Communicating your Results

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Choosing how you communicate results

The final output of a digital marketing strategy is a single document that presents your objectives and how they will be achieved.

At this point you have:

• Identified the high-impact goals you want to achieve
• Set your KPIs and budgets
• Researched the audience
• Agreed a creative strategy
• Chosen your paid and organic channel mix

Now you need to collate this in a single document for approval by key stakeholders and execution by in-house or agency partners. It's incredibly efficient and valuable to have all the thinking and project pieces in one document for easy reference, sense-checking, and execution.

There are numerous ways to gather and present your digital marketing strategy together and this can vary depending on the audience.

Presentation

For example, if you want to secure budget or get approval, doing a presentation on objectives, outcomes, creative, channels, media plans and costs and presenting your strategy in PowerPoint is standard practice. However, it's not common to include complicated or technical elements of your strategy in a PowerPoint as these are executional pieces which should be shared with the appropriate teams, as the detail can confuse higher level stakeholders. In this instance, mention that there is an executional document to supplement the appropriate pieces within your strategy.

PowerPoint is best suited to communicate the top-level outcomes, actions, and costs of the strategy. It's stylish and, when delivered in person, can be effective in building trust with stakeholders and getting their feedback before it is signed off and executed.

Document

Microsoft Word and detailed documentation is best suited to technical pieces for execution. This document can be referenced as a supporting document to the PowerPoint to demonstrate that the finer details have been considered and are available if requested by stakeholders, but are intended for development teams, media planners and other executional departments. It's good to reference the existence of a technical document to build trust in the strategy without going through the actual details.