An effective digital marketing strategy has clear goals and outlines the metrics needed to meet these targets.

• Key Business Requirements (KBRs) identify business goals and expectations.  They outline a purpose and help to map out priorities.

• KBRs are an important FIRST STEP in a digital marketing strategy.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) determine the metrics you will use to measure how well you’re meeting these objectives.

This distinction is important because in today’s business climate we have access to an incredible amount of data.  While this is ideal, if we’re not paying attention to the metrics that will help our company to meet its goals, it doesn’t really amount to much. For example, monitoring “likes” on a social media platform only helps us move product if we can get the consumer to the website where a purchase can be made. However, if your goal is brand awareness then the “likes” become valuable information. Without these objectives, we’re basically just collecting meaningless stats with no end result in mind. Creating a chart with clear KBIs and KPIs can help. This approach maps out a digital marketing strategy where business owners, stakeholders, and marketers can all see the objectives and the measurements required to reach their goals.