Developing a strategy for your digital agency is tantamount to its success. Armies don’t go into battle without a plan, and neither should businesses. Without a strategy, you risk financial loss, poor client testimonials, and a chaotic internal system that negatively impacts productivity.
But as important as creating a digital agency strategy is, the reality of developing one comes with its own challenges. But we’re here to help. Take a look at our step-by-step guide that focuses on how to create a results-driven strategy that your digital agency benefits from for years to come.
Setting Goals
When it comes to creating a digital agency strategy, the first thing you need to do is set some goals. Knowing what your objectives are will help you develop a strategy that is most aligned with your vision.
If you’re unsure about how to go about setting the right goals, there’s an easy process to follow: SMART goals – or Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. These keywords can help you identify goals that are realistic and make sense for your agency. Here are some more tips to follow:
- Align your goals with the agency mission – Consider where you see your digital agency 2, 5, or 10 years down the line. Which goals best align with that mission?
- Involve key stakeholders in the process – Key stakeholders such as investors, owners, supervisors, and certain employees all may want to be a part of the strategy development process and can offer helpful insights into the health and sustainability of the agency.
- Be specific – The clearer and more specific your goals are, the easier it will be to work towards them. Do yourself a favour and be as precise as possible when setting future objectives.
The more you understand your agency’s goals for the future, the easier it will be to cultivate a strategy that synchronises with your mission.
Conducting a SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s an analysis system that helps you understand more about your agency’s position, and what kind of strategy will work most in your favour going forward. Take a look at these tips for conducting a strong SWOT analysis:
- Involve key stakeholders – Once again, involving key stakeholders is important for performing a realistic analysis. The combined perspectives of all invested parties can only benefit the agency.
- Be honest and objective – If you downplay certain issues or embellish certain strengths, your analysis won’t be accurate, and your strategy will be set for failure.
- Move from the outside in – You can begin your SWOT analysis process by evaluating the external variables of your agency such as market growth, customer retention, and ROI. Then you can move on to internal factors like employee productivity, attrition, and engagement.
- Use real data – The best way to approach a SWOT analysis is to use real, hard data. Otherwise, your conclusions will be little more than bias-influenced estimations. Facts only!
When it comes to conducting a SWOT analysis, you need to be 100% realistic. You can’t develop a feasible strategy unless you know exactly what you are working with, and this analysis can help you get to the root of both your problems and powers.
Identifying Target Customers
Identifying who your target customers are is an essential part of creating a results-driven agency strategy. Your clients are what keep you in business, so make sure you’re attracting the right ones.
The best way to identify your target audience is to conduct deep market research, analyse customer data, and create customer profiles and market segments based on the data you find through research. Assessing your competition’s market can also provide some useful pointers about target customers.
Developing Strategies and Tactics
Strategies and tactics are two separate ideas. A strategy is a plan of action, while a tactic is a particular method or action used to execute an overarching mission.
Combined, these two things work together to help your agency navigate a path to success. Here are some tips for developing better strategies and tactics:
1. Prioritise Strategies Based on Impact and Feasibility
If you really want to see results from your digital agency strategy, you need to base your tactics on actions that have the most realistic potential for positive impact. Your strategy needs to have realistic motivation and connection to the team and resources you have access to.
2. Start With a Core Team
Ever heard the phrase, ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’? The same can be said of an agency strategy meeting. Develop your strategies amounts core team members who have the most stakes in the future.
3. Use Scenario Planning
Scenario planning is when you develop tactics based on realistic hypothetical scenarios that could happen in future. This can help spur creative problem-solving. For instance, what would your agency do if it didn’t meet its revenue quota this year? How would you work around that?
This kind of strategic role-playing is a fun way to develop resilience tactics and anticipate challenges which may occur in future. There are many other fun strategic brainstorming approaches to explore.
Measuring and Monitoring Progress
Once you have developed and started implementing a strategy for your digital agency, the only thing left to do is monitor its progress. Without a progress-tracking system, you won’t know how effective or ineffective your strategy is performing.
One of the best ways to measure strategy progress is to set key performance indicators (KPIs) and use analytics software to track results.
KPIs are specific, measurable benchmarks you can use to gauge performance. Some examples of KPIs often used in the digital marketing industry include website bounce-back rate, bottom-line profitability percentage, social media engagement, and customer acquisition cost (CAC).
Develop a Digital Agency Strategy that Works
Without a strategy, working towards your agency goals will be much harder and more exhausting than it needs to be. Strategies provide structure, discipline, clarity, and oomph to your agency team that helps them overcome challenges and smash goals in a more consistent and productive way.