Brands need to stay afloat and strategic through a fragmented digital landscape, writes Cameron De Giorgio, digital strategist at Blue Hive/Wunderman Australia. 

Digital is ever changing. With this change comes immense opportunity, but also often a sense of dread with so much choice across channels, platforms and technology often leading brands to analysis paralysis – and rightly so.

Here are three key recommendations to help brands focus on working towards business objectives, rather than focusing on the latest technology available:

1. Be adaptive, not prescriptive

Brands need to be adaptive with their digital marketing planning, not prescriptive. It is all well and good to have a direction and plan for digital marketing mapped out, but there needs to be flexibility within these plans. This will allow for things such as the introduction and testing of emerging channels, reallocation of budgets and consistent review points to make sure that the direction outlined at the start of the year is not only still working, but to make sure that this activity is still aligned with the business needs to be headed. Having firm targets and metrics to monitor performance across all channels, help to make these adaptive realignments data-driven rather than intuitive.

2. Be tentative with technology

It’s not hard to find a technology product that promises ‘robust marketing automation’ and ‘real-time reporting’ however behind these impressive feature sets, it’s vital to stay focused on addressing the core business objectives and mapping out a strategy to address these before looking at technology to be the sole solution. Digital Marketing Platforms serve a vital purpose, however, should be viewed as enablers to our strategy, rather than being the entire strategy in themselves.

3. Understand and address customer pain points

Speak to your customers. Yes, as cliché as it sounds – this can often be overlooked or neglected in favour to digital analytics data. As digital marketers, we are spoilt for choice with data to analysis, however it’s always worth balancing quantitative with qualitative to help keep our understanding holistic. A great place to start reviewing the holistic customer lifecycle is by addressing channel usage and preferences. Address and understand the key pain points customers are facing throughout, and use this as the ‘low hanging fruit’ to start focusing attention on.

Digital ecosystems for brands are scattered, and will continue to become more complex. Now whilst this needs to be respected and understood, if we take a step back and remember what we’re trying to achieve, be adaptive with our approach, open minded with technology and truly understand what our customers pain points are – we can remain strategic and top of our game through the ever-changing landscape that is digital.