Five Steps To Prepare Your Digital Marketing Project

Five Steps To Prepare Your Digital Marketing Project

You were just brought in to solve all the digital marketing challenges of an existing company. You’re excited, nervous and thinking about where to start. Questions are racing through your head.

What’s the first thing you should do? Will people be receptive to your recommendations? What if you offend someone with your questions? How do you know what’s already working? Is there a good lunch spot nearby to meet with my partners and vendors? (I might have projected myself on that last one.)

It’s going to be tough to step into this role. Expectations are high. It’s often political. You feel like you have a lot to prove, and with modern digital projects, your boss will be looking for a demonstrable return on marketing dollars.The following five tips will help you prepare your digital marketing project for success.

Step 1: Get your brand (and brand assets) in order.

First thing's first -- determine if what you really need is a full-service branding project to get to know your audience and position in the market. Assuming your project isn’t a branding project, any agency is going to love to build a brand you’ve already established.

Only a quarter of our clients come to us with their brand’s guidelines already identified. We often have to work with them on a digital style guide as the first step to creating brand consistency in their online presence.  

Most successful marketing executives that I’ve worked with have been extremely analytical. They can never have enough data. They base their decisions on that data, backed up by their own experiences and a ton of intuition.

In any company, there’s a wealth of data ready for you to analyze. Instead of starting from zero, connect to the resources the company already has available. Research all you can. Meet with the management team to learn how they track information and which tools they use.

Once you have access to these tools, use the knowledge to build a picture. Look at the sales reports, website analytics and customer profiles, but don’t stop there. All of the information you're able to collect will shape the direction of your project.

You were just brought in to solve all the digital marketing challenges of an existing company. You’re excited, nervous and thinking about where to start. Questions are racing through your head.

What’s the first thing you should do? Will people be receptive to your recommendations? What if you offend someone with your questions? How do you know what’s already working? Is there a good lunch spot nearby to meet with my partners and vendors? (I might have projected myself on that last one.)

It’s going to be tough to step into this role. Expectations are high. It’s often political. You feel like you have a lot to prove, and with modern digital projects, your boss will be looking for a demonstrable return on marketing dollars.The following five tips will help you prepare your digital marketing project for success.

Step 1: Get your brand (and brand assets) in order.

First thing's first -- determine if what you really need is a full-service branding project to get to know your audience and position in the market. Assuming your project isn’t a branding project, any agency is going to love to build a brand you’ve already established.

Only a quarter of our clients come to us with their brand’s guidelines already identified. We often have to work with them on a digital style guide as the first step to creating brand consistency in their online presence.  

Most successful marketing executives that I’ve worked with have been extremely analytical. They can never have enough data. They base their decisions on that data, backed up by their own experiences and a ton of intuition.

In any company, there’s a wealth of data ready for you to analyze. Instead of starting from zero, connect to the resources the company already has available. Research all you can. Meet with the management team to learn how they track information and which tools they use.

Once you have access to these tools, use the knowledge to build a picture. Look at the sales reports, website analytics and customer profiles, but don’t stop there. All of the information you're able to collect will shape the direction of your project.

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