of digital and the expectation
of the audience. Otherwise, to hit these criteria every idea would have to be deployed through a social media network. The
interaction here is between the audience and the idea.

Growth needs
For Maslow, growth needs are concerned with personal development and realisation of an individual’s potential. Within the
digital strategy sphere, the individual is replaced with the aims of the digital strategy and audience progression and / or evolution
to these aims.

Esteem needs
Within Maslow, esteem needs include the desire for achievement, prestige, recognition as well as appreciation and attention from
others. Digital ideas can be rated against these (consider the games and quizzes on Facebook) to see what value a member of the
audience receives from the effort they will be expected to put in.

Self-actualisation / engagement needs
This is the ultimate goal - the achievement of complete satisfaction by an individual successfully fulfilling their potential. In digital
terms, these are essentially ideas without barriers that allow the audience to move from being inactive participants to
influencers, advocates and, physiologically, partners in pushing the digital strategy’s aims.

Engagement path

Awareness Evaluation Use Conversion Engagement

The engagement path shows the steps along the audience’s interaction with a digital strategy. The ultimate aim of a digital
strategy should be to move the audience through each step within the engagement path to achieve the stated goals of the digital
strategy.

Awareness
The initial steps involve the audience being aware of the brand and one or more elements of the campaign. A specific idea could
be solely focused on stimulating awareness of other elements of the digital strategy, e.g. a PPC advert linking to a microsite.

Evaluation
Evaluation is the equivalent of dipping a toe in the water. This may involve limited exposure to a further reaching idea, a light
weight approach to a deeper idea using progressive disclosure or potentially a walkthrough of a more advanced idea. The
evaluation step encourages the audience to move through to the next stage in the engagement path without setting up the
barrier to commit.

19


Use
To achieve the aims of the digital strategy, at some point the audience will be expected to use one of the tools within the
campaign, hopefully repetitively. Use should not raise the barrier of conversion, e.g. the user being forced to expend excessive
time and/or money.

Conversion
An idea that reaches the conversion stage of the engagement path will be meeting the short term aims of the digital strategy,
e.g. making a single purchase through a site.

Engagement
Engagement involves entering into long term dialogue with the audience over an idea. Ideas that reach the engagement stage
can result in repeat conversion and the transition of the audience from being inactive participants to active advocates.

Idea and digital channel touch points

For each idea there will be a digital channel through which it will be delivered. Not all ideas and channels will touch upon all
audiences, and some audiences may be reached by multiple touch points. For a digital strategy to work, however, each audience
must have a touch point within reach.

Location Examples

TV – National and Regional
Radio – National and Regional
Press – National and Regional
Magazines – Targeted Titles
Point of Sale – Instore
Experiential – Events/Shows
Exhibitions – Targeted Titles
Mobile
Display Advertising
Search (Google)
Twitter
Forum/Blogs
Email
Social (Facebook/MySpace/Bebo)
Video (YouTube)

20


Engagement evaluation

With ideas rated across a digital transposition of Maslow’s needs, their route along the engagement path and their touch points
to audience segments established, the following chart can be created:

Engagement

Conversion

Use

Evaluation

Awareness
er

og

ne

te

e

ite

er
g
itt

Si

nn
Pa
gi
Bl

os
Tw

En

n

Ba
icr
an
ai

tM
ch

M

n
kF

ig
ar

oo

uc

pa
Se

od
eb

m
Ca
c

Pr
Fa

Examples

For each idea, this chart shows:

• The highest level attained within the Maslow evaluation (through colour)
• The steps along the engagement path that idea achieves
• The route a member of the audience might take between ideas to move to the final stages of the engagement path

21


Channel Approaches
Whilst each digital strategy is unique, the first edition of this paper highlighted that some of the concepts and some of the ideas
raised were somewhat difficult to follow without example. The following are three small examples of channels of ideas being put
together using different tactics to achieve different end goals. Each of these form just a small part of a digital strategy, but
should help clarify the concept of a channel and some of the tactics that could be employed.

The UGC loop

Awareness
Drive to Purchase
Search Engines
A
ce n
Audie

Campaign
Site

Social Search

Campaign Engagement
B
nce

Brand
Audie

Campaign
Page
Microsite
Display Advertising
Brand &
Product Info

Campaign UGCE
Page
C
nce
Audie

Mobile Below the
Campaign Line
Voucher
iTunes Prize Draw/
Campaign Engagement Free Sample

Shop

The User Generated Content (UGC) loop starts with initial seeding to drive initial awareness and subsequently uses user generated
content to perpetuate the campaign. Normally tied with a below the line promotion, or self actualising / ego driven competitive
element to encourage the audience to participate and become part of the awareness drive of the campaign.

Focusing on the initial locations, Facebook helps UGC perpetuation of a campaign by pushing updates, tools and application
messages onto the news feeds of connected friends. This has, of course, extended through Facebook social plugins from the
confines of Facebook pages to external websites.

The microsite in this model becomes the focus of the campaign with the social reach used as an extension of awareness, like a
spider at the centre of its web. Dependent on the length of the campaign the microsite may achieve independent awareness
through search engines, but over short campaigns social traffic and seeding is likely to be the direct driver.

22


The digital experiential

Brand Ambassador

Brand Ambassador

Brand Ambassador

Virtual Stand / Walled Garden
(50 metres)

Digital does not have to be limited to websites, mobile app or social media channels. The above example uses digital as an aid to
an experiential campaign with brand stand and brand ambassadors. Through use of open wireless networks that brand
ambassadors and the public can connect to with mobile devices, the stand and experience are projected over a far wider area.
The interaction and engagement would be dependent upon the experience the brand is trying to convey, however, the following
have been used:

• Walled gardens of mobile website content
• Video interactions including augmented reality (both to on-stand screens and to mobile devices)
• Real time games and interactions with the audience in the area of coverage
• Download of assets for later consumption by the audience
• Data captured on iPad / tablet machines

Extending the mobile aspect further by using targeted SMS push and / or geo-location social media services (e.g. Foursquare)
helps to build awareness and target audience groups that are more likely to engage.

The benefit of bringing digital into experiential is that of extending the experience. An audience can be seeded before the event,
live interactions can be recorded at the event and through unlocking captured assets over time, the audience can be
communicated with after the event. The 5 to 10 minutes of engagement that the brand might usually have is extended over a
period of weeks.

A simple version of this model was used by Red Ant at Internet World 2010; purposefully run without any form of awareness
campaign, engagement with the target audience ran to 18%.

23


The online and offline – below the line

Awareness & below the
line competition

Awareness Loop
(sub competition)

New Product
Microsite
Web
Outdoor, DM,
In-store, TV, Radio

Retailer Website

Online Competition
Submission
Retailer

Offline Competition Retailer
Submission Store

Offline - Awareness & below the line competition

Digital strategy does not have to focus purely on digital devices and on digital feedback. In many instances there is a direct
requirement in the aims, or good reason from the background to the strategy to work from an offline first step, and potentially
deliver direct offline aims.

This model uses both an initial seed from an offline promotion and in store conversion allowing the entire campaign, from an
audience perspective, to be conducted offline should they so choose. The DM affords the opportunity to push the digital touch
points for the brand and campaign to drive awareness so that in the future the audience can be engaged with through digital,
which will reduce costs.

24


Fiscal evaluation
The second part of ideas evaluation is fiscal; ideas which are obviously unfeasible that are outside of the available budget should
have been weeded out before this stage. However, each idea should be rated against cost (both build and maintenance), and
estimated return in both fiscal value and worth balanced against the aims.

Build cost
The build cost of any idea is perhaps the easiest step for digital agencies to assess, and depending upon the level of engagement,
potentially the most expensive. With digital asset building it is important to remember that most digital assets can be reused
across multiple members of the audience and can be re-skinned to potentially run across multiple audiences.

Example
Idea Build Cost
Idea A 10 days
Idea B 5 days
Idea C 15 days

Maintenance cost

The maintenance time per week for each idea should be estimated and factored into the costs. Not all ideas will automatically
incur a standard maintenance cost; some may not change during the digital campaign, others may have a fixed cost. The
following is an overview of the equation used for calculating the estimated time for each engagement focused idea:

Proactive Engagement + (Audience Involvement * Reactive Engagement)

Proactive engagement
Proactive engagement is tied to the amount of seeding each week for a given idea, calculated using the simple formula:

Number of Seeding Posts*Time for Each Seeding Posting

Audience involvement
Audience involvement seeks to calculate the percentage of the audience population that is likely to be active in any given week
and the level of involvement that each different audience persona is likely to need for each idea. This can be calculated using the
following simple formula:

Audience Size * Percentage of Audience Active * Involvement

An involvement factor of 100% would be deemed typical; audiences requiring extra help would be rated at more than 100%,
audiences that are self managing to a degree would be rated less than 100%.

25


Reactive engagement
The reactive engagement should be calculated for one active audience member over the period of one week, and the audience
involvement factor will adjust accordingly for the size and persona of the audience. Weekly reactive engagement can be
calculated:

(Weekly posts * Moderation Factor) + (Weekly posts * Response Rate * Response Time)

• The weekly posts are the number of posts made by an active member of the audience through the idea
• The moderation factor is the percentage of posts that will require attention for moderation by whoever is maintaining the idea
• Since not all posts will require a response, this is handled by the percentage of posts requiring a response in the response rate
• Response time is how long it takes to handle a single standard request through the idea

Fiscal value and worth

A digital strategy will consist of a number of aims that should, at this stage, already be aligned with one or more ideas. How each
idea tackles each aim can be further subdivided into a number of key performance indicators using the following:

• Estimated audience size per idea
• Expected success rate as suggested by the engagement evaluation
• Estimated average return per conversion

A picture can be built up to look at the expected fiscal values that are being generated by each idea. The worth of the idea is also
an important factor in the fiscal evaluation. Value deals purely in terms of bottom line returns either through purchases, savings
or lead generation. The aims of a digital strategy are often unequal when aligned to brand strategy, and worth repositions the
idea against how well it matches the digital strategy aims.

KPIs
Key performance indicators are the metrics by which ROI and performance can start to be estimated and eventually measured.

• Page views • Actions completed
• Visitors • Total purchases

The resultant returns are not yet rated into worth or value; they are the points at which fixed numbers are estimated. Against
each return (tangible or non-tangible), a fixed measure of when that return is to be achieved has to be specified.

Tangible idea returns
The easiest returns to measure are tangible website returns. These have a direct measurement against normal website metrics.

Examples of these would be:
• Sales through the site • Audience downloading application
• Leads generated through contact forms • Audience forwarding viral videos

Each of these actions can be given a simple estimate value for each idea, to be mapped directly into the aims of the digital strategy.

Non-tangible idea returns
Non-tangible returns are somewhat harder to derive, since these have a layer of analysis over and above direct measurement.

Examples of these would be:
• Brand awareness • Presence
• Reputation / impression • Education

Each of these may map directly against an expressed aim, but they are not directly measurable. To assess the return on these,
simple metrics (visitors, repeat visitors, people browsing certain sections of the site) can be used to calculate where these benefits
will be achieved.

26


Worth

Areas of worth
All aspects of worth for an idea have to be tied into digital strategy aims. Returns should be placed into a rating structure similar
to the rating of aims, placing them across Process (Awareness to Conversion), and Focus (Broad to Direct).

Worth map
To create a worth map, the following steps should be taken:

• Each area of worth should be rated 1 to 10 in order of importance (1 = Trivial, 10 = Critical). The rating of these should be
aligned to grouping within the aims of the digital strategy
• Each return should be rated 1 to 10 in order of importance (1 = Trivial, 10 = Critical)
• The area rating should be multiplied by the return rating to establish a measure of worth
• Worth can then be mapped on a graph. The Y axis would be Awareness to Conversion. The X axis would be Broad to Direct.

Process
Awareness

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

9 x (Increase In Visitors) (Ranking Over Key Terms) x 9

8 8

7 x (Site Linkage Increase) (Brand Awareness) x 7

6 6

5 5

4 4

3 3

2 2

Focus 1 1
Focus
Broad Direct
1 (Facebook Fan) x 1

2 2

3 3

4 x (Increase In Unique Visitors) 4

5 5

6 6

7 x (Enquiry Form Completed) 7

8 (Total Sales) x 8

9 (Sales Above £100) x 9

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Process
Conversion

27


Estimating performance
The estimated performance of an idea is split into the fiscal value of returns and the performance of the return. These should be
documented in tabular form to allow quick reporting over reporting periods.

Establishing fiscal value
It is easy to oversimplify certain areas of fiscal value reporting. In direct ecommerce, it is tempting to measure performance on
total transaction values, ignoring elements such as margin per transaction. It is also difficult to place a fiscal value on non-
tangible returns.

For a simple framework, fiscal values can only be approximations. However, over the lifecycle of the digital strategy, ROI and
performance framework fiscal values can be amended based on evidence to give better approximations. This would occur at the
evaluation stage.

Fiscal values can either be fixed, or calculations based upon simple metrics, e.g.:

Return Fiscal Value
Total Sales 20% average margin
Sales above £100 5% additional margin
Brand Awareness 1% given brand value for each 10,000 visitors over 100,000

To avoid counting the same value twice, each return and value should be aware of previous returns (e.g. if a visitor is worth 1p
and a newsletter subscriber is worth 3p, since a newsletter subscriber is already a visitor the additional fiscal value of a newsletter
subscriber is 2p). In addition, the maximum size of the audience population can only be taken from the population of the
audience group at the awareness touch point, as shown in the chart below:

ROI
Audience Channels CPA Value Worth

Twitter Blog Main Site £x.xx £xxx.xx £x,xxx.xx
People; X,XXX
Cost; £XX.XX

Search Engine Main Site £x.xx £xxx.xx £x,xxx.xx
People; XX,XXX
Cost; £XX.XX

People; XX,XXX
Search Engine Blog Main Site K £x.xx £xxx.xx £x,xxx.xx

Cost; £XX.XX

P
People; XX,XXX
Cost; £X,XXX.XX
Product Microsite Main Site
I £x.xx £xxx.xx £x,xxx.xx

Campaign Banner Product Microsite Facebook Fan Page Main Site £x.xx £xxx.xx £x,xxx.xx
People; XX,XXX
Cost; £XXX.XX

Main Site £x.xx £xxx.xx £x,xxx.xx
People; XXX,XXX
Cost; £XX,XXX.XX

28


Establishing performance
Whilst value is a useful reporting and measuring tool, performance is perhaps more useful. Since performance can only be
measured in the light of the digital strategy aims, it needs to factor in worth of each return from the worth map. Performance is
calculated as:

Performance = (Fiscal Value of the Return * Worth ) / Mean Worth for all Returns

For reporting, performance should be added as a column to the fiscal value table to allow both measurements to be seen side-by-
side. The report should be structured as follows:

Return Worth Fiscal Value Performance Mean Worth
Total Sales 64 100,000 106,667 60
Sales above £100 81 10,000 13,500 60
Brand Awareness 35 10,000 5,833 60

Fiscal evaluation
With all of the factors for each idea in place for fiscal evaluation, the following table can be constructed to rate each idea fiscally
to suggest if the idea should be developed. Maintenance, Value and Performance are rated across the duration of the core
campaign. Where an idea runs across multiple KPI’s, the worth (and subsequent performance) should be derived of the mean
worth of each KPI. When a KPI is derived from multiple ideas, the value assigned to the KPI should be split as a percentage of the
total success rate per idea divided by the total success rate of all ideas in that KPI.

Idea Audience Size Success Rate Build Cost Maintenance Estimated Value Estimated
Cost Performance
Idea A 10,000 20% (2,000) £5,000 £2,000 £10,000 £10,000
Idea B 50,000 20% (10,000) £10,000 £5,000 £30,000 £25,000
Idea C 50,000 10% (5,000) £10,000 £2,000 £15,000 £30,000
Idea D 1,500 80% (1,200) £5,000 £0 £12,000 £20,000

Evaluating ideas
By now in the digital strategy process it should be apparent which ideas / channels to build for which audiences, to attain the
best results. These need to be evaluated by all stakeholders to ensure agreement so that production time can be focused on
delivering one set of agreed ideas.

Creation conclusion
Whilst the creation stage isn’t truly finished until the systems are technically designed, built, tested and ready for deployment
trying to cover the nuances of these next design and build steps is beyond the scope of this paper. However by the time the steps
detailed in the creation section have been complete all concerned should be clear about:

• The areas that are required to be built
• The audience journey and the KPIs at each stage
• The planned return from each idea and channel
• The time required for building and maintaining each channel

With everyone clear about the channels that are to be built the next focus of strategy is the campaign actualisation.

29


30

www.

Stage 3:

Actualisation

31


Planning engagement
Building the right team

Engagement is best planned and managed through teams; the team members themselves may be actively involved in managing
communication flows with the audience, may be passively involved with additional brainstorming, developing campaign content
or may just be in the role of governance (e.g. is the campaign going off track?). The number of people in the team will change
dependent upon the digital strategy; however the following roles in activation need to be considered:

Overseeing
A core part of running the actualisation of a strategy is being able to take a step back from the work that is being undertaken to
review progress against the aims, through each one of the tactics employed within the digital strategy. Being too close to a
particular channel can lend it a bias that may skew the strategy.

Researching
The research role can be both active and passive. Where the research role is active, discrete tasks have been assigned to it. They
may include ongoing location of key influencers within a particular social channel, for example; for this, time should be allocated
in advance with set goals. Passive research could involve the wider team, providing a greater number of people with the aims of
each of the channels and a set communication route so they can point out areas of interest, become early warning indicators for
points of inflection and help drive the tactic along. It is not uncommon to have key advocates as passive researchers feeding back
into the campaign.

Creating
Creation extends beyond the initial channel creation, but also the messages as they are delivered through the campaign. Whilst a
certain degree of message creation can occur in advance, the trends and flows of a particular campaign would mean that these
would need to be tailored rapidly.

Responding
It is impossible to pre-plan responses to the campaign and still engage at a personal level; templates can and should be prepared
for common feedback, but to truly engage requires personal responses.

Reporting
Rapid movement in any campaign requires rapid reporting; each member of the team should be maintaining reports of their
activities, with brief notes on trended successes and failures. The nature of these reports will be as ad-hoc as the channel they
represent, but should share common traits:

• Brevity – reports should be able to be reviewed at a glance
• Daily – reporting periods should extent to a timeframe no longer than one day (perhaps shorter in rapidly moving campaigns)
• Trended – each report should be considered in the light of the previous report to show at a glance the trend of activity

Reports can be shared around the team to quickly pass on lessons learnt, but must be read and compiled by the overseeing role
to provide a more structured response.

Actualisation is a microcosm of the entire digital strategy process, but with the changes restricted and the speed increased. The
team that manages the actualisation of the project needs to be aware of the shifting nature of the audience and external
influences on it, and be able to rapidly react to maximise any potential benefits.

32


Building an engagement timeline

The more a digital strategy is planned the easier it is to actualise, and it allows more time for thinking about engagement. It is
possible, unfortunately, to plan too far ahead, and it is possible to damage a digital strategy by not responding to the fluxes and
flows that occur naturally across actualisation. However, it is possible to build a flexible engagement timeline that allows
messages across channels to be dropped in or pulled out as required.

Actions and messages on brand
Within any campaign there will be triggers, whether they are actions or messages. Unless the proposition of the campaign or
channel within a campaign is purely based around these, it is unlikely that too many of these will prove engaging with the
audience. Within the planning section we touched upon style of message based around the studies by Merrill and Reid. The
greater alignment to the social style of the audience these brand messages and actions have, the greater their adoption by the
audience (and therefore conversion); also the frequency of these messages and actions and how tolerant the audience will be if
they are not on social style will be determined by how lenient the audience is, based across previous worth. This has been put
succinctly by social media strategist David Griner as:

“It’s hard to shake hands while you’re reaching for someone’s wallet.”

Engagement is not the same as direct selling, and actions and messages on brand need to be factored as such.

Building the message
Communities of practice were briefly discussed in the planning section - sometimes the easiest route to the persona delivering the
most worth is not direct, but through intermediaries. Building the message has most effect across aims that promote awareness;
these are most effective through communities (practice or otherwise), or interest groups.

- Influenced - Uninfluenced - Target to influence

Through a community based message we build alignment or co-alignment of brand to community. The message may not be the
same, but has enough parallels to encourage a micro-trend within the community or, dependent upon how vocal the community
is within the location, a wider trend.

Message building across an engagement timeline is one of the most useful and time efficient elements of engagement. Enlisting
advocates across the targeted communities is important, as is empathy of the message to the community. However, once
ingratiated into the community, the pre-planned message can become the bulk of day to day engagement and the campaign can
build upon this as its foundation.

33


External events and worth
During any campaign there will be external events that will be of interest to the audience and communities that are being
targeted by the campaign. These may not be entirely on message for brand, but are on message for the audiences that the brand
wishes to engage with.

Through external events, the brand and the campaign can establish worth with the target audience. Engagement by its very
definition is not one way - digital strategies should follow suit. Investing time and resources into an audience ensures that the
audience has a greater likelihood of being receptive to brand and, in turn, investing time and resources into that brand. The
worth to the audience is derived from the additional benefit (time, analysis and comment or access), delivered by the message
(and subsequently the brand).

When selecting external events, it is important that the messages are not drowned out by the noise of the event itself. It is
tempting to pick on a large event either inside or outside of an audience’s direct focus in an attempt to piggyback on the wave of
interest. This normally leads to the message being drowned out by the noise of others, or the brand being perceived as
subscribing to the “me too” meme which weakens the underlying digital strategy aims. It is important in such instances that the
message being delivered is pertinent and has worth in the context of the event to attain focus.

Activity calendar
Bob’s Bangers Week 1: Commencing 13th September 2010
Red – Twitter The new Website is launched this week so it is important to talk about this across
Blue – Facebook all of the networks. First round of Champions league group matches are starting
so this can also be a talking point to get discussions started amongst followers.
Purple - (both channels) Bob’s new stock will also be uploaded so this can also be a discussion point later in
Green – activity (non conversational) the week. Important to seed the stockist as much as possible to get clicks up.
Character Monday 14th Tuesday 15th Wednesday 16th Thursday 17th Friday 18th
Launch of website New Stock Poll Seed Website
Deal of the week
Bob Group, fan and follower The New site has gone Post Article on low What is your favourite #ff bloggers of relevance
outreach (T, F, B) live - Lots of new Insurance cars for first car brand? visit our
features and reviews for time buyers. Facebook poll <URL to Outeach to / Twitter/
you to enjoy! <URL to poll> Facebook community
site> Post a News Article e.g
Jeremy Clarkson What was your parents Hi Guys, Our deal of the
Looking forward to this first car? Another poll week can be found here!
week’s footy action! New Stock Has been we have going <URL to Massive discount! <URL
uploaded! Take a look, poll> to site>
Check out the deal of the you may find your dream
week section on our car! <URL to site> Post Car News Article or Outreach Blogs & Twitter
website for fantastic new RT someone
offers! <URL to site>! Group, follower outreach
Blog Outreach
Does anyone have any
predictions for tonight’s
game?

Followers 0
Feedback 0
Bob We will need to start by It’s important to keep on
getting the message out top of the real time
there that the new trending topics on twitter
website has been so we should keep an eye
launched and is ready to on them. When we
be viewed. Outreaching #Follow Friday people it
to people on twitter and gets the name out there
bloggers can help as well
generate a buzz around
the new site. Asking
questions can also help
get people talking

34


Engagement loops
Not all actualisation can be pre-planned; if everything were preset before the campaign the messages and actions that comprise
engagement would be staid, miss out on audience alignment and the digital strategy would lack effectiveness. There is also the
matter of response to consider - the brand entering into a dialogue with members of the audience to deliver both perceived and
real worth.

As previously stated, actualisation is a microcosm of the digital strategy as a whole - the stages, the steps and the alterations in
approach are also minor. In comparison, there is also the level of individual engagement to take into account. Whilst digital
strategies run in circular lifecycles, communication of messages and action across actualisation runs through engagement loops.

The engagement loop

Planning Engagement Timeline
Creation Act
ual
isa
tio
n
Construct

Deliver

Challenge Message
Park

Actualisation Monitor
Team Activities

Evaluation Review

Engage Monitor

Report

Audience

35


The engagement loop starts at its bedrock with the pre-planned engagement timeline. In each iteration the messages and plans
made in the timeline will be delivered and challenged in controllable bursts of between a day and a week, dependent on the
dynamic of the campaign. Each step in the engagement loop has a specific purpose to help break down audience engagement
into manageable chunks - these are:

• Constructing the message
• Delivering the message
• Monitoring the responses to the message
• Engaging with those in the audience who responded and monitoring their future responses
• Reporting on message success
• Reviewing the message
• Challenging the message

Construct
For messages taken directly from the engagement timeline, the message or the building materials of the message should already
exist and construction should be straightforward. If through running the campaign it becomes evident that a strand of the
engagement timeline is not delivering results and not engaging with the audience, the plans need to go back to basics and work
from what has been shown to be successful.

As actualisation is a microcosm of a digital strategy as a whole, construction combines, on a very small scale, the planning and
creation elements. This can be distilled to the following questions:

• What goal am I trying to achieve and / or work towards?
• What has been working through the campaign in attaining this goal?
• If success is limited against this goal, what has been working for the other goals for this audience?
• What hasn’t been working through the campaign in attaining this goal?
• How can I tailor my message to reflect what has been working?

The end result is a small plan of action and the rudimentary parts of the next message in the campaign.

Deliver
The delivery of the message and its construction appear to be intertwined and therefore the distinction seems slightly
superfluous. This is only true of simple, single channel campaigns. Where there are multiple channels to a campaign, messages
are going to be delivered across each of them and the constructed message will require slight modification to fit the expectations
of the audience and the limitations of the tactic within the channel.

Messages through channels are not just updates to text or tweets - they are as diverse as the tactics employed within a channel.
At a top level these could be:

• Action of a character
• Sound
• Visual branding
• User experience
• Wording / tone of voice
• Clothing and appearance of a brand ambassador

As with all conversations, when we are trying to get someone to do something, the more we can align with and / or understand
the mindset of the other party, the greater the chance that they will do it (convert). Messages within the engagement loop are a
dialogue, or in some instances even a story. Delivery is intended to derive how the audience best reacts to the message and how
they form their impression in the channel back to the brand.

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An example of considering delivery would be a small experiment carried out by Red Ant to see how an audience similar to those
of a campaign Red Ant were running, projected themselves when asked to consider a number of objects (brand and non-brand
aligned). The aim was to look at different methods of linguistic delivery across the Twitter location. The results were split into
four categories of connection:

• Attribute – something that is innate about the person responding or the object
• Action – something that someone is doing or will do
• Experience – a cross between the previous two, a classification based on previous experience of the object – think of previous
service or established brand message
• Other – anything not listed above

Answers could sit in more than one category.

The scores across the four categories brought out the following trends:

• Attribute based connection was the most frequent with 70% of terms being some form of connection by attribute
• Experience was second with 30%
• Action came in at 6.7%

The population of the test audience wasn’t large enough to form a solid platform of research; however, when the lessons learnt
were then reflected in the delivery of the campaign, there was a 5% increase in conversion.
The delivery step puts a pause in the distribution of the message and asks the question:

“Is this the right way to place my message within this channel?”

Monitor
From the earliest websites with their now rather kitsch visitor counters to the latest round of site and social analytics packages
that attempt to define sentiment and meaning to the multitude of brand aligned audience messages, monitoring activity across a
campaign is essential; so much so that it is implicit in the core principles of a digital strategy at the beginning of this paper:

• Digital can be reactive as well as proactive
• Digital should always prove returns

Without monitoring you cannot be reactive, and without monitoring you cannot prove returns.

Engage
Engagement is at the heart of the loop, as engagement is at the heart of digital strategy. When audiences are engaged they react
with the brand, build against the goals of the digital strategy and ultimately deliver the value of the campaign. Engagement can
either be with an audience or an individual - for those campaigns with enough time allocated for reaction, personalised
engagement can build long term brand loyalty (as ASOS have proven with their support through Twitter channels).

Monitoring and engagement run hand in hand in a small sub-loop. It is important to react in a timely fashion and in the right
way; although through personalisation there is an opportunity for greater leniency in brand guidelines in allowing that member
of the audience to achieve their goals.

Regardless of the campaign or goals of the originating message, the key to engagement is audience worth. The member of the
audience has taken time to react to the message - now it is the responsibility of the person / team managing the engagement to
deliver on the implicit promise made by the brand, and attempt to start a dialogue.

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Report
Reporting is required to monitor the engagements and to feed the strategic elements of the loop. Since the loop can be
anywhere between one and five days in length and at least each channel should circulate reports daily, the reporting element
should not be onerous. The job of the reporting step is to deliver pertinent information for review to determine whether the
messages are getting across to the audience.

An example report card is:

Message “What is your favourite car brand? visit our Facebook poll <URL to poll>”
Goal(s) targeted Currently have 100 Fans looking to get 150
Engagements / Actions (overview) 50 new followers / Used Facebook and twitter messaging and gained 50% increase
Previous engagements / Actions (overview) Used Facebook competition and only had 25% increase
Lessons learnt Messaging and Polls returned more fans than competition

The aim is to cover key points ready for reporting back to the team, not to analyse each point.

Review
In the review step, each of the reports for the channels is circulated through the actualisation team, specifically to those in
overseeing roles. It is important that, unless the campaign is finished, the review step is not seen as an end point to the
engagement loop, but rather preparation for its next iteration.

The primary aim of the reporting step is to create an open platform through which the iterations of the campaign can be
challenged, not to judge the success or otherwise of a particular iteration. Review meetings should:

• Share lessons learnt amongst the team, primarily those involved in creating and responding
• Produce / update the review report

To this end, the review meeting should be driven by those in creating and responding roles (those actively involved in
engagement) - those in overseeing roles should purely be compiling information ready to produce / update the review report that
combines each of the channel reports into a single document.

A simple review report would comprise:

Channel Goal E/A Trend Total E/A Value Notes
Week 1: Twitter Reach 500 Deal of week Deal of week 2 Sales £3000 Deal of the week
Followers tweet tweet messaging generated
positive feedback
and 2 sales

Week 2: Reach 50 Votes Facebook poll on Deal of the week 0 Sales £50 Polls failed to
Facebook best car brand worked well convert votes into
sales

Challenge
The aim of this step is to challenge the next proposed message from the engagement timeline in light of previous iterations of the
engagement loop. This step is the prime concern of those in overseeing roles and it is up to those engagement roles to rate
expectation of the next message and to challenge it based on lessons learnt.

The challenge step may involve messages from the engagement timeline being parked, it may invoke a slightly wider review of
the actualisation plan where research (and possibly small levels of design and build) is used to build a stronger set of messages to
place into the engagement timeline for the next or future iterations.

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The ultimate aim of the challenge step is to ensure that the goals of the strategy are constantly being kept at the forefront of
actualisation and, even at the smallest feasible level of the campaign, there is the assurance amongst the team that the digital
strategy goals are being achieved.

Park
Park isn’t a step in itself, it is an acknowledgement that, with the best of intentions, not all messages within the engagement
timeline will, through their pre-planned nature, engage the audiences through the channels at the set time, or perhaps at all.
The reason these are parked as opposed to discarded is that at some point in the planning they were held to have worth to the
audience, and whilst they may not have that same worth at the time they are planned to enter the engagement loop, they may
still have in the future.

Trends, buzz and inflection points

Audiences and crowds are very poor at relating to that which is entirely new; engagement can cater for this by building upon
trends. A brand may launch a new microsite, tie in a social channel and start talking about their latest product, but none of this
is likely to be new:

• The audience is aware of what a microsite is - this is just another one
• If a social channel is the chosen medium of communication, the audience should already be there. They are used to brands
talking to them through this channel
• The brand has a new product - if there is a history of engagement with the brand it’s likely the audience is aware of similar
products from the brand. If the brand is unfamiliar, it’s likely the audience is aware of a competitor with a similar product

Engagement through digital media can leverage this familiarity to build upon existing trends and buzz within an audience’s
sphere of consciousness. Whilst a brand may have a distinctive difference from its competitor, if it is competing to deliver to the
same audience, the scope of successful engagement (if the competitor is successfully doing this) is likely to be co-aligned. As well
as successful competitor co-alignment, research carried out earlier into aligned subcultures and urban tribes should identify areas
of trend and buzz through which engagement can occur.

Points of inflection are equally as important as trends - those times where a trend switches direction (this has been excellently
written up by Greg Satell at www.digitaltonto.com – the following borrows heavily from his work, although with a distinct spin).
Through early identification of points of inflection a brand can move ahead of the trend, the messages and engagement of a
particular campaign will appear to carry additional gravitas and worth to the audience and, for brands where there is a greater
awareness, there is the opportunity to guide the trend to its next stage.

Greg highlights three particular ways to spot a point of inflection:

• Everybody agrees
• Extrapolating trends leads to absurd conclusions
• There are vast changes in cost

Of these, the first two have specific relevance to spotting the changing attitudes of an audience and their engagement with either
a trend that is part of the campaign, or an external trend that has been or can be leveraged to meet the aims of the campaign.

The final point regarding vast changes in costs (or in engagement terms the involvement and level of time and effort a member of
the audience has to spend to engage with the campaign) has less merit at a campaign level and greater relevance to a digital
strategy as a whole. Vast changes in cost sit at the level of strategy because the required investment by a brand in building a
shift at the cost level for an audience is normally considerably higher than a cycle in a campaign will allow.

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Everybody agrees
An audience may have a distinct outlook, but an audience in majority agreement means that it has stopped looking at the facts
and has begun to put more emphasis on others’ perception of the facts. The trend, in effect, has become a series of copycat
statements, and whilst this will build awareness through each retelling, the level and value of engagement tails off. Looking at a
broader view, Greg Satell states:

“Markets function by buyers meeting sellers, both of whom must believe they are getting a fair deal for a transaction to happen.
When everybody seems to agree on where things are going, the pricing mechanism fails to do its job properly. George Soros calls
this the principle of reflexivity.”

In place of a financial market space, a campaign targets engagement and audience interest. When an audience stops engaging
with the message and simply becomes a sounding board for others’ perceptions, this is a sign that the core message is ready to
change and the audience is on the hunt for something new; trended “me-tooism” has a short and distinctive role in engagement,
but only works for limited bursts and does not necessary build into brand loyalty.

Extrapolating trends leads to absurd conclusions

“The value of any investment is based on a stream of future earnings. If it’s a loan, that return is fixed unless there’s a default,
but if it’s an equity investment then you essentially get a share of those future earnings. Furthermore, when you invest equity,
you expect some extra in return for the risk.”

In the creation section of this paper, ideas were rated according to a slightly reworked version of Maslow’s hierarchies of needs.
This evaluated the investment required (deficiency needs) by the audience (given from brand), and return given (growth needs) to
the audience through any particular idea. Altruism is a rare commodity in audiences or groups of any nature - the return might
not be fiscal, but at some level the engagement within a campaign needs to reward the audience.

If the idea within the channel has made it into the campaign and digital strategy there will be distinct returns pre-planned at a
barrier of entry that rewards the audience as barriers grow. Trends do not always follow such rules - the initial barrier to entry is
likely to be low enough for the trend to be established initially. However, over time the investment required by the trend can and
does often change.

When the investment required by the trend does not make sense in the future, even if it does in the present, then the trend is
likely to be unsustainable and either:

• The campaign behind the trend will need to adjust to lower the investment threshold for engagement
• The audience will move onto a new, less expensive trend

If the trend is external to the campaign but used by it, this becomes an opportunity to lead the audience along a specific route
within the campaign.

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Trends and inflection points
The problem with trends is that the campaign runs the risk of becoming one message in many competing messages. The
differentiation of message worth is difficult to establish and therefore makes it harder to build engagement and brand loyalty.
This does not mean that trend alignment does not have its place; trends within an audience are easy to identify - following and
analysing them allow a campaign message to be aligned against them.

Inflection points provide an opportunity to guide the next cycle of a trend and as such are outstanding opportunities to establish
additional worth with an audience. The key is to look at the future of a trend, extrapolate the short and medium term outcomes,
and craft the next set of messages within a campaign to attempt to move the brand into a trend leading position.

Engagement reporting, review and challenging

Rapid reporting is essential in managing the actualisation of a campaign, and specifically the engagement loop, to maximise
engagement with the various audiences that will make up a campaign. Without pertinent information it is impossible for a
campaign to react and move accurately in response to the demands and desires of the audience, which will lead to stagnation
and a misfiring campaign. We previously defined common traits in reports:

• Brevity – reports should be able to be reviewed at a glance
• Daily – reporting periods should extend to a timeframe no longer than one day (perhaps shorter in rapidly moving campaigns)
• Trended – each report should be considered in the light of the previous report to show at a glance the trend of activity

Measurement of the success (or otherwise) of a campaign is key to campaign improvement, and measurements should be
reported by the cycles within the engagement loop. It is in the campaign team’s understanding of these reports that true value
can be wrought from audience engagement and ultimately the campaign; information held by the individual becomes team
knowledge and the campaign is empowered.

Within the engagement loop the improvement of a message is handled by the team in the review and challenge steps. The
formality of these steps has to be tailored to the nature of the strategy and make-up of the team, but should be aligned to a
continuous improvement philosophy.

Reports can be shared around the team to quickly pass on lessons learnt, but must be read and compiled by the overseeing role
to provide a more structured response.

Continuous improvement
Successful brands, business and even people always seek to improve. By focusing on the core goals of a company or brand, digital
strategy becomes part of that company’s or brand’s bid for improvement. Whilst specific improvement can be a goal in itself,
there is a science of improvement philosophies that can be adopted and used with the KPIs of an engagement loop to try and
better the campaign through each iterative loop.

There are many different continuous improvement philosophies, each tackling the problem in a slightly different way to reflect the
various challenges faced across different industries. The common antecedent of most continuous improvement philosophies is
Kaizen (Japanese for “improvement” or “a change for the better”), which was introduced as part of industrial rebuilding efforts
after the Second World War. Each of them, like the engagement loop, attempts to improve a given process across a cycle of
activities, and an understanding of these philosophies is helpful in gaining a more rounded understanding of campaign
improvement as a whole.

An alternative improvement philosophy that is popular within digital marketing is Six Sigma and the DMAIC project methodology,
which stands for:

• Define the scope and goals of the improvement process
• Measure KPIs of the current process and collect relevant data
• Analyse current performance in terms of future requirements
• Improve the current process
• Control the outcome to ensure it is moving as expected

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The tools that are available for Six Sigma and DMAIC can be adopted for the engagement loop on an as-required basis, dependent
on the strategy and the team actualising that strategy.

Challenging the message
No message within a campaign is strong enough or engaging enough that it will continue unchallenged in one form throughout
the duration of the campaign. Singular themes within messages lead to a monotonous drone that stretches the patience of even
the most ardent advocate, then wanes into an annoying distraction. Through each iteration of the engagement loop the next
message from the engagement timeline is challenged with the results and lessons learnt from the past messages. With this
information, common challenges to the message are:

• Is the message relevant at this time to the audience?
• Have messages on this theme worked with the audience before?
• Are messages of this type still moving the audience towards the aims of the strategy?
• Are there more engaging messages for the audience at this time?

However, the most vital challenge to the message is:

“How will this next message improve my campaign?”

It is an important question to ask, since a message that is not improving the campaign is a wasted message, and the next cycle of
the engagement loop risks inducing boredom and losing connection with the audience. Messages that are not felt to work should
be parked and more engaging messages released into the loop.

Rating the loop

As each cycle of the engagement loop completes, the cycle and the progress through the campaign should be rated. There are
two key pillars for rating each iteration:

• Engagement
• Goals attained

Engagement per iteration can be rated:

Growth in population / abs(target population to engage – previously engaged population)

The goals attained can be rated:

Growth in goals / abs(target goals to attain – previously attained goals)

These two ratings show the success in moving towards the target, allowing the cycle to be rated by:

(Engagement + Goals attained) / 2

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The progress through a campaign is somewhat simpler - by dividing the growth by the target it is possible to maintain a
cumulative record. The following table shows results across a six week campaign:

Target engagement 5000
Target goals 500

Week

Start 1 2 3 4 5 6 Results
Growth in Engagement 0 300 500 1200 800 1200 1050 5050
Growth in Goals 0 50 75 80 50 120 110 485
Message Engagement 0.0% 6.0% 10.6% 28.6% 26.7% 54.5% 105.0%
Message Attainment 0.0% 10.0% 16.7% 21.3% 16.9% 49.0% 88.0%
Growth Progression 0.0% 6.0% 10.0% 24.0% 16.0% 24.0% 21.0% 101.0%
Attainment Progression 0.0% 10.0% 15.0% 16.0% 10.0% 24.0% 22.0% 97.0%
Campaign Progression 0.0% 8.0% 20.5% 40.5% 53.5% 77.5% 99.0% 99.0%

Keeping a constant record of the campaign progress is the responsibility of those in overseeing roles so they can ensure the
campaign is progressing correctly.

Key performance indicators

As well as evaluating engagement, the actualisation should also be reviewed against the key performance indicators specified in
the fiscal evaluation, which was written when determining the feasibility of any particular idea or channel of digital strategy. It is
important not to become too fixated on the bottom line KPI targets from the outset; the actualisation of any digital strategy will
involve a number of collaborating steps that together will deliver against the digital strategy aims. During the actualising stage,
engagement is the primary aim - in short:

“If you look after your audience the KPIs will look after themselves”

However, this does not absolve the actualisation step from any responsibility to KPI reporting. From the fiscal evaluation it is a
simple step to build a KPI spreadsheet that records indicators and shows value and worth of the campaign against the previously
constructed measures of Value, Worth and subsequent Performance.

KPI reporting across each cycle may detract from the focus of engagement. However, for example on a 12 week campaign, KPI
reporting should occur at least fortnightly and preferably weekly. The KPI report should be both accumulated (to balance against the
fiscal evaluation targets), and for the reporting period (to give an indication of trend). Those in overseeing roles are both the owners
and authors of the KPI report and it is their responsibility to distribute it to those in wider roles and to strategy stakeholders.

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44

Stage 4:

Evaluation

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Well, did It work?
On the face of it this seems a simple question, but like most areas around digital strategy it isn’t black and white and there are
shades of grey in evaluation. Even if a digital strategy achieved all goals specified from the outset there are other areas to
consider, a few being:

• Did the digital strategy exceed the goals, if so by how much?
• Were there any unexpected benefits achieved from the digital strategy?
• What was learnt over the course of the actualisation?
• Did the digital strategy lead to any longer term assets?

Digital strategies run in cycles and the purpose of evaluating any particular cycle is not to apportion congratulations or blame,
but to learn about how to improve the next cycle.

Fiscal evaluation

The first elements to evaluate in a fiscal review are the key performance indicators; if KPI reports have been generated across the
actualisation stage these should be readily available. The KPIs themselves are relatively meaningless - however, within the fiscal
evaluation stage for each KPI there is a mathematically modelled Value, Worth and Performance. To recap:

Value
Value is an estimate of fiscal return against a number of KPI criteria being hit, e.g. 1,000 visits to a campaign microsite is worth
£10 based against lifetime sales increase from the audience due to increased brand awareness. Of course, the value changes for
each digital strategy and for each company and brand. As specified in the fiscal evaluation section, the business stakeholders of
the company or brand should set these (with guidance), not those who are responsible for executing the strategy.

Worth and performance
Worth is determined by the importance of a particular measured Value to the underlying business goals and digital strategy.
Using the previous example, a strategy may create huge awareness for a particular brand, but if the underlying goals of the
strategy were to drive immediate sales, then the awareness and lifetime consumer value would be of less Worth. When it comes
to evaluation, successes in this area shouldn’t skew the overall results.

The KPI review will give a solid feel for how well the campaign met the financial goals of the strategy and provide overall metrics
like Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), Cost Per Sale (if that is indeed possible through the strategy), and savings made, which all deliver
against the driving force behind most business goals - money and profit.

Reporting
With the value and worth of metrics defined in the fiscal evaluation of the idea (rather than post-execution of the campaign, to
avoid the temptation of working the values back to the KPIs achieved) and KPI data accrued across the duration of the campaign,
the reporting does not require complex analysis at this stage.

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Campaign KPIs Numbers attained

Newsletter Sign-ups 100
Previous Site Links 150
Current Site Links 160
Mean Ranking Improvement over key terms 0
Dealer Purchases 2
Brand Searches 200
Generic Searches 2000
Previous Visitors 5000
Current Visitors 7500
Previous Unique Visitors 2000
Current Unique Visitors 3000
Enquiry forms completed 40
Test Drive application forms completed 30
PDF Car specifications sheets downloaded 500
Pages viewed (products / public) 8000
Pages viewed (information / public ) 2500

ROI and performance

Return Fiscal value Performance

Newsletter Sign-ups £100.00 £123.13
Site Linkage increase £5.00 £3.29
Ranking over key terms £0.00 £0.00
Increase in brand searches factored against generic terms £0.00 £0.00
Dealer purchases £2,000.00 £2,472.53
Increase in visitors £25.00 £18.50
Increase in unique visitors £50.00 £41.20
Enquiry form completed £28.00 £24.23
Test Drive application form £3,750.00 £3,708.75
PDF Car Specification Sheets downloaded £75.00 £57.69
Pages viewed (products / public) £40.00 £19.23
Pages viewed (information / public ) £0.25 £0.10

Total £6,073.25 £6,468.65

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Audience engagement evaluation

The collateral benefit of digital strategy is the creation and growth of engaged audiences. Whilst straight numbers can be
measured and allotted value and worth through the KPIs within the fiscal review, these cannot adequately give the true picture of
the success or otherwise of campaign engagement.

Of course, engagement is not a means to an end for any campaign. Communication with the audience is a means to deliver
against the digital strategy goals; audience engagement does however have subsidiary benefits when considering lifetime value
of the audience and its equity, normally called customer equity. The three key drivers to customer equity are:

• Value equity: What the customer assesses to be the value of the product or service provided by the company
• Brand equity: What the customer assesses to be the value of the brand, above its objective value
• Retention equity: The tendency of the customer to stick with the brand even when it is priced higher than an otherwise equal
product1

By evaluating audience engagement, these equity drivers can be measured, recorded and used to show the effects of the
campaign both for the campaign loop and in the scope of the wider digital strategy.

Audience migration and growth

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B: Brand purchaser
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The ebbs and flows of an audience through a campaign are in many respects as important as the size of the audience. Certainly,
engaged audiences in large numbers are a definite boon to a campaign, but without alignment to the goals of the digital strategy
they are simply large numbers doing little. The evaluation of audience migration, therefore, is not where the audience has moved
to, but how the audience has been moved towards the goals of the strategy:

• Has an audience been introduced to the brand through the campaign?
• Has an audience been educated about the brand or particular product through the campaign?
• What level of the audience has moved to purchase from connection with the campaign?
• Where were your audience and where are they now?

It is through the last question that strategy is derived. Just as the engagement loop is a microcosm of the overall strategy, the
strategy loop must contain continuous improvement processes like the engagement loop; and since not all audience members or
indeed audiences will achieve the final steps towards strategic aims in one step, the evaluation of audience migration and growth
serves to prepare for the next stage in the strategy.

48 1 Wikipedia


Audience sentiment
Evaluation of audience sentiment is focused on the achievements of the campaign. Broad brush sentiment assessment can be
achieved through the plethora of buzz monitoring tools, to various degrees of success and accuracy. Sentiment monitoring should
not, however, be constrained to numbers – some opinions within audience groups are more valuable than others.

In planning the messages and routes of messages within the campaign, both urban tribes and communities of practice were
touched upon as keys to getting the right tone of the message and to identify key influencers within those communities. The
litmus test for campaign sentiment is how those key influencers are touched by the campaign and their opinion of the
brand/company. A positive ranking from these key influencers will allow rapid growth of message in future campaigns, leading to
greater effectiveness in shorter timescales.

Engagement and action
Throughout the actualisation process, the actualisation team is encouraged to engage with the audience. As part of evaluating
the campaign, the engagement must also be evaluated; this evaluation must first be segmented into:

• Touch point – where and how did the engagement occur?
• Audience – which audience group was engaging with the message and campaign?
• Level – what was the involvement required to engage?
• Value – what was the value of the engagement when rated against the strategic goals?

With the various engagements across a campaign segmented and rated in this way, the following question can be answered:

“Which engagement routes (touch points, audiences and barriers to entry) gave the most valuable engagement?”

Once the average is taken from all engagements across routes, the next important question can be answered:

“What was the most valuable engagement route across the campaign?”

The answers to both questions can then be used to shape future campaigns, especially the structure of future engagement
timelines (once balanced against migrating audiences).

Engagement contract
The engagement contract isn’t strictly an evaluation step, it is a check and balance for the campaign that sets the rules for future
campaigns – it is more important than mere evaluation. An engagement contract is the implied promise throughout the
campaign from the brand to the audience about its value, and it is sealed through the audience’s engagement to the brand. The
engagement contract is a form of social contract, maybe not as formal as the theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau (and
certainly not as grandiose), but in terms of the success of a brand in on-going digital strategy certainly as important, since:

• Nothing devalues trust in a brand like a broken promise
• Digital footprints of betrayal are exceptionally hard to erase
• Audiences are rarely shy about advertising when they have been let down, especially those that have taken the trouble to
engage

A break of the engagement contract destroys value and brand equity since the goal posts have been moved by the brand, leaving
retention equity a very distant proposition.

This does not mean that engagement contracts have to be singular in approach and facet across multiple audiences. Differing
product groups and routes to brand should leave plenty of room for brand expansion. A brand can be many things to many
different audiences; however, once engaged across a route, the brand should remain true to the message that evoked
engagement.

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Lessons evaluation

Throughout the campaign, lessons should have been noted during actualisation through engagement reporting, KPI reporting
and the results of the engagement loop review. To assume that any digital strategy will be correct from the outset would show
an amazing amount of arrogance and a gross simplification of the audiences that the digital strategy is trying to engage with.
The lessons recorded through evaluation of success, surprises and failures form the backbone of the evaluation of the mistakes or
missing elements of the campaign and digital strategy thus far.

Lessons learnt are not failures in the strategy if they are recorded and the lessons are implemented in future campaigns. These
lessons tend to fall into two camps:

• Internal lessons: including self perception and self recognition / examination
• External lessons: including audience perception and audience recognition / examination

Both areas fall generally into the assumptions made when entering into the digital strategy process.

Internal lessons
Internal lessons come from the new information that the campaign derived about the brand / company. It should come as no
surprise that the internal perception of any company and / or brand and their corresponding strengths and weaknesses can differ
radically from their actual position. This can leave the company and / or brand open to missing out on opportunities and
misidentifying threats, both at a larger business level and certainly within the scope of digital strategy.

A degree of misperception comes through closed cultures within a brand, as surrounding people influence each other with the
same message and pre-built assumptions that are not shared by those outside of the closed culture. These incorrect messages
can, if unchallenged, live through generations of employees and stratify into some quite bizarre thinking. It is not the primary
role of digital strategy to challenge prevailing ethos; however, to successfully engage, the prevailing ethos either needs to become
aware of the lessons fed back through audiences, or live up to the level of where the ethos places them.

Internal lessons also often come about as a result of misperceptions in process. A signpost of such misperception occurs with
failure as a result of success. A weakening of brand perception because marketing endeavours have proved to be so successful
that the brand can’t deliver against promise is a far too common occurrence.

The challenges represented by internal lessons are not in engagement or campaign execution, the challenges reside in the
marketing teams and board rooms of the companies that should learn from these lessons and take steps to adapt / improve
accordingly.

External lessons
External lessons relate to the opportunities and constraints of engagement with audience groups that a brand and / or company
may have on entering into a digital strategy, or which may present themselves across the lifetime of that strategy. Successfully
capitalising on unexpected opportunities through audiences and quick identification of potential threats to external perception or
perceived opportunities are the reasons for adopting external lessons, and can deliver additional business benefits external to the
original goals of the strategy.

The most often talked about external lessons found through campaigns in general are those of undiscovered audiences, areas of
brand alignment that were previously unheralded and outside perceived market scope. There are many instances of counter
culture adoption of utilitarian brands and the products they market. Of course these audiences present challenges and
opportunities in equal (or, dependent on audience, unequal) measure.

External lessons can provide the springboard for the next phase in digital strategy; learnt properly, they provide an excellent
opportunity to exceed and grow original digital strategy goals and potentially the fundamental goals of the originating company
and / or brand. Unheeded, digital strategy runs the risk of running through continually ineffectual loops until it becomes a
meaningless appendage of a company’s routes to growth and potentially damaging to the company / brand.

50


Bringing evaluation together

For those familiar with Kaplan and Norton’s balanced scorecard method of evaluation from the 1990s, many of the themes
expressed in the evaluation section will be familiar. Digital strategy requires the more heuristic and rounded approach to
evaluation delivered by the balanced scorecard, but since it is only one aspect of wider business strategy and there are lessons
arising from the digital strategy to adopt (or not), it may be too comprehensive.

The previous sections of evaluation create an unbalanced scorecard that places greater emphasis on learning the lessons of a
campaign to feed into the next stage. The areas covered in the unbalanced scorecard are covered below.

An unbalanced scorecard

Attainment

£ ¥

Financial Audience & Engagement

Lessons
Internal

Strengths Weaknesses
External

Opportunities Threats

The initial split in the scorecard is between attainment and lessons. The lessons section unbalances the scorecard with greater
emphasis being brought about in the evaluation. Attainment is still a crucial measurement of success, and lessons are not the
same as excuses. If the aims of a digital strategy are measured correctly against the background as stated in the planning
section, there should be no reason for the aims of a campaign not being hit and the review of strategy to either hit or make the
expected movement towards the aims. Lessons are given precedence in the scorecard because it is through the lessons of a
campaign that the strategy grows and becomes more successful.

Completing the scorecard is a simple matter of bullet pointing from the previous evaluation steps. The scorecard is a snapshot of
the campaign and strategy, the detail of the digital strategy can be delved into by completion of the previous evaluation steps, or
even a review of the previous “workings” - the documentation that has been created in each stage of planning, creating and
actualising the digital strategy.

51


The bottom line

This section started off with the question “well, did it work?” Each subsequent step has sought to answer a small part of that
question and to give further insight into the digital strategy that was not captured by the initial aims. The answer to the original
question cannot, unfortunately, be provided by this paper. No two digital strategies will be alike, so it is necessary to follow the
method, learn and take on the lessons for each digital strategy – only then will the answer and the eventual bottom line become
apparent. What does hold true across all digital strategies is the ultimate bottom line which all digital marketers should consider
when evaluating:

“Did the strategy bring more benefit to the business than the effort expended?”

This is the litmus test by which digital strategy will and should be measured - the rest is just a matter of degrees.

52


This work is licenced under the Creative Commons
Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. To view
a copy of this licence, visit:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/

53

If you would like to talk further about
planning a digital strategy, or require
Red Ant to help you along this path
please feel free to contact us on:

0845 459 3333

E: digital@redant.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/red_ant www.redant.com

Red Ant: Digital Strategy Whitepaper 2011

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Red Ant: Digital Strategy Whitepaper 2011