Success in Digital Marketing Isn’t About Luck

To reach the top, no matter the context, you need to know what you want and have a strategy to get there. In digital marketing, having this clarity is far better than relying on luck.

We can all easily think of a company, brand, or content creator killing it in digital marketing. Every one of their channels and messages is perfectly aligned with a specific communication style and a clear personality, connecting with their audience in a way that makes you wonder if they’ve cracked the code for success.

But the truth is, behind that success is just a well-planned strategy focused on bringing value to the brand and its target audience.

So, how do you build a strategy like this? The first—and most important—step is to stop thinking of strategy as a strict plan and start seeing it as a way to respond to the market with a structured approach based on your core identity and value proposition.

• A well-developed strategy doesn’t just react to the market; it also creates a plan to influence it, stay ahead of changes, and adapt to opportunities or challenges as they come.
• The concept of value in a company refers to the set of principles, benefits, and qualities the business offers to its various stakeholders (customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, the community, etc.)—which justify its existence and success in the market. Value can be viewed from different angles, each contributing to the perception of the company as a relevant and valuable player in its environment.
• Value is about a company’s ability to adapt and respond effectively to changes and opportunities in its environment, often without sticking to a rigid plan. It’s created when an organization is evolving, spotting and seizing unexpected opportunities, and changing direction when needed.
• Emergent strategies are those that come about adaptively in response to unforeseen changes in the environment. This concept emphasizes flexibility, adaptation, and continuous learning as organizations face new realities.

A great example of an emergent strategy is Google. Initially, Google launched as a search engine. But as the platform grew, the company recognized an opportunity to pivot its business model toward digital advertising (Google Ads). This shift wasn’t part of their original strategy, but rather an adaptive response to the changing environment. Google’s ability to capitalize on this opportunity created massive value and helped the company become a digital advertising giant leader in digital advertising.

With this understanding of strategy, it’s time to start knowing your business or personal brand—and I’m not just talking about knowing what you sell or how much you make. You need a deeper understanding of where you stand, what your needs are, and where you want to go. Consider the following questions, and don’t convince yourself that you don’t have a problem—if you want to grow but aren’t making headway, then you do.

What’s your Marketing/Communication challenge?

It’s essential to understand your current situation and identify your top priorities. Take a closer look at the work you’ve done so far to gather insights that will help you develop a brief. This brief should highlight where you are now, what insights you’ve uncovered, and the direction you need to head in.

• Often, the problems that are immediately visible are just symptoms of deeper issues. To find the root cause, you need a structured, in-depth approach that digs past the symptoms and gets to the core.

What’s your scalability challenge?

When answering this question, consider why you’re pursuing growth and what you hope to achieve with the profits. It’s also important to analyze how your company is structured, how decisions are made, and what makes it unique, as these factors will help you define a scalability model.

• Scalability, as defined by various authors, is the ability of a business to grow and expand without significantly affecting its cost structure or operational model. If there are issues with your scalability models, it could indicate that the company isn’t prepared for sustainable growth.
  • Misalignment between resources and demand
  • Verne Harnish, author of Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It… and Why the Rest Don’t (2014), points out that a major mistake in scalability models is that companies often don’t align their resources with growing demand.
    Harnish suggests that many businesses try to scale without the right people, infrastructure, or systems to handle increased demand, leading to bottlenecks and operational problems.
  • Problems with automation and operational efficiency
  • Eric Ries, in The Lean Startup (2011), highlights that one of the biggest barriers to scalability is the failure to automate key processes. Ries argues that for businesses to scale, they must put automated systems in place to reduce dependence on manual labor, enabling more efficient operations at a larger scale.
  • Cash flow management errors
  • John Mullins and Randy Komisar, in Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model (2009), explain that one of the most common mistakes in scalability is not planning cash flow management properly during periods of rapid growth. Companies that grow too fast without sufficient working capital often face difficulties financing their expansion, leading to liquidity issues. 
  • Underestimating the complexity of expansion
  • Geoffrey A. Moore, in Crossing the Chasm (1991), argues that many tech companies make scalability mistakes by underestimating the complexity of expanding a product or service into larger markets. He explains that companies that thrive in their original niche often face challenges replicating that success in broader segments because the needs and expectations of these new markets can be quite different. 
  • Lack of scalability in organizational culture
  • Jim Collins, in Good to Great (2001), points out that a common scalability mistake is neglecting to create a solid organizational culture that can support growth. Companies that don’t prioritize maintaining and communicating their core values as they expand tend to face cohesion and long-term performance challenges.
  • Problems with business model replicability
  • Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of Repeatability: Build Enduring Businesses for a World of Constant Change (2012), suggest that one of the main mistakes in scalability models is failing to create a replicable business model. Companies that don’t establish processes and systems that can be consistently repeated across different markets often struggle with growth.

What’s your communication model?

Start by understanding the core of your company—who you are and what drives your brand or product. Once you have that clarity, you can develop a consistent personality and tone that stays uniform across all your channels.

• Building a communication model based on tone and communication archetypes is key for ensuring consistency, alignment with your brand identity, and effectively connecting with your audience. Your company’s communication should be clear, and authentic, and reflect its purpose, values, and personality. Various experts offer frameworks and theories to help shape this model using tone and archetypes.
  • Understanding Communication Archetypes
  • ​​The concept of communication archetypes is inspired by Carl Jung’s 12 psychological archetypes, applied to branding and business communication. In The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes (2001), Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson explain that archetypes are universal patterns that trigger emotional responses and behaviors in consumers. By using archetypes, companies can project a clear and consistent personality, fostering a deeper connection with their audience.
  • Defining Communication Tone
  • A brand’s communication tone is the way its voice comes across when engaging with its audience. Jennifer Aaker, a marketing professor at Stanford, created a brand personality framework to help define that tone. In her study Dimensions of Brand Personality (1997), Aaker outlines five key dimensions of personality that can shape a company’s communication tone.
  • Developing a Communication Model based on Tone and Archetype
  • To develop a communication model, you need to strategically integrate your archetype and tone. David A. Aaker, in Building Strong Brands (1995), emphasizes that the key to successful brand communication is consistency in brand personality over time. This requires having a well-defined communication model reflected across all customer touchpoints.
  • Other Authors to Consider
  • Simon Sinek believes that companies should kick things off by sharing their “why” (the purpose or reason they exist) before diving into the “what” and “how.” He argues that when a company genuinely communicates its purpose, it can forge a deeper emotional connection with its audience, which significantly shapes the brand’s tone and voice.
  • Neumeier introduces the idea that a brand is a “perception that lives in the minds of consumers.” The tone and archetype should be designed to bridge the gap between the brand’s current perception and the one it wants to project. Effective communication should be consistent, memorable, and, above all, authentic.
  • Byron Sharp challenges a lot of the traditional beliefs about marketing in his work, suggesting that brands mainly grow through acquiring new customers rather than relying on loyalty. He stresses the importance of consistency and differentiation in brand communication, pointing out the need to be memorable and stand out.
  • Claude Hopkins was a pioneer in applying scientific principles to advertising, insisting that communication should be grounded in facts, evidence, and measurable outcomes. His approach suggests that the tone and style of communication should be direct and focused on credibility and proof of a product or service’s value.
  • Douglas Holt suggests that iconic brands go beyond just selling products; they represent culturally significant ideas and ideals. He believes brands should tap into “cultural tensions” to connect emotionally with their audience.

In search of a strategic model for your business

Now that you have a solid understanding of your brand and the pain points you need to tackle, it’s time to find a strategic model that can help you achieve your goals effectively.

• A strategic model is a framework that outlines how a business plans to reach its long-term objectives. An effective strategic model helps guide important decisions about resources, markets, core competencies, and competitive positioning. Over the years, various authors have developed strategic models that offer different approaches for organizations aiming for growth, differentiation, and lasting success.
  • In Blue Ocean Strategy (2005), W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne suggest that instead of competing in crowded markets (red oceans), companies should look for blue oceans: untapped markets with minimal competition. Rather than battling for a piece of the existing market, businesses should focus on creating a new market space where competition doesn’t matter.
  • In his book The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990), Porter introduced the diamond model, which explains how a nation’s or industry’s competitive advantages are shaped by four key factors: factor conditions (like infrastructure and labor), demand conditions, related industries, and strategy, structure, and rivalry.
  • In The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997), Christensen introduced the concept of disruptive innovation, which describes how initially simple technologies or business models can ultimately transform entire industries, surpassing established competitors.
  • In his article Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage (1991), Jay Barney developed the resource-based view of competitive advantage. According to Barney, companies should identify and leverage their valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable (VRIN) resources to maintain a long-term competitive edge.

If you’ve realized that what you need is to find new customers, you should be clear about how many customers you’re targeting and why your brand or product will add value, beyond just solving their problems.

• In his book The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997), Clayton Christensen introduces the concept of disruptive innovation, which helps companies identify and capitalize on market segments that have traditionally been underserved or ignored by established businesses.
  • Christensen suggests that businesses should seek out new market segments that, while initially appearing to have little potential, could grow rapidly as the market evolves. These opportunities often emerge on the fringes of the traditional market, where existing products or services don’t fully meet the specific needs of these groups.
• Geoffrey A. Moore, in Crossing the Chasm (1991), breaks down how tech companies can move from catering to a niche group of early innovators to capturing a broader, mainstream market. His insights are particularly helpful for recognizing and taking advantage of emerging markets in the tech industry.
• Moore categorizes consumers into five groups:

1. Innovators: The first to embrace new technologies.
2. Early adopters: Those who see potential in a technology before it becomes widely popular.
3. Early majority: Practical consumers who adopt technology once it’s been proven.
4. Late majority: Conservative consumers who wait until a technology is widely used.
5. Laggards: The last to adopt, only doing so when absolutely necessary.

• Moore points out that there’s a “chasm” between early adopters and the early majority. Many innovative companies fail to “cross this chasm” and end up stuck in a niche, unable to reach mass adoption. The key to crossing the chasm is targeting pragmatic users who need a clear, proven solution.
• Adele Revella, in Buyer Personas (2015), and Brian Solis, in The End of Business as Usual (2011), emphasize the importance of truly understanding consumers by creating detailed buyer personas and analyzing the customer journey.

If this sounds like your situation, one of your main KPIs should be CAC, essentially, how many customers you’re bringing in through your marketing efforts. This will help you assess how profitable your strategy is and whether your tactics are effective.

On the other hand, if you’re attracting a good number of new customers but need to focus on building relationships with them, then your strategy should shift towards retention and loyalty. You can use an inbound or flywheel model to put the customer at the center of everything you do.

In a retention strategy, the most important thing is to give each customer a valuable experience, so they make your brand a part of their daily routine and want to include it in their lifestyle.

• Customer experience (CX) is all about how a customer perceives their interactions with a brand throughout their entire journey. It’s about managing and optimizing every touchpoint to create a positive and consistent experience that boosts satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth.
  • Shep Hyken, an author, consultant, and speaker on customer experience, emphasizes in his book The Cult of the Customer that companies should cultivate a customer-centric culture where every interaction lead to lasting loyalty.
  • Brian Solis, a digital marketing and customer experience expert, highlights the need for businesses to intentionally design every customer interaction with the brand. In his book X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, Solis argues that brands shouldn’t just offer products or services; they should also create holistic and satisfying experiences.

This can be achieved through various tactics, like creating a sales and purchasing model that’s comfortable, simple, and appealing to users. It’s also essential to identify every touchpoint you have, so you can deliver the right message that drives action.

Regardless of the strategic model you need, the primary focus should be adding value to your brand and your target audience. You want to clearly communicate who your brand is and let customers know that, in addition to meeting their needs, you’re offering an extra benefit—whether it’s a community with shared values or content that provides knowledge or entertainment on a daily basis.

The strategy should always have a methodological approach focused on overall results, while the tactics that come from it should be executed by analyzing the partial results to see what works, what needs iteration, and where to start growing.

How do we create a strategy that leads to success?

Once you’ve collected this initial data about the challenges your business or brand faces and identified the strategic model that suits you best, it’s time to establish a clear definition of your business and your target audience.

In other words, we need to understand the business context to create an appropriate diagnosis that aligns with its category. We also develop an audience matrix to grasp user behavior and where they are in their journey. Finally, we perform a competitive analysis to gain insights into your competitors’ tactics, helping us identify best practices and opportunities we can take advantage of.

Setting goals: A key component

When defining your strategy’s objectives, keep the conversion funnel in mind. Goals and tactics should be tailored to each stage. For instance, in the discovery stage, the focus is always on brand awareness and positioning, with KPIs centered around impressions, views, and reach.

In the consideration stage, the goals should focus on engagement, website traffic, app downloads, or lead registrations, with KPIs that measure interactions and leads generated.

Then, in the decision stage, it’s important that the goals target sales and conversion rates, using KPIs like cost per conversion or revenue volume.

So, with this in mind, your goal can’t just be “sell 1,000 wooden chairs in two months.” Instead, you should have multiple objectives that measure how you’re connecting with your target audience at each stage of the conversion process.

Remember, a strategy isn’t just a plan; it’s about knowing how to deliver the right message at the right time.

So, what’s next? 

After this long but necessary journey, it’s time to start outlining how we’ll execute the strategy: What are we going to do? And how will we do it? At this point, it’s important to recognize that every action should align with corporate values and identity, the purpose of the product, and the underlying goal for growth.

The strategy design should include defining metrics based on specific objectives, applying the overall strategic model we talked about earlier, and developing a communication model that incorporates various digital marketing strategies. This can range from social media content to web engineering and user experience (UX).

Our favorite moment: experimentation 

The best part of Scientific Advertising is the freedom to experiment with different tactics to find out which one is the most effective and appropriate. It’s important to understand that experimenting doesn’t mean improvising.

Every “path” taken within the scientific method is based on smart decisions reached through the following process:

• Hypothesis: In this phase, we come up with and refine various tactics to achieve our defined goals. It’s important to create variables in audiences, channels, formats, messages, and CTAs to see which ones connect best with the target audience.
• Validation: This is when the different planned tactics are executed along with their independent variables.
• Verification: By analyzing the different KPIs established, we identify which variable of the tactics was most effective and decide whether to iterate on it.

Experimenting with industry opportunities

Within the framework of experimentation, we should pay attention to trends in advertising and digital marketing. However, it’s important to clarify that I’m not referring to hopping on a viral dance or sound on TikTok. Instead, I’m referring to identifying those big consumer trends.

For instance, right now, authentic and less edited content is more popular than content that feels overly polished and planned. Plus, advancements in Artificial Intelligence are improving the customer experience, and brands that prioritize sustainability and social responsibility are building stronger communities.

You can take these “trends” and experiment with them to see if they match the needs of your target audience and your business goals. The secret to your success might be hidden in one of these new ideas; you just need to experiment mindfully.

After all these preliminary steps, what happens when you put the strategy into action? You end up with a methodological approach based on the real challenges your company faces and new tactics focused on your objectives.

Our strategy design is all about achieving success through discipline—going beyond just planning, seeking measurable results that align with your goals, and most importantly, figuring out what works best for you to iterate on. This way, you can create an identity that showcases the added value of your brand or product.