We need a social strategy! No a digital strategy! Wait, what about mobile? Email isn’t dead, is it?

These are just a few of the comments I hear flying around all too frequently in meetings and executive workshops lately. Adopting a digital strategy is nothing short of daunting. It requires a lot of planning and there are many considerations to keep in mind. If you're in the majority of marketers today that are thinking about how to go digital more effectively, here are five key thoughts that you will want to keep in mind:

1. Mind the Gap (and other potentially misleading notions)
   Are you ever lumped into a category in a way that just makes you bristle?  To know what I mean, you only need to think of one story you’ve heard that started with, “When I was your age..." or "Why do they <insert any demographic> seem to...” Social and economic determinants predominantly shape us, not just age, gender or the period in which we are born.
   The inherent value of analytics is that it can help you see diverse facets of your customer far beyond basic demographics ̶  often instantly. Using your data, you can build a more focused and deliberate picture of what they value and their preferences, reconstruct context and deepen your understanding of behaviors.
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2. Minimize Friction
   How many times have you found yourself closing a website or deleting an app because it frustrated you? Friction points are anything that can slow your sales or impede the customer experience. In other words, the stuff that distracts, stresses out or confuses your customers. According to the Razorfish Global Digital Marketing Report, 73% of people in the U.S. felt that a bad brand website negatively influences their opinion of the brand.Sometimes simple fixes, like streamlining a landing page, can have a big impact on the customer experience. Are you asking for card type when the first number automatically identifies the card? Do you repeatedly ask someone to take a survey when they’ve already completed one? How similar is the web experience to mobile (this is a big one)? Think With Google reports that 90 % of multiple device owners switch between screens to complete tasks and 84 % of smartphone shoppers use their phones while in a physical store.  Consistency and continuity are critical.
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3. Promote Dialog
   We need to think of customer engagement as a two way street. An emphasis on outbound marketing a hold-over from traditional approaches to marketing, while there seems to be lingering confusion about inbound. To combat those tendencies, you need to ask - if you are willing to put out material, you have to be at least somewhat prepared to receive and handle responses. So if I tweet your customer service handle, will I get a prompt, professional response? Will it resolve my issue?  As my colleague Bree Baich outlines in What Happens When Brands Engage Socially, you have to be willing to dedicate the time, training and resources to make it work.
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4. Clarify Intent
   Clarifying intent has many applications to the digital conversation. For the purposes of this post, it is about better understanding the customer relationship lifecycle. The traditional marketing funnel that envisions a linear progression is rapidly disappearing. Your customers can interact with you on many fronts and usually do. Decide which entry points tie to the behaviors you would like to get out of your customer and align it to the right part of the organization. After all, the idea of “going digital” doesn’t just involve marketing and in many cases should be an enterprise-wide initiative.
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5. Capture the Best Data for the Job
   Do you really want to sink yourself into a data lake, where you separate important data from the rest of your data? You might, but only if you really think you have data that will have long-term value. How do you know? When you think about the abundance of data available to you aided by digital platforms and technology, be sure to have some scope around what data ties to your customer initiatives or overarching business goals.

So where are you on the path to “going digital?" What is working (or not working) in your organization?

Editor's note:

I like this five-part approach to structuring your thoughts about digital marketing. I've heard time and again that all marketing is essentially digital, which is not far from the truth. But we all need to be careful to keep the valuable parts of marketing that predate the digital era that still apply, and also be sure we're doing all we can to leverage the opportunities with "going digital."

If you want to read more about digital marketing, take a look at the Digital Marketing Insights Page we've created, which gathers registration-free thought leadership content about this important area. I encourage you to check it out.