Digital Channel Strategy Consulting

Organizations have many channel options to consider in architecting the right channel ecosystem. With a wide array of options across owned and third-party, digital, and physical channels, numerous factors must be considered, including evolving customer journey paths and needs, legacy channel infrastructure and relationships, channel synergies and conflicts, organizational capability, urgency and speed of key trends, channel-specific optimization strategies, and many others.

All this complexity can leave executives wondering which digital channels to prioritize and how to manage them effectively — maximizing upside, mitigating downside risks and making the transition smooth. As digital channels continue to multiply, intersect and bring new innovations to the market, their alignment has never been more important.

How We Help

A successful digital channel strategy is about using the right channels to market in the optimal way. We help you identify the channels — including emerging digital ones — that will maximize your profitable reach. For example, we work with you to:

Define benefits and drawbacks for your business across owned and third-party channels, to recommend where to play
Identify digital capabilities and channels that add options for your key customers
Identify the highest ROI allocation of investment in the selected channels
Create a system of metrics to measure and improve each channel’s individual and holistic performance for your company
Develop a channel performance improvement plan to drive results in each key channel
Develop a strategy for owned channels, third-party channels and Amazon to balance the risks and rewards of delivering your brand on and off your owned channels
Coordinate channels for an optimized channel ecosystem and a seamless customer experience
Map out processes for managing channels and resolving channel conflict
Adopt a channel strategy that can adapt to changes in the marketplace

Your Benefits

A plan to address the right digital channels for your organization

Greater efficiency across all channels

The right investment balance that prioritizes the most effective digital sales and marketing channels for your organization

Improved access to your customers under the right conditions and times

How can we help you with your Digital needs?

Discuss your needs

Successes

A global entertainment content company exclusively utilized third-party channels, such as TV networks and cable/satellite firms, to reach its target consumers, but it wanted to build a more encompassing consumer experience. L.E.K. Consulting was engaged to identify the product, business model and strategy, and we identified the potential for a direct-to-consumer subscription digital video service. We helped the company make a transformational leap into a different channel. This cannibalized existing revenue streams to create a digital-first business and a high-margin revenue stream more than double that of the legacy business. We helped the client transform its business — from analytics through programming — to take advantage of this new business and customer intimacy.
Faced with growing online competition, a leading boating and marine manufacturer required a new strategy to improve its dealers’ ecommerce sales, while at the same time enhancing the digital customer experience. We created a point-by-point playbook that incorporated elements of a successful electronic-retailing model, and also worked with the client to sharpen its brand positioning on behalf of dealers and their clientele. By realigning its brand portfolio, management is now poised to grow valuation by some 25%-30% above prior long-range planning. Read more
A commercial and consumer hard case brand experienced declining revenues and market shares, largely driven by the client’s underperformance in ecommerce channels and a lack of a defined channel management strategy. We were engaged to help the client implement an ecommerce growth strategy and revise its overall channel strategy. Extensive research and analyses highlighted that the client faced multiple problems in its online channel, such as high price variability, low search result placement and unclear product differentiation. We developed a comprehensive online strategy, including defined online seller rules and a strategy to maximize share with Amazon, allowing the client to improve sales, margins, and overall performance in both online and traditional channels.
As part of an organizational strategy and design project, we helped a leading industrials conglomerate transform fulfillment organizations for its ecommerce channel, increase agility and collaboration in new product development, and institutionalize data analytics and decision-making processes.
A global footwear brand and retailer asked us to conduct a deep assessment of the company’s overarching channel strategies, including owned retail, owned ecommerce, wholesale, distributor partners and Amazon, and to develop a holistic channel strategy that would address a lack of cohesion that negatively impacted sales performance. Using a combination of analytical techniques and collaboration with internal stakeholders, we built a holistic channel strategy tied to clear merchandising and marketing plans to promote omnichannel optimization and minimize cannibalization. The comprehensive project resulted in a 30% increase in the global ecommerce business.
A category-leading food manufacturer asked us to assist in refreshing its strategic plan, a key component of which was thinking about evolving the brand’s product, go-to-market and operational platforms to grow where people shop today and will shop tomorrow (particularly in ecommerce). We defined a roadmap to achieve the plan, including the necessary activities, timing, milestones, evaluation metrics and gaps in current resourcing.