Overarching Strategy

Let’s begin with a very high-level look at your strategy. This is your overarching strategy, the highest guide to your activity. It is your strategy in one sentence or a number of key phrases that quickly summarize your digital strategy. It involves a simple statement of what you will do and what your objectives are. The overarching strategy should be a simple and clear sentence that anyone could understand even if they are unaware of the full plan. Your overarching strategy should be based on a core insight. You need to gather as much information on your audience, channels, and products, for example, basically everything that has been worked on to date. This will become the basis of your insight.

When doing your research, consider questions like what are the interesting learnings that you can use to develop your core insight? What content is your audience consuming? What format do they prefer? What are their interests? Can you identify a gap or a weakness for your brand based on what you’re seeing and reading in your research? When you have identified your core insight, you can begin to develop the overarching strategy for your digital campaign. We are going to make an important distinction now regarding the difference between digital marketing and digital media. The difference between the two is actually pretty clear. Digital marketing is the practice of utilizing digital tools for the purposes of marketing. Digital media is part of digital marketing.

More specifically, it is the medium through which the marketing activity is delivered. For example, Google, Facebook, email, and display. Digital marketing consists of all online activities, creative formats, and messaging that aims to engage with consumers online using both free and paid channels for the purpose of delivering or part delivering on a company’s commercial objectives. Digital media refers to the channels used to distribute the messaging to the audience. For example, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and email. Marketers use media plans to manage these different activities which include a detailed guide to the formats, timings, and spends for a campaign.