r Q.We have a defined mid-long term vision for the future contribution of our digital
marketing channels?
Managing digital strategy Getting new customers Keeping customers loyal Proposition Targeting Define your future Understanding your ecosystem 3
can really help explain the need for digital channel initiatives within a company. They also show where the focus of digital marketing activities and investment should be.
Strategy recommendation 15 Define a vision for how digital channels will support your customer and brand
Provide tools to support and track viral sharing and recommendations about your brand. You will also want to track positive and negative sentiment.
You’re probably thinking ‘we’ve already got a corporate mission statement that everyone pokes fun at, so why would we want to define a vision statement?’ or ‘why should we bother?
It’s too corporate and we’re just a small business, we just get on with selling our
products.’ Good questions! But we still think it’s helpful to have a vision for your online marketing for all different types of organisation. We say this since the opportunities from digital marketing are too big to not have a vision of how you will use digital media in the future. If you don’t define the opportunity you won’t be able to grasp it because there will be too many other distractions. They may also take time to be achieved. Look at how Dell4 set their long-term vision, both for their online channel as a whole and how online analytics will support it.
A good vision statement for your digital marketing activities can help:
þ Show how digital marketing or Ebusiness can transform your organisation in the future if you innovate and invest
þ Show where you need to focus your effort – is it customer experience and service to build loyalty or are you also looking to expand your reach into new markets?
þ Energise colleagues by showing the future potential of digital marketing and
communicating that it’s a strategic priority through a senior manager or director who is a sponsor of digital marketing
þ Set top-level goals without going into detailed KPIs.
We’re not talking about mission statements of what your company currently is, instead, a vision is an inspiring, ideal future state. A vision is almost certainly not going to be 100% attainable, but you must feel as if it is possible.
Let’s look at some examples of inspiring vision statements taken from the US SEC filings for these companies:
þ Amazon.com
Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
þ Dell
Dell listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they trust and value.
þ eBay
eBay pioneers communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity. eBay brings together millions of people every day on a local, national and international basis through an array of websites that focus on commerce, payments and communications.
Managing digital strategy Getting new customers Keeping customers loyal Proposition Targeting Define your future Understanding your ecosystem 3 þ Facebook
Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.
þ Google
Google’s aim is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Note that some of these examples are better described as mission statements and for use beyond a company. Remember that mission and vision statements are two very different things and we’re focusing on digital vision statements here. At a corporate strategy level, a company should have a vision statement, and a mission, and goals by which to achieve these. The mission is what your company currently is; a vision is an inspiring, ideal future state.
We give more examples and why it’s important to have a long-term vision in in our goal-setting guide.
Some examples of vision statements for digital channels
Here’s a real example of a BHAG5 digital vision statement for a multichannel company. þ 1 x 2 x 3:
þ Largest online audience share (No.1) in Europe by XXXX By XXXX, 1 in 2 of total sales will be generated on-line
þ 1 in 3 of our people and our customers love our online services and will recommend them to a friend
þ 2 in 3 customer service contacts will be electronic by XXXX
Best Practice Tip 5 Set BHAG: “Big Hairy Audacious Goals”
These ambitious targets are used to gain attention for an initiative and attract investment and resources to it. They were popularised in a 1996 Harvard Business Review article by James Collins and Jerry Porras on Building Your Company’s Vision.
You can see this is simple yet specific enough to link to future targets unlike many vague mission statements.
Here’s another example of a vision statement for a retailer which is less specific about goals but emphasises the strategic focus:
“Our digital channels will make it easy for shoppers to find, compare and select products using a structured approach to merchandising and improving conversion to produce an experience rated as excellent by the majority of our customers.”
Different aspects of the vision statement can then be expanded upon when discussing with colleagues, e.g.
þ Digital channels = the web site supported by email and mobile messaging þ Find = improvements to site search functionality
Managing digital strategy Getting new customers Keeping customers loyal Proposition Targeting Define your future Understanding your ecosystem 3
þ Merchandising and improving conversion = Through delivery of automated merchandising facilities to present relevant offers to maximise conversion and average order value. Additionally, use of structured testing techniques such as AB testing and multivariate testing will be used.
þ Experience rated as excellent = We will regularly review customer satisfaction and
advocacy against direct competitors and out-of-sector to drive improvements with the web site
You can see this example focuses on the online experience, but is not so good at highlighting channel integration.
Best Practice Tip 6 Define a simple label which triggers the focus on digital amongst your colleagues
It’s useful to apply a simple reminder to staff of the importance of a focus on digital in strategy and implementation. We have seen this used type of label successfully in several different companies, for example:
þ Digital by default
þ Digital First
þ Digital DNA
Checklist - creating your vision statement
We think you should include these features in your vision statement. Check yours:
r 1. Shows how digital channels will help the customer. What value will you provide? r 2. Shows the benefit to the company in terms of efficiencies or profitability?
r 3. Link vision to specific goals in the future? r 4. Is simple and memorable?
r 5. Is inspirational?