Clients jumping into digital often want all the bells and whistles, whether or not they need them. OnIt Digital's president offers tips to create a strategy profile before employing specific tactics.

When I arrived at my client's office, they had already had their first brainstorming session about their new website, and they were already completely and utterly confused. Here's what they said they wanted me to work on (in one, big, long sentence): 

We want a website with a social networking feature that allows users to interact with one another, a blog that we can get our consumers hooked on -- with podcasts they can listen to -- an information exchange, you know, so we can create a dialogue between everyone and create a place where they'll want to come back [deep breath]; we want them to meet one another, have some widgets that exist on their desktop, supporting microsites, emails to support our marketing efforts, and collect data [another deep breath] oh and video, we have to have video,  you know what we're talking about right?

To which I replied, "Yes, of course I do, and what's really great about it is that you've covered the approach for every industry in the entire known world." Okay, I didn't say that…but I did think it.

No wonder they were confused. It was a sea of tactics and ideas -- big thinking about all of the great new technologies available and the opportunities for having a dialogue with their consumers but no marketing strategy and no thought about their target audience. To unwind this tangle, we needed a strategy that would inform the tactics. 

Let's first talk about that word -- strategy. What is it? It seems to be the age-old argument in the hallways of marketing companies, PR companies and ad agencies. Ask 20 marketers what a marketing strategy is and you'll get 25 different answers. Here's my answer: The definition doesn't matter.

What matters is that you're thinking about your customers and asking the simple questions: 

• Who is my target audience, both demographically and psychographically?
• What do they think about my product/service now? What do I want them to think?
• What messages/offers will they respond to based on the profile I’ve identified?

It's kinda like going on a date with 50,000 of your closest friends. You want to get to know them before you buy them all a wedding ring. And since there are 50,000 of them, you have to make assumptions about the one wedding ring they'll all like and fight over. The last thing you'd want to do is buy them all a gold band when what they really want is platinum with diamond studs.

Many times consumer insight comes from a combination of previous experience, past data, focus groups and/or market research. But it doesn't have to be complicated. What's important is that you're asking the questions and creating the profile. From there your tactical approach should become apparent.   

Back to my clients. They wanted to market an online video portal that allowed users to keep up with the latest in video game news. So we started asking the questions and came up with this profile. 

Sample profile for video gamers

• 13 to 30 years old
• household income: $100,000
• average time online: four hours per day
• not married
• likely to create and live in social circles online
• love video games that are involved in sports, shooting and puzzles
• story lines are not necessarily important; they much prefer the challenge of the game and a rich graphical interface
• likes tips for doing better but they don't necessarily want all the answers
• interested in new releases

From here we were able to whittle down the options to a launch plan that made much more sense. No more long sentences with anything and everything, just a very targeted tactical approach.

Here's what we came up with:

• The site will contain a video player with four channels: New Releases, Sports, Shooting and Puzzles. 
• Each channel will contain an archive of 30-second to 90-second video clips. Clips will be a combination of original produced content and purchased content from syndicators.
• Users will be able to share their own video game secrets through an interface that allows them to upload their own comments and videos.
• Each week we'll have a new release of a four-minute show that recaps the week in gaming and pulls the user submitted clips in, providing a unique conversation among gamers.

There's more to it than that. We have to still layer on the creative approach and add more tactical ideas. But I hope you get the idea… focus on the consumer first, tactics second. You'll avoid a lot of confusion.

Marc Mallow is president and founder of OnIt Digital, LLC. Read full bio.