You have objectives, channels, targets and plans. Written out on paper, your strategy looks great – but in practice, it’s collecting dust in a drawer.
This might sound familiar to you: day to day, teams aren’t aligned, and activity feels disjointed or siloed. Delivery feels reactive rather than intentional. Targets exist, but don’t always feel grounded, and teams miss them but can’t articulate why. And digital ends up operating as a set of channels and campaigns, rather than a coordinated way of delivering against organisational goals.
Is it a capability problem? Do the ways of working need a shake up? Does the team just not have the time?
Before you start brainstorming solutions, take a look at these five elements and use them to build a strategy that drives you forward.
What is a strategy?
Your strategy is really just a way of thinking that drives you forward.
I like to describe it as the lines on a page of a colouring book: it gives shape and structure, but your daily delivery is what fills it with colour. However you think about it, strategy connects your mission to your execution in a way that is clear, actionable and consistent.
At its simplest, a strategy is the third element in a trifecta: vision (the long-term change you want to see in the world), mission (what your organisation does to contribute to that changes) and strategy – how you’re going to get there
If you’re not getting the most out of your digital strategy, do a quick health check to check it has these five pillars.
1. A clear mission and vision
Most organisations have a mission and vision. The issue usually isn’t that they don’t exist: it’s that they don’t actually influence decisions.
Everyone broadly knows what the organisation is trying to achieve. They just don’t use it to guide their work, and the three elements aren’t connected. The vision and mission sit on a website, the strategic objectives are in a document and everything else happens somewhere underneath – delivered by a network of people with individual skill sets and targets.
You see this play out in small ways. For example, teams default to repeating activity that worked last year, make decisions based on what competitors are doing or what gets them quick wins, or they respond to what feels most urgent. Campaigns are planned without a clear sense of how they contribute to anything bigger, and priorities shift depending on who’s in the room.
If your digital strategy is going to do any real work, your mission and vision need to act as the anchor for everything else.
- Each of the three elements – your mission, vision and strategy – need to be clear enough to guide decisions. If your mission is so broad it could apply to any organisation in your space, it won’t help anyone prioritise.
- They need to show up consistently. Not just in strategy documents, but in briefs, planning sessions and internal comms. They should feel less like a statement and more like a reference point.
- They need to translate into something more concrete. A strong mission should break down into a small number of organisational priorities, whether that’s raising funds, driving policy change or building awareness. Without that step, teams are left to interpret the mission themselves, and they won’t do it consistently.
2. Strategically aligned priorities
All organisations, departments and teams have objectives. They sit in a document, often grouped by team or function, and on the surface they look reasonable. But do they clearly connect back to the mission?
A strong digital strategy creates a clear line from mission to execution.
That means building a simple hierarchy below.
Each layer should clearly connect to the one above it. That’s what allows teams to understand not just what they’re doing, but why it matters:
- Your mission defines what you’re trying to achieve overall
- This breaks down into a small number of organisational priorities, like ‘raise funds’ or ‘raise awareness’.
- At the tactical level, each team defines what they need to do to contribute to those priorities.
Teams should contribute to objectives in unique ways
Each team might contribute to the same objective or parts of the funnel, but in different ways.
- A communications team might focus on increasing reach and building awareness with new audiences.
- An advocacy team might focus on growing a supporter base and mobilising people to take action.
- A fundraising team might focus on acquiring more donors through digital channels and increasing online income.
The simple test
If your team takes too long to answer these questions, or the answer changes depending on who you ask, there’s likely a gap:
- Which objective does your work relate to?
- How does your work contribute to the mission?
3. A clear understanding of audiences and channels
Another common gap in digital strategy is how organisations approach audiences and channels.
Channel decisions are often made in the wrong order. This might sound familiar: “Our competitor is on TikTok, so we should be too – let’s start putting some content up.”
The problem with this approach is that teams start with platform – deciding they need to be on TikTok, or invest more in Instagram, or increase spend on paid social advertising – and not with audience.
That leads to problems. Effort is spread too thin, you’re not delivering content consistently, people aren’t engaging in a meaningful ways, and you’re not sure what impact any of the channels are having.
People use different channels in different ways, and with different levels of intent. You can’t realistically be on every single channel. So how do you choose?
An effective digital strategy aligns three things
- What your audience is doing
- How they’re using a channel
- And what you’re asking them to do
For example, if your goal is immediate action (a donation, a sign-up, a conversion), you need to focus on channels where intent is higher. If your goal is awareness or behaviour change, you’re more likely to use channels that have access to a high volume of audiences, and where people are open to discovery.
It’s also important to recognise that the same audience behaves differently depending on context. Someone might scroll TikTok for entertainment, use Google when they want answers, and engage with Instagram for social validation. That doesn’t mean you need to reach them with the same message everywhere. It means:
- You need to be clear about the role each channel plays: when in someone’s mental journey it’s being used, and what they want out of it.
- Channels aren’t interchangeable: you need to understand the mix that best represents how your supporters move through a journey.
Audience engagement is a slow burn
Another common mistake is expecting people to act immediately. Someone who’s never heard of your organisation is unlikely to donate or sign up straight away. You need to build towards that over time, moving from awareness to engagement to action.
Have a look at the See Think Do Care model for one way to frame the needs of different audiences at different stages of the journey.
The simple test
Look at your current channels and ask if these things are clear – if not, the issue isn’t the channel. It’s the strategy behind it:
- Why do we exist on this channel?
- How does this channel fit with audience behaviour?
- What is this channel doing to help us drive outcomes?
4. Realistic, evidence-based targets
Most strategies include targets, but how they were selected is important.
Ideally, they’ve been set based on existing data. But sometimes they’ve been guessed, borrowed from another organisation, or set without a clear plan to achieve them.
When targets aren’t rooted in data and can’t be rationalised, confidence in the strategy drops quickly. Teams don’t believe in them, progress becomes harder to measure, and conversations shift from improving performance to explaining results.
Effective target setting is grounded in evidence
The best, most realistic targets build on what you’ve already achieved in similar campaigns or activity, using historical performance as a baseline.
If you don’t have those – for example if it’s a new product, channel or area of work, it’s worth considering a small pilot to understand how it might perform before you set targets. Make sure you have a strong evaluation process so you can understand why it performed the way it did, and what impact improvements might have.
Failing that, it’s okay to use charity benchmarks – but tread carefully when relying on them. Charity benchmarks are a great way to understand what is feasible, or to understand if your performance was consistent with broader trends. Another charity might seem similar in size or cause to you, but they could be very different in terms of what they invest in budget, time and capacity, and therefore what results they get.
Clarity is just as important as accuracy
There’s a meaningful difference between saying you want to “grow your supporter base”, versus “increase your email list by 10% over 12 months”. The latter gives you something you can measure, plan against and take ownership of.
Tools like SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) are useful here because they force you to define what success actually looks like, and make sure you’re pulling in the right direction.
Targets need to connect to action.
It’s important to have a clear understanding of what needs to happen in order to reach a target. If you can’t explain it, the target isn’t useful.
For example, you can’t halve your CPA from last year without there being a significant difference in the way you’re approaching your campaign. To reach it, maybe you’ll use different optimisations, target different audiences, or produce different products that are more attractive to prospective supporters.
Those things then turn into your activities.
A simple test
For each target, ask – where did this figure come from, and how are we going to hit it?
Without credible targets, teams disengage, performance becomes harder to manage, and strategy starts to feel theoretical. With them, teams have something concrete to aim for, progress becomes measurable, and decisions become more objective.
5. Clear tactics that link to objectives
The final step is translating all of this into action. Arguably, tactics (or activities) don’t sit in a strategy document. But what’s the point of a strategy if it doesn’t ladder down into activities?
Without clear tactics, teams default to habit or familiarity. Delivery continues, but it might just be repeated from last year. News tools and methodology are launched without much thought about strategic alignment, or conversely, they’re overlooked when they could represent new opportunities to reach a target. Not much time is given to innovation or testing of new activities.
Over time, the gap between planning and execution gets filled with whatever feels urgent, rather than what is most effective and forward-looking.
Tactics are what connect targets to day-to-day work
Directors and heads of teams should be working to translate strategic objectives into the day to day gameplan for their teams. Tactics should clearly answer what you are going to do differently to achieve your goals, and they need to be specific enough that a team can act on them.
Each tactic should have a direct impact on an overarching target. For example, if your goal is to increase average gift value, you might test higher donation prompts, adjust suggested amounts, introduce higher-value propositions, or use social proof to reinforce recommended options. Each of these activities has a clear role in shifting the outcome.
Tactics shouldn’t sit in your strategy document, because while your strategy stays stable over a long period of time, tactics can shift day to day. They should instead sit in campaign or activity plans. And whether your tactic fails or succeeds, it should give you a clear direction of travel towards your target, and a base to grow activity on.
A simple test
Look at your current activity or the decisions you’re making about delivery, and ask – which target does this support, and how do you expect it to influence that outcome?
If that isn’t clear, it’s probably not strategic.
Without clear tactics, strategy remains theoretical, teams default to familiar activity, and results are inconsistent. With them, work becomes more focused, testing becomes more intentional, and progress becomes easier to track and improve.
Digital as an enabler
Digital isn’t a strategy or an objective in its own right. We don’t have an ‘offline strategy’ any more than we have a digital one, and it doesn’t exist over there away from all of your other work. The first step to becoming digital first is incorporating it as essential and assumed in your strategy.
Digital is a set of tools, platforms and ways of working that help you deliver on your strategy.
I like to think of digital as an enabler. When I write strategies, I talk about digital as an enabling force that helps the team do things like get in front of the right audiences, test messages and propositions, and learn quickly.
That stuff doesn’t sit by itself – it’s a core part of audience, fundraising, and marketing activities you’re doing. Digital is key to making them happen.
Conclusion
A digital strategy doesn’t fail because it’s badly written. But if your mission, priorities, audiences, targets and tactics don’t clearly connect, delivery can get messy, and fast.
If your digital strategy isn’t delivering what you expect, it’s worth stepping back, looking at each of these five pillars in isolation and asking where the gaps are.
Then your charity can be confident all teams are pulling in the same direction to achieve its vital mission.
We can help you with your digital strategy
Get in touch to find out how we can help you get your head around your charity’s digital strategy.
You can also check out how we helped Opportunity International rethink their digital marketing to reach their highest potential.
