understanding the domain of a digital strategy

A digital strategy must not be implemented without knowledge of its domain: the world in which it lives, its part in that world, and residing. How to divide that world, the events, and people into what is salient and what is not can be challenging. Without the foresight of Cassandra determining what is, or rather, what will be important is an inexact science that must balance the empirical with empathy.

A reflection of the challenge can be found within the specialisation of the various agencies that offer digital strategy or services within. By nature, there is a gravitation to those matters and themes that characterise the agency as individuals are naturally attracted to those matters and themes that interest them. It is certainly helpful when creators are their own customers i.e. the empathetic rule of: “does this feel right?” can and often does answer many potential issues before they arise. It does not counter bias and the assumption of ‘I am the everyman and he is in and of me’, for that the domain must be examined.

Consider a domain as a stage; all the world’s a stage, and digital strategy is merely a player:

• the backdrop, the world in which this will exist
• the scenery, that which relevancy demands awareness
• the backstory, the events that have driven to this point
• the actors, those that will enable

To work in isolation from these is at best counterproductive and worst leads to flights of pure fantasy.

Each must be analysed and understood in turn to comprehend how they can feed into the ambition and the message they use.

a message on message

If ambition is simplified to what is to be achieved through digital strategy, then message is the osmotic catalyst through which ambition is cooperatively driven. The ambition cannot be assumed to be common amongst all actors in a strategy’s execution, so the message must become a bridge between the motivation of each. This is put succinctly by David Griner, Creative and Innovation Editor at Adweek, as:

“It’s hard to shake hands while your reaching for someone’s wallet”

This is true of all engagement within a digital strategy. Where ambition overrides cooperation, actors will be driven away, the flow will dissipate, and results will stutter before, if not corrected, and even stop. This is not limited by the nature of the strategy, any system that is enforced by diktat will breed resentment and counterproductivity. It might be ‘my’ ambition, but ‘we’ can share a commonality of message.

background

Often regarded the most straightforward to understand when examining domain, after all, the sky is blue, the sea is green, birds fly, and stones drop; except when it is not, and they do not. Assumption can be a self-evident fallacy to fantasy, that will create the shakiest of foundations for any strategy. Since it is impossible to composite every factor into the consideration of background there are two principal questions:

• what is apparent and relevant?
• what is apparent and not relevant?

And two further questions, since what is not apparent and not relevant can uncomfortably become both, especially if things start to go wrong:

• what is relied upon that is not apparent?
• what is relied upon in the not relevant pile?

By answering these four questions it quickly becomes apparent what backdrop is, and what is in the scenery; what requires attention and what can be safely ignored.

digitally relevant, digitally apparent

Determination of what is relevant within the background of a digital strategy must hold to its core that digital strategy cannot be built or executed in isolation. Processes may be enhanced, brand perceptions reborn, new customers found, or existing customers brought onward, none of which can happen without a starting point that is not or was not in digital. Digital is an enabler to ambition, not the ambition itself; therefore, if it is in the scope of ambition then it must be classified as apparent. With the scope of what should be evaluated addressed, relevancy then comes down to whether the digital strategy or this part of the background is:

• dependent: can one work without the other?
• aligned: do these need to operate in parallel?
• current: is this still current, should it be?

In all these specifically what is online cannot be run in isolation from what is offline. Placing either in a silo immediately creates a disconnect that is difficult to repair.

background events

The background is determined by the previous circumstance, no area of the background just happened to be. For those areas of the background that have been deemed relevant, it is important to understand their nature. Principally within the construction of a domain it must be understood whether the factors that led to this point were:

• in the past and completed
• part of an ongoing trend over time
• enforced by external factors

It is possible to understand their likely outcomes from the composition of the factors that led to each of the starting points:

• Past: What are the lessons, positive and negative, and what is the possibility of repetition?
• Ongoing: Where does the trend lead, is it likely to cease, what are the opportunities to be had?
• Enforced: How delicate is the ambition, how capricious are those external factors, what consideration should be given to dictated routes and inflexion?

Each of these has an implied level of risk and opportunity. It is the role of the created digital strategy to minimise the risk and maximise the opportunity. It is through the analysis of background events in domain construction that these are analysed.

people

Digital removes the line between actor and audience, creator, and consumer. To achieve a positive outcome from any strategy those persons relied upon to achieve it must be engaged, enabled, and empowered. This is true not only of consumers but of all people that interact with the strategy. As part of a complicated process people can be the most complex, they must not become an assumption and as part of the domain it must be understood:

• what has taken them to this point?
• what will take them beyond this point?

It is too easy and too often to assume that those that “must” engage with a strategy, e.g. employees or single route B2B will:

• fall into line
• share the ambition
• become automatons to the company will

This is a mistake. People wear many faces depending on events and situations, none of them happily conform to abject submission without benefit; least of all against the disruption of change. As an actor a digital strategy must engage as an audience; as an audience, a digital strategy must empower as an actor, and both must be enabled.

A word on faces

People are complex, far more so than nearly any other cog that might comprise a digital strategy. Not least in their complexity is that dependent on:

• The situation
• The person
• The history
• The time of day
• Which side of the bed they got out of that morning

Responses from the same person may differ. Whilst factors may decide the reaction for a person, the person remains the same, they are simply wearing a different face. Such a change may put an individual in more than one audience group in analysis, there is no harm in this provided it is at an individual level. If wider groups fall into multiple categories it is an indication that the groups do not accurately define the make-up of the audience.

Audience

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

The diagram shows a simplified message path of a single idea within a digital strategy. The message is seeded and is picked up initially (but not necessarily exclusively), by existing advocates. Through them, the message will spread to those that are influenced by the advocates, be they advocates themselves or influencers within the market space. This continues until for the lifecycle of this part of the message it reaches those influenced, but no longer passing it on.

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.

Nothing in this model should surprise digital marketers, even less those specialising in social media. The spread of message through techniques such as:

• KOL marketing
• post boosting
• contextual advertising
• aspiration and envy sharing drivers

These are now commonplace, the model also holds for internal message through activities such as:

• champions
• adoption events
• working groups
• fiscal and/or benefit drivers

The nature of the strategy will suggest the optimal route of message spread amongst people, the spread itself enables success.

One area of consideration that should be part of audience selection is that the current audience might not be appropriate for the aims of the current 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 audience

Examination of the background will immediately suggest available audience. An established brand should have a good idea of its audience through previous traditional marketing efforts. A strategy that is focused internally will have its actors and therefore audience compiled through relevancy.

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.

Office culture

As people identify and align with behavioural types as consumers, so do they within organisations. In 2012 Robert Half, the professional staffing company, conducted a study in North America which identified six clear personality types within games of office politics:

• Gossip Hound
• Credit Thief
• Flatterer
• Saboteur
• Lobbyist
• Adviser

It is not the role of digital strategy (unless that is the stated ambition), of digital strategy to fix office politics within an organisation. Understanding the different personality types within an organisation, the key individuals, the mixture of types they imbue, and how to use that for gain is required to maximise the efficacy of that strategy.

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?”.

A sample persona can be seen below:

Finding your audience

One of the benefits of digital distribution 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 activity to discrete tranches of segmented audience will enable reduced cost and increased efficacy against a generic broadcast and hoping something sticks.

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, intranets, blogs, office circular, search engines or forums. Often locations apply to multiple personas and demographics.

By looking at the personas, locations suggest themselves. It is found in locations owned by third parties that numbers are readily available since the consumer is the product. Estimating uptake from these third-party numbers requires care since accuracy and lean towards optimistic.

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.

In 2010 the segmentation of potential audiences was becoming more available across advertising tools (social or otherwise). Subsequent legislation has placed greater controls on the authorisation, collection, and dissemination of personal information, even anonymised. At the time of writing legislation and innovation are still in a game of cat-and-mouse which unfortunately has had a detrimental effect upon user experience. Despite attempts at legislation in a marketplace where the primary product is the audience, whichever tools are available can safely be assumed to have a level of segmentation to allow the focus to be applied to groups where success is more probable.

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:

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? Having completed the previous analysis it should, in theory, 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.

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:

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.

motivation

Motivation is a huge field of study, far too large to cover in a small subsection. Psychological theories on what motivates people that should be reviewed concerning digital strategy are (non-exclusively):

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
  Focuses of graduated levels of attainment fulfilling ever greater needs split between deficiency and growth.
• Hertzberg’s Hygiene and Motivating factors
  Focuses on mitigating areas of dissatisfaction (Hygiene) and boosting areas of satisfaction (Motivation).
• McClelland’s theory of needs
  Focuses on:
  • Achievement: Demonstration and acknowledgement of competence
  • Affiliation: Social acceptance and love
  • Power: Self-determination
• Vroom’s theory of expectancy
  Focuses on the connections:
  • Effort will lead to success
  • Success will be rewarded

Each of these has validity, and the face that a person wears in their approach to the digital strategy and the strategy itself will best determine the motivational model adopted to achieve success. A strategy focusing on internal systems transformation may wish to lean toward the expression of motivation using Hertzberg or in more factory process Vroom. Engagement across a more optional marketing strategy may adopt Maslow, or forget deficiency and focus on the happier approach of McClelland.

audience and events

“Time may change me , but I can't change time”

People cannot sit aside from events. The circumstances and motivations that have taken a person to the point where they require analysis as part of the domain follow in part the same as background events:

• Past
• Ongoing
• Enforced

Since audiences are constantly how they relate to audience groups musts be evaluated slightly differently from the evaluation of background in that:

• Past: What is the relevancy, is there an expected bounce, is there an expected repeat, what is the opportunity in each?
• Ongoing: What is the underlying motivation for trend, how can it be shaped by message, what is the aspirational opportunity?
• Enforced: How willing an actor in our digital strategy is this audience, how does necessity shape opportunity?

Past behaviour is an indicator of future behaviour depending on whether the previous outcome was through choice or necessitated and depending on the outcome of their aims. In this way, an audience can be evaluated against the aims within a digital strategy cycle to determine expected success.

time to play

With a full analysis of the domain and how that maps to ambition and aims the digital strategy is finally ready for its initial creation. Steps to achieve this are however for later.