As of 2013, all of the Fortune 100 companies are spending at least a quarter of their marketing budget on digital media. If the Fortune 100 cannot afford to look away from a proper digital media strategy, do you think that you will be able to? In order to survive and thrive in the increasingly competitive world of instantaneous gratification, you need to meet people where they are – in digital media.

Having an effective digital media strategy is a full-time job. Although you may understand the basics of digital media, the nuances require a great deal of legwork and time. Instead of taking all of this work on in-house, it is usually the practice of successful companies to outsource a digital media strategy to a reputable professional. This allows for a higher productivity within the day to day operations of the business as well as within the long-term media strategy of the company.

– What exactly is digital media strategy?

Digital media strategy is an umbrella term that connects many disciplines. When an expert refers to digital media strategy, that person may be referring to social media marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, direct response marketing, email response rates, website usability or SMS text response rates. Hopefully, your digital media strategy partner is referring to all of these things at once.

It may seem as though the above definition requires too much work on your part, and you would be right about this assessment. Incorporating a proper digital media strategy into a growing business is a 24 hour a day, seven day a week position. This is why many successful companies outsource the entire workload to a company that understands how to streamline the process. There are many workflow options and automation programs that a media strategy agency will be able to incorporate effectively into a campaign, giving you marketing juice even as you sleep.

– How can I improve the digital media strategy of my business?

No matter how integrated a business may be into its online community, there are always ways to improve. For most companies, the first media strategy to improve is the organic communication to and from customers. This communication should include an assessment of customer issues. However, the assessment should not stop there. A proper digital media strategy agency will be able to segment communications by demographic information, creating a profile of different groups and giving a business the ability to analyze trends within different segments of its target market. This much more detailed assessment will allow a company to focus its marketing dollars even more precisely, improving its conversion rates and reducing the amount of empty impressions and click throughs that it has to deal with.

Digital media strategy should also include reputation management. A business with any success will likely have to face a backlash of either angry customers or jealous competitors. The anonymity of the Internet allows virtually anyone to place negative reviews or completely false assessments of a business on major websites such as Yelp and Foursquare. Believe it or not, the major search engines take these reviews into consideration very highly. If your competition decides to post negative reviews under fake accounts, your visibility within Google can be negatively affected. You need a digital media strategy in order to counter these kinds of underhanded tech underhanded techniques.

Finally, a good digital media strategy will include a consistent analysis that creates a real time portrait of consumer response to a marketing campaign. Although a media amateur can take a snapshot of a consumer response, it is much more effective to move with the wave of your customers as they speak and react. Real-time analysis means that you have the ability for real time responses. Believe it or not, this is par for the course when it comes to doing business in the modern landscape. Any company that does not have this kind of analysis and response rate incorporated in the next few years will find its market share dwindling.

– What are the advantages of outsourcing my strategy to a digital media strategy agency?

The number one advantage of outsourcing your digital media strategy is getting all of the features that are mentioned above. You will not have to limit yourself to an amateur approximation of the media strategy that you should have. You will be able to communicate with your target audience in real time. You will be able to keep your best foot forward in the public eye no matter what kind of dirty tricks your competition may employ. You will be able to change your marketing strategy on the fly if you note that your customers are not responding well to anything that you have to say.

The second advantage is that you will be able to take off one of the many hats that you wear throughout the day. Being able to focus is a luxury in small business. You owe it to yourself to remove this huge load from your own desk and give it to people who can perform it more efficiently. You will then be able to focus on the aspects of your business that you perform best.