Thoughts About Digital Planning

I’ve often been asked what you really do in the field of online strategy. Is it about marketing? About PR? About technology? What are the facts characterizing digital planning?

Compared to traditional planning the job is similar and simultaneously different.
A planner in a traditional kind of thinking has to define media-independent insights in a creative process of thinking based on research to develop the big idea for an advertising campaign. The process in digital planning is similar – you have to do creative thinking as well. And you have to find the appropriate infomation and go through cases. But what set it apart is the fact, that you are already in a kind like a medium – the online world. And it’s probably not that one big linear strategy, it often is an intelligent combination of micro-strategies.

A digital strategy is not just about search engine optimization or social media relations or online advertising, but all these things can be part of the strategy. Digital planning is the key to digital brand management: It’s strategic planning, acting and optimizing across all online channels in an integrated way and create a maximum of synergy effects across all marketing efforts targeting the best possible ROI.

So, you have to start thinking from a more media-orientated point of view and bring in the product and the brand. Digital Planning requires both – strategic advertising and PR thinking. You have to know your audience – where, why and how people act online. Then decide on your objectives: So, do you want to talk to people and customers or want to support them (customer support) etc. Now you can set up your strategy in the meaning of figuring out what will be different after you’re done. (I like that term.) Do you want to establish relationship or rather do market reasearch or increase sales or improve the brand image? And when you have set up your strategy, then you can decide on technology.

Important for me is to say, that digital planning doesn’t stop at the “border” to the offline world. You have to have the skills to think beyond. Consider it as understanding, planning and acting in an meaningful sustainable way in the digital world to achive higher brand goals.