This document provides a strategic approach to building an online presence and footprint. It discusses the importance of having a clear strategy with well-defined goals and metrics. It emphasizes answering key questions like what the company's winning aspiration is, where it will play, how it will win, what capabilities are needed, and what management systems are required. It also discusses content strategies for different channels and devices, as well as best practices for mobile websites and apps. Experimentation and analytics are highlighted as important ways to test hypotheses and continuously improve strategies.

1. A Strategic Approach to
Your Online Footprint
Part 1
Presented by
Sridhar Sunkara

2. How to grow my business

3. Strategy is the Key

4. Strategy is choice
The challenge for management is to pick the right game to play and play to win

5. 5 important questions to build a strategy
What is our
Winning
aspiration?
Where will
we play?
How will we
Win?
What capabilities
must be in place?
What management
systems are
required?
The motivating factor, aspiration
what area of
products, customer
segmentation, channels
– Value proposition, competitive
advantage
The resources, the activities
that need to happen, etc
Integrated Approach
Source: Playing to win – How strategy really works:
Harvard Business Review Press

6. What is your aspiration
Purpose of a company is to create a Customer
There should be a deep understanding of the
Customer
Serve & Win with Customer
Don’t put Product Lens - marketing blinded by products and not see the larger
pictures or true market dynamics

7. Where to Play
There should be a deep understanding of the
consumer, competition analysis, and
capabilities
Need to understand what business you are really in
Where to compete and where not to compete
Some of choices:
Geography, Product or service type, Consumer
segment, distribution channel, vertical stage of
production or service you engage

8. Where to Play
Important things to avoid
Refuse to Choose
Buy your way out of an unattractive game
Accepting an existing choice as immutable

9. How to win
To provide better value proposition than competitors do, and
providing it on a sustainable basis
Two generic ways:
Cost Leadership – Cost reduction is relentlessly pursued
• Does not always mean charge lowest prices
• Have option of under pricing
•Can reinvest margin to creative competitive advantage
Differentiation – Brand is relentlessly built
• Distinctively more valuable
• The more a product or service is differentiated along a
dimension consumers care about, there can be premium price

10. How to win
Loyalty emerges where there is a match between what
the brand distinctively offers and the consumer
personally values
Sustainable Winning Strategy
To have both cost leadership and differentiation

11. Capabilities
Companies activities that when perfumed at the highest level
will enable the company’s to bring its where to play and how to
win choices to life
Capabilities should reinforce one another and should make
stronger than they would be alone.
Create an Activity System – Visual representation of company’s
competitive advantage, capturing on a single page the core
capabilities of the company

12. Capabilities
When articulating activities think about:
Generic Strength
Critical Strength
Mutually reinforcing activities

13. Management Systems
Management is what is most neglected in companies
To be successful a company need robust process for
creating, reviewing, and communicating about strategy
Need structures to support its core capabilities
Need specific measures to ensure its strategy is working

14. All 5 Questions need to be answered
Strategy is Iterative process
Organization has Multiple levels of nested
cascades
No one perfect strategy; find the distinctive
choices that work for you

15. Methodology

16. Business Model Canvas
Each component contains a series of hypotheses that you need to test

17. Lean Startup Model
Each component contains a series of hypotheses that you need to test

18. What is your online strategy

19. Customer Discovery

21. What should I do first?
Too much to thing about
Too many channels

23. Your Websiteshould be your first step to online presence

24. The website is the hub of your
integrated marketing effort.
The website is the hub for your
various audiences.

25. sustainable
growth
What do you want?

26. What is more important
Time on your site
online assets
Conversion Rate
or

27. Stickiness?
• Increasing Conversion
• Not More Time on Site
• User Experience - Careful of Distractions

28. How To Increasing Stickiness to the site

29. Website navigation and content should help to
facilitate decision, not calculate persuasion

30. • Increase number of results per page
• Visuals (images, map)
• Suggest alternatives
Return Relevant Results

31. Encourage Use of Filters
• Dynamic
• Sliders when possible
• Retain all filters and
sorts
• Add option to clear
selected fields

32. Clear Price Displays
• Bigger is better
• Highlight promotional rates
• Remain consistent through funnel
• Create transparency
• Allow customers to modify

33. Create Urgency
• Highlight 5 or less items
• Number of times booked
• Show what they can save now

34. Easy to Find Content
• Limit tabs
• Don’t make customers
search
• Show thumbnails on main
page
• Include guest reviews

35. Details
Photo Layout convert
quickly
2.28%Increase in conversion

36. Streamline Checkout
• Remove Unnecessary
fields and steps
• Test one-page flow
• Provide phone number
• Remind customer what
they ‘re buying

37. • Stickiness should focus on increasing conversion. Not on
the amount of time on site.
• It’s about creating a great user experience. Make it easy
for users to accomplish their goal and they will stick
around.
• Be original and authentic to the value you are providing
• Be transparent about what you are offering.

38. Content Strategy

39. The important challenge now
Content & Design for different outlets, different
devices and languages

40. Creating Adaptive Content
Put more effort into
creating content in such a
way that it can be reused
effectively.
Create Once,
Publish Everywhere
Content

41. Future of Adaptive Content

43. Content Goals
Sharable (Viral): Content that is designed to spread organically. Usually, it has little
substance beyond the initial spark that makes viral content unique; thus, it has a fairly
short shelf life.
The main goal with viral content is to get your consumer to click the social share buttons
and build awareness of you, your product or your company.

44. Discussion: Content that is designed
to spark a conversation within a
community.
unlike viral, its shelf life is much
longer.
The content can play on the same
extremes as viral, but it's more
thought-provoking.
The main goal with discussion
content is to get its consumer to
leave comments and to interact
with other readers.

45. Lead: Content that is designed to draw people into some sort of opt-in. This content
exposes a gap in the consumer's knowledge and hints at a promise of closing that gap if
the user enters his email address or fills out a lead form.
Conversion : Content similar to lead content, but with one important difference. This
content convinces consumer into making a decision to alleviate whatever problem they
need help with

46. Call to Action Strategy
Fast Thinking
Slow Thinking

47. Stylized Text Memes
Infographics
Photos

48. Visual note-taking
Video

49. Build the right CMS

50. Why Quality Custom CMS Work
• EASY TO USE
• INTELLIGENT
• HELPFUL
• FLEXIBLE
• POWERFUL
• INTUITIVE
• STABLE
• SECURE
• PLEASANT
• SIMPLE

51. Flexible Content – WINNER

52. Design Responsive Web Design
Custom Mobile Web Design

53. Why Mobile

54. Why Mobile

55. Why Mobile

56. How people Really Use Mobile
Mobile does not
mean on the go
68% use at home
Most common use is
ME TIME

57. Why Mobile

58. Mobile Ads or Apps?
Mobile ad budgets in the U.S. are expected to
increase from $2.3 billion in 2012 to almost $11
billion in 2016
New media require new
methods of advertising, and
those evolve over time.
3 reasons why mobile ads
don’t work
People Don’t Like Them
There’s No Right Side
The “Fat Finger” Effect

59. Mobile Apps will trump
Consumers
- don’t perceive them as advertising
- they value them for their functionality
Marketers
- more cost-efficient than traditional ads
- sometimes create entirely new revenue streams
Users spend on average,
82% of their mobile minutes with apps
18% with web browsers

60. Smartphone apps fall into five categories:
1. Games and entertainment, 42% of time spent
2. Social networks (especially Facebook), 31%
3. Utilities, including maps, clocks, calendars, cameras, and e-mail;
4. Discovery, including apps for Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Flixster;
5. Brands, such as Nike and Red Bull.
1. Add convenience
2. Offer unique value.
3. Provide social value
4. Offer incentives
5. Entertain.
Five strategies that can help Apps succeed

61. Five strategies that can help Apps succeed
Add convenience Offer unique value.
Provide social value
Offer incentives
Entertain

62. Mobile Best Practices
KEEP IT QUICK
SIMPLIFY NAVIGATION
BE THUMB-FRIENDLY
DESIGN FOR VISIBILITY
MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE
MAKE IT EASY TO CONVERT
MAKE IT LOCAL
MAKE IT SEAMLESS
USE MOBILE SITE REDIRECTS

63. Measure

64. Experiment – The Lean Way
To Win – Set Metrics >> Build Hypothesis >> Experiment >> Action
Step 1 – Pick what key metrics you want to improve
Step 2 – Form assumptions by
1. With existing data
2. Without Data
Step 3 – Create an experiment
Who is your audience?
What do you want them to do?
Why should they do it?
Step 4 – Measure

65. Experiment – Results
If
1. Success >> Next Metric to improve
2. Failed spectacularly - revisit hypothesis. It’s time to identify a new who, what, and why,
based on what we’ve learned.
3. Marginal success - but not close enough, try another experiment. The hypothesis might still
be valid, and we can try again, adjusting based on what we’ve learned.

66. Experiment – The Lean Way

67. Sridhar Sunkara
Follow Me: sssunkara
Call Me
901.270.4397
Email Me
sunkara@thinkebiz.net
Thank You