How to Map Your Digital Ecosystem to Prioritize Your Positioning Opportunities?

It is crucial for businesses to stand out amidst the chaos of the internet, and to do so, they need to have a polished, distinctive, and effective communication strategy.

Few realize just how significant the internet has become in everyone’s lives. For businesses to thrive in this turbulent environment, they must focus on developing a communication approach that is both refined and unique.However, the internet is much like a casino: one day, you could be riding high, and the next, you might lose everything. Maintaining a presence requires daily effort, as competition is fierce and constantly evolving.

If you want to stand out, it is crucial, first and foremost, to have the most comprehensive understanding possible (a concept that doesn’t truly exist on the internet) of your ecosystem, allowing you to identify positioning opportunities. Once you’ve established your status, maintaining it requires looking beyond the immediate scope of your products or services. Instead, it’s about understanding the life contexts and moments that lead to the consumption of your product.

For example, if I’m a bank, to attract new clients, it’s more strategic to position myself around life events like marriage or divorce—key moments when people are likely to switch banks—rather than just promoting my fantastic low-interest loan.

First step: Assess your position within the ecosystem

« Know thyself »

Socrates, a true digital native, had already grasped the first essential step in implementing a digital strategy: conducting a comprehensive assessment. 

The goal of this assessment is threefold: to identify the objectives of the strategy, align these objectives with the brand image, and determine what is feasible given the available assets.

• Why focus on content? 

The primary reason for a content strategy is often to increase visibility. However, it’s not just about being seen—it’s crucial to determine what kind of visibility and traffic are needed to convert visitors into actions. 

The type of actions we want from our visitors varies depending on who we are and what we aim to achieve. 

This effort is essential because the volatility of the internet means that your site’s structure and content can quickly become outdated, requiring constant reassessment.

• What can I do?

These objectives should be guided by two key imperatives: does this align with the brand imaget, and am I capable of achieving it? 

This is often a lengthy process, and the ROI can be challenging to measure. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand your strengths and weaknesses and to leverage your environment wisely.

• What do I have at my disposal? 

Finally, the last essential element of a thorough assessment is to review your assets to determine what should be removed, kept, or modified.

Step 2: Know the competition: direct, indirect, and also potential partners.

« Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.. »

Mike Tyson is one of the first brainworkers to understand that on the internet, you are never alone and that competition can be quite fierce. 

Once you have a clear view of your digital presence, it is essential to compare it with your competitors and analyze the different ecosystems. 

It would be presumptuous to aim for a monopoly on a subject, but it is crucial to know who your competitors are, their strategies, and whether there are potential collaborators within your ecosystem.

• Who are my competitors?

Initially, everyone knows who the historical competitors are for their product, but it’s worth noting that your physical and digital competitors might not be the same. Online newspapers, Wikipedia, and government websites, for example, are significant digital competitors on a wide range of topics, even though they are unlikely to capture market share from anyone. These “digital competitors” can undermine an entire content strategy.

To identify these digital competitors, there are several options: if your team has some time, they can examine the key players emerging in the topics you want to dominate. Otherwise, specialists can assist with this analysis.

• What is their strategy?

Identifying your competitors is a good start, but it’s also essential to determine how they communicate and execute their strategies by examining their websites and social media (#NSA).

For instance, if you want to sell a perfume, you should look at how your competitors present their perfumes. Do they talk about the product directly? What life moments do they associate with it (e.g., is the perfume marketed for meetings or work)? Or do they simply advise saying yes to everything, including the product?

The goal is to be proactive in adapting to changes in your ecosystem and to avoid remaining static.

• With whom can I collaborate?

Indeed, Jamie, among all the players, some can be quite beneficial. While it’s important to know your enemies, it’s even better to understand your allies (or the reverse) because they can offer significant visibility at a lower cost. Whether it’s through paid or earned media, every opportunity to gain exposure is valuable.

After this analysis, you’ll have a clear vision of yourself and your ecosystem, and you can now use this understanding to identify opportunities and threats to build your strategy.

3rd Step: Determine Your Strategy

« I don’t write for myself; I write for the pleasure of millions of readers. »

Like Ken Follett, you should primarily focus on your fan base and their needs. However, unlike him, it might be presumptuous to aim to address the entire country with your talent.

• Understanding Your Audience and Their Needs

Don’t live in an echo chamber, as Clovis might say, and make sure that the content you plan to produce will interest people beyond just your family and friends. A good indicator for this is Google AdWords (not Google Trends) or, more simply, search volumes, which will quickly help you estimate the target audience you can reach. These tools will enable you to identify current and emerging trends on the internet, but you can also commission studies on the subject.

• Avoid Aiming Too High

However, it would be presumptuous to claim that the entire target audience is just a click away, as you likely already know (if you read this article properly). You have competition. For your information, one-third of internet users click on the first link, and almost all the rest click on links from the first page. Yes, the world of the internet is a harsh one…

• Writing Isn’t Improvised

Once again, there are several options: if your colleague considers weekends to be outdated, you can engage them to use the insights from the first two steps to craft a realistic, disruptive strategy that addresses genuine consumer needs. Alternatively, you can always enlist a communications agency to handle this and much more (page optimization, keyword purchases, internal linking, etc.).

Step 4: What If You Get Help from Data?

If this plan excites you but you lack the capacity, time, or desire to handle it yourself, know that it is now possible to reconcile these three steps by leveraging AI and data analysis technologies.

For you, Synomia has developed apps incorporating AI to quickly detect the best opportunities for digital communication, precisely estimate market potential, and conduct an audit of both client and competitor positioning!