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How to define strategy in startups or digital project kick-offs

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One of the most frequent mistakes in facing a kick-off or a startup related to a digital and/or technological product is to face it without experience, delegating some architectural and development choices to foreign suppliers, who are not always the ideal custodians of the strategic choices related to execution.

 


There's a dozen ways to lose a race and only one way to win one.

Charles Bukowski


We had already covered the theme of digital project failure in large companies. Qhis phenomenon, in an even more amplified way, is evident in startups where it becomes dogmatic to make a virtue of necessity and in the kick off of digital projects, where the role of the digital strategist is that of director in the definition of the project roadmap governing the technical and business objectives.

Compared to other sectors where it is easier to separate the spheres of influence of each business department (such as marketing from sales), each area is interconnected (which is why we increasingly speak of omnichannel) and one influences the other in an often decisive way:

Strategy: Research/Data Science - Ecosystem Planning - Social Strategy - Brand Strategy - Content Strategy - Team Recruitment [...]

Marketing: Growth hacking - Search Engine Marketing - Search Engine Optimization - Social Media Marketing - Digital PR/DEM - Programmatic - Gamification [...]

Design: Branding & Positioning - User Experience - Design Thinking - Product Design - Copywriting & Scripting - Campaign Creative [...]

Technology: Digital Infrastructure - Algorithms and Big Data - Backend Technology - Native Applications / IoT - Server Side Engineering - CMS & Platform Builds - HTML/JS/CSS [...]

The panorama of professional figures related to the digital project has become in recent years extremely fractioned and vertical due to the high depth of development reached by digital technologies. 

 

 

Digital project framework

The years of experience made of failures and successes have led us to the definition of a project framework useful for those who begin to take their first steps in the world of startups and not to lose sight of what is really important.


What

Create and develop the brand: What strategy? - What technology to use? - Which communication? - Which digital agency?
Vehicular qualified traffic: Which digital channels should be used? What are the right KPIs to monitor?
Creating the digital community: Which channels, which tools, which ones to invest in and with what content?
Conversion: What is the customer journey? What is the ROI? 

 

Who

Create and develop the brand: What strategy? - What technology to use? - Which communication? - Which digital agency?
Vehicular qualified traffic: Which digital channels should be used? What are the right KPIs to monitor?
Creating the digital community: Which channels, which tools, which ones to invest in and with what content?
Conversion: What is the customer journey? What is the ROI? 

 

Like

Create and develop the digital brand

  • Review / define a digital strategy
  • Evaluate / select suitable digital agencies. Take care of the technological, communication and marketing aspects, to achieve the objectives
  • Produce a credible overall architecture and the right content

 

Reach the right audience

  • Evaluate / define the right channels (advertising, SEO, SEM [...]) to reach the right audience
  • Based on business objectives, define assets and targets

 

Creating the digital community

  • Support the process of the digital project to develop an onsite (magazine/news etc.) and offsite (pr, social etc.) community to spread the products and the brand story in the most organic way possible

 

Conversion

  • ROI verification, customer journey analysis
  • Check and optimize the funnel from lead to conversion
  • Continuous optimization process on the various fronts of the digital project (Communication / Technology / Marketing)

 

The derived framework is an inverted pyramid1 where from the base (development of the project in its entirety) to the apex (achievement of the objective) the highest quality standards must be guaranteed: this increases the chances of success and not failure of the initiative.

 

 

 

The fundamental step is to have a clear vision of all the elements at play between disciplines to govern the process in all its phases (definition, execution, follow-up)

If you liked this article, then you'll appreciate Quodigi's support: we provide consulting and advisory services on web strategy and digital transformation. We have developed IO, the web intelligence platform designed for business decision makers. Learn more about what we do to support your company in its digital growth!

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Simone Mastrogiacomo
Simone Mastrogiacomo
Digital native and startupper by nature. After creating my first website well before I came of age, I participated in 50+ digital projects in various industries and scales. I contributed to the achievement of results in terms of audience reached and turnover before during and after my studies at the Polytechnic of Milan, where I graduated in Architecture with the thesis "Digital Architect - Professional perspectives between architecture and web at the time of dematerialization". At the age of 29, together with other young entrepreneurs, I founded Quodigi, a digital consulting company whose goal is to contribute to the development and innovation of the Italian entrepreneurial fabric through the integration of skills.
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