Whether you’re embarking on a voyage to an entirely new web presence or simply trying out some sponsored posts on Facebook, preparing for your digital marketing project by outlining the objectives, strategy, and goals at the start is key to achieving your project’s success. Taking time to develop a formal project outline will help identify potential roadblocks, technology requirements, and realistic outcomes prior to launching the project. What are some things you and your marketing team can do to prep for launch?
Define Your Digital Marketing Project’s Purpose & Scope
Breaking new ground…
It’s important at the start of a project to be clear on whether this is new territory for your marketing team or an improvement on past tactics. For example, if your marketing project involves creating and launching the company’s Instagram channel, it will be important to understand where this new channel fits with the existing marketing programs. You should consider questions like:
- Why is your brand/organization moving into this new channel?
- What kinds of metrics can you expect?
- Does the channel integrate with your existing CRM/CMS/reporting program?
- What are the best practices for the channel?
- What are your competitors doing on the channel?
…or reinventing the past?
If your digital marketing project involves reinventing an existing property, like the company website, it will be important to determine how your team can create both newness and continuity. You should consider questions like:
- What are the objectives of the relaunch?
- What do your KPIs say about the existing property and where are the opportunities for improvement?
- Does the existing technology (CRM/CMS/web platform) limit or enhance your ability to achieve success?
Document & Communicate Your Digital Marketing Project
Put it in writing…
Once you and your team have worked through identifying the marketing project’s scope and purpose, it’s important to put it in writing. Formally documenting your project creates a shared understanding amongst the team and within the organization about what the expectations are for the project. Documenting all your marketing projects also makes quarterly and year-end reporting much less time consuming since your project plans clearly outline your strategies and tactics, and your goals have already been established.
…and then shout it from the rooftops.
Communicating your project internally is the final step prior to project launch. Whatever the scope of your digital marketing project, it is always beneficial to be ready to communicate its purpose. Whether you’re seeking project approval or simply accounting for your marketing team’s time, it’s important to clearly define vocabulary and KPIs in your project documentation. It’s also important to consider which internal departments may be affected by your project. For example, if you’re adding an Instagram channel, you may want to work with customer support in the event a customer uses Instagram to get in touch. If you’re updating your company website, you may want to notify sales that important webpages in the lead nurturing funnel are changing.
Once your digital marketing project has launched, you can start providing updates within your team and within your organization. This allows your team to establish a presence for the marketing department within company culture while creating rapport with departments that marketing interacts with and impacts. It also allows your marketing team to put a stake in the ground and say to the rest of the company, ‘this is how we’re spending our time and here’s what you can expect from us.’ This creates accountability for the team and hopefully internal support for the project.
[ Check out other pre-project launch considerations. ]
