When I was working as at Zed, I was asked to be the project leader of a digital transformation project. It was a great challenge as the client was an important offline newspaper in Spain.

Diario Negocio was created in 2006 and (closed down in 2012), to make a comparison the newspaper is like City AM (London’s first free daily business newspaper), the only difference is Diario Negocio is not distributed beside the Tube’s exit but distributed directly to companies in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Zaragoza.

The newspaper had the following problems:

• Static website (the reader has the option to download a large PDF of the offline edition of the newspaper)
• No digital strategy
• No digital revenue (it did not run any commercial campaign)
• No social media presence
• No digital structure (HR, sales, marketing, content creation)

The first step was to create a series of workshops with top management in order to create the strategy. What I follow was the process I explained in the post 7 steps to create your marketing strategy

1. Define mission & vision
2. Scan the environment
3. Set priorities
4. Set objectives
5. Create the strategy
6. Define operational plans
7. Develop and manage project plans

The outcome of this workshop is the following:

Knowing how the company was going to achieve their goals, the next step was the implementation of the digital strategy:

1. Align digital / SM / marketing strategy with business goals
2. Segmentation and creation of buyer personas
3. Content Marketing strategy
4. Planning / publishing calendar
5. KPI’s and Metrics
6. Continuous optimisation
7. Risk analysis and contingency plan

I found internal key elements in order to deliver this digital transformation project as required:

• Implement a Social Media Guideline: specific set of policies: no sexual harassment / content, can’t disclose company secrets, can’t speak ill about the competition, be transparent
• Start a Training Programme focusing on the new CMS, latest digital technologies and social media
• Re-utilise the best of the newspaper and create digital transformation (HR, Marketing, Publishing, Advertising)

The top challenges were:

• Recognise social media as a game changer
• Customer experience must be seamless across different channels
• Think like your readers / customers
• Digital / Marketing / Social media strategy is part of the business strategy and not separate
• Work with editors in order to avoid frictions about laid offs (see digital as an opportunity)

The results of the digital transformation was: