CORPORATE STRATEGIES
The benefits of digital marketing in a business strategy
Corporate strategies are the starting point for business planning in medium-sized to large companies. A fundamental part of corporate strategies is the definition of marketing strategies, within which digital marketing occupies an increasingly important position. This is because the advent of the digital revolution has led savvy companies to exploit the opportunities offered by online channels to grow their business.
At this point, you may be wondering:
- What are corporate strategies?
- What is the role of marketing within the strategic management of a company?
- But more importantly, what advantages can the integration of digital marketing within a corporate growth-oriented strategy bring?
Here we want to provide you with all the answers you are looking for, so you can get a clearer idea of corporate strategies and how you can improve them through digital marketing.
In order not to be found unprepared in the constantly evolving world of digital marketing, training, and updating are indispensable. Check out the Digital Strategy Course by Digital Coach®; it can be a growth opportunity for your business and professional future!
Corporate Strategies: what they are
Corporate strategies are the strategies decided by the top management of a company with the aim of improving its performance. They are, therefore, decisions taken at the highest level within an organization and impact all underlying functions and processes.
From the corporate strategy, derive the guidelines on which to base the planning of activities for each business area into which the company’s operations are divided, i.e., the business strategies.
In fact, corporate strategies for business development start from the analysis of two fundamental contexts:
- the internal context, to verify the state of company performance and determine the strengths and weaknesses of the organization
- the external context (the market(s) of interest and the players operating in it) in order to identify the main opportunities to be seized and possible “threats” to be paid attention to.
Based on the results of this analysis, the main alternatives on which to build a corporate strategy will be single-sector growth or diversification. We elaborate on these below.
SINGLE-SECTOR BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
The company may decide to optimize the resources and skills it already possesses in order to increase its strength within the sector in which it operates. In this case, it is a corporate strategy oriented towards single-sector growth, whereby the objective is to increase the company’s weight within its market and gain more strength in its relations with stakeholders (competitors, suppliers, customers, etc.).
This type of corporate strategy can be declined by pursuing horizontal integration or vertical integration.
HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION
The horizontal integration strategy involves the company expanding its business by producing products or developing services that are similar to those it already offers. In this way, it exploits the processes, skills, and know-how it already has at its disposal to amplify its presence and market power in the relevant sector.
VERTICAL INTEGRATION
Vertical integration strategy, on the other hand, implies that the company progressively assimilates within itself upstream (supply) and/or downstream (distribution) processes with respect to those already in place. This allows the organization to deploy its resources to become increasingly autonomous and gain an advantage over its competitors.
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CORPORATE DIVERSIFICATION STRATEGIES
On the other hand, diversification strategy at the corporate level occurs when a company decides to develop new productions in new markets instead of strengthening its position in the sector in which it already operates.
A diversification strategy can be implemented when the company:
- can no longer expand in its own market
- possesses surplus resources that it intends to reinvest in other activities
- wants to increase its volume of business and improve its image
In the latter case, it can be very useful to adopt a differentiated marketing approach via digital channels to increase the company’s visibility and nurture the relationship with consumers.
HORIZONTAL DIVERSIFICATION
Horizontal diversification strategies are when new productions are intended for the customer segment currently served, while new product development can be carried out either by maintaining existing technologies or by using different technologies.
RELATED DIVERSIFICATION
Related diversification involves the company deciding to make products related to those it already produces, both in terms of technology and marketing.
CONGLOMERATE DIVERSIFICATION
Conglomerate diversification, on the other hand, is when the company extends its activities towards completely new productions that are completely disconnected from the company’s current productions and technologies and aimed at a completely different clientele.
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Corporate Marketing And Digital Marketing Strategies
Up to this point, we have seen in detail corporate strategies and how they are deployed. As we mentioned earlier, however, a fundamental part of corporate strategic management is the planning of marketing and, increasingly now, digital marketing strategies.
In fact, corporate strategies have to do with the direction the company should take with regard to products, while marketing strategies serve to propose these products to the market with the aim of obtaining the best possible result in terms of revenue.
Once corporate strategies have been defined at the corporate level, choosing whether to expand in one’s own sector or in other markets with new products, it is necessary to act, at the level of competitive strategies, on the positioning of the company and the brand in the minds of consumers. The marketing opportunities offered, in this sense, by digital channels are vast.
Through web and social media marketing, by targeting activities to specific goals, a company can gain enormous advantages in visibility, brand awareness, engagement, and, of course, revenue.
DISCOVER WHY THE BEST INCLUDE DIGITAL MARKETING IN THEIR CORPORATE STRATEGIES
Planning and detailing the management of digital technologies and digital marketing as part of a company’s business strategy has now become a key competitive lever for a company’s business and one of the main business best practices. The exponential growth of the digital business phenomenon demonstrates this.
Digital marketing has two fundamental characteristics that differentiate it from marketing through traditional channels:
- enables precise tracking and measurement of business results achieved online
- enables continuous improvement and optimization
Obtaining large amounts of data for analysis is very important to know whether the marketing strategy implemented in the digital sphere is working as hoped. If this is not the case, all the data collected and the analysis done help to understand how to improve the strategy and optimize the activities implemented.
In addition, digital marketing is a great way to do corporate storytelling and support corporate strategies by telling the company to the audience it wants to reach.
Let us see how a digital marketing strategy is constructed and fitted into a corporate strategy’s framework.
DIGITAL STRATEGY AND CORPORATE STRATEGIES
A successful digital strategy must lead to a marketing funnel that optimizes the company’s resources to obtain new customers.
For a digital strategy to effectively support corporate strategies, it must identify all digital channels to reach online consumers and plan digital activities to integrate with offline ones.
The digital strategy is divided into two main branches, web marketing, and social media marketing, within which the channels and actions to be implemented are specified.
WEB MARKETING
Web marketing is that area of digital marketing that concerns the promotion of a company’s products and brands through channels, tools, and activities on the Internet. It can play a primary role in positioning new products launched by a company that has implemented a corporate diversification strategy.
In the field of web marketing, there are numerous channels that can be included in the digital strategy:
- SEO, the set of activities and techniques geared towards gaining traffic and visibility on search engines free of charge from the organic placement of relevant keywords or keywords
- SEM, the set of activities aimed at gaining traffic and visibility on search engines through the purchase of paid advertising on platforms such as Google Adwords. Other names for paid channels are online advertising and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing.
- Content Marketing for the creation and distribution of quality content that stimulates interest, interaction, and sharing
- Email Marketing or Direct Marketing (DEM), which relates to the direct sending of commercial messages to groups of people via email
- Affiliate marketing consists of advertising promotion based on the results affiliates achieve
- Inbound Marketing, in which the audience must be won over by providing interesting and useful content for the target audience
- Mobile Marketing, where marketing actions take place through mobile connection tools or networks
- Locally-based marketing, a form of web marketing that integrates communication on mobile devices with locally-based services/products
Using web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, all business-relevant data can be monitored, tracked, and measured.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media marketing includes all those activities aimed at promoting a product or service online through the use of social networks.
Companies can use an appropriate social media strategy to complement their corporate strategies and dialogue with current and potential customers. They can also interact with bloggers and influencers, do digital PR activities, and make themselves known to a wider audience. A social media marketing strategy is based on 3 main points:
- establish an established presence on major social networking platforms
- create shared content and advertisements
- monitor customer feedback throughout the campaign through social media analytics surveys
Social media management should be embedded within a broader corporate-level strategy to carry out activities of:
- Brand Reputation
- Social Monitoring
- Digital PR
- Digital Storytelling
- Content Marketing
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The course comprises 507 hours of training, divided into 31 training modules and 96 Work Experience coordination sessions.
The curriculum of the training part is designed to enable the aspiring Digital Marketing Manager to train in all areas that may fall under his or her managerial and operational coordination.
During the course, participants have the opportunity to undertake 6 real professional experiences of 4 months each in 6 areas of their choice:
- DIGITAL PR
- SEO COPYWRITING
- INBOUND MARKETING
- CONTENT MARKETING/BLOGGING
- VISUAL CONTENT/USER EXPERIENCE
- WEB ANALYTICS
- SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
A successful digital strategy must create a marketing funnel to optimize company resources to obtain new customers.
For the digital strategy to effectively support the corporate strategy, it must identify all the digital channels through which to reach online consumers and plan digital activities so that they integrate with offline ones.
The digital strategy is divided into two main branches, web marketing and social media marketing, within which the channels and actions to be implemented are specified.
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