How a strategy-first approach benefits our clients
10 minute read
Whether your goal is to demonstrate thought leadership, raise brand awareness, or fuel lead generation, starting your project with a comprehensive strategy phase is the best way to create practical solutions and position your project for success. Let’s start with the basics of what happens during the strategy phase: Learn more about our strategy and research team here.
7 key components of our strategic planning process
In the strategy phase of our process, we learn about what makes your company unique, and we establish key objectives that help inform the rest of the project.
Discovery: Discovery consists of everything we have learned about our clients’ needs. Discovery exercises include interviews, analytics audits, and on-site research. The final result is a discovery document we review with the client to confirm all that we have learned is thorough and complete.
Co-authoring exercises: Imarc facilitates exercises that are designed to identify strategic goals and bring pain points to light. From here, Imarc’s strategists create a plan that aligns with client goals.
Audience identification and personas: Imarc pinpoints the site’s target audience in order to define user journeys, identify relevant content topics, and address their business needs.
Buyers’ journeys: Building buyers’ journeys allows Imarc to eliminate points of friction and design ways to streamline purchase paths.
Sitemaps: Imarc builds sitemaps to identify the main buyer’s journey as well as the overall lift in regards to content creation.
Wireframes: Creating wireframes allows our team to display content structures and key interactivity to clients prior to adding the brand expression.
Usability testing: Imarc’s strategists vet solutions to confirm that they deliver a powerful and effortless user experience that will enhance the site’s functionality.
The value of doing strategy first
Strategists gain a complete understanding of clients’ businesses upfront.
Beginning projects with strategy gives our team ample time to compose thoughtful solutions that support clients’ business goals. This is done through stakeholder interviews, surveys, and research to uncover as much information as possible and create a path to success. These insights better equip our strategists to implement solutions that will accelerate conversions.
Clients have clear expectations around the overall budget and timing.
Once we determine the tactics and resources necessary to execute the client’s vision, we can define the cost and timing for the project. Proactively setting expectations helps establish a smooth working relationship.
Clients get all the features and functionality they want and need.
With additional time to consider features and functionality, our strategists identify the best elements that will delight and engage the audience and integrate these elements into the site. Strategists leverage their experience and expertise to align functionality with client goals.
Strategy informs data-driven decisions that produce results.
Our strategy-first approach allows our team to proactively address complexities and uncover as much information as possible. Using key analytics, our strategists determine strengths to build on and areas to improve on the website. We also examine industry trends and user tendencies to best position our clients for success.
The valuable insight and direction support further project phases.
Strategy is just the first step in our extensive process. Leading off with strategy allows time to ramp up teammates in other areas, and it ensures smooth handoffs between project phases. Seamless transitions between project phases keeps your project on time and on budget.
Let’s get started!
If you’re planning a website redesign or looking for ways to improve your site’s user experience, Imarc’s team is here to help. Let's talk!
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