*6.2.3. Strategy formulation*

Goals indicate what a business unit wants to achieve; strategy is a brave blueprint for arriving there [16]. Every business must purpose strategy for achieving its goals, consisting of a marketing strategy and a compatible technology strategy and outsourcing strategy.

Some specific questions could be, for example, whether your business has a product.

The following are key steps in creating a platform strategy [17]:

**1.** Create social media marketing goals that solve your biggest challenges: understand what your needs in the platform. Set goals that you know are attainable.

**6.4. Feedback and control**

relevant products.

multi-platforms:

A company's strategic fit with the environment will inevitably erode, because the market changes faster than the company's efforts [16]. Obtaining feedback is very essential for ensuring the continuity of a strategy. This is even more critical with platforms because their evolution is dynamic. There are several means to gather feedbacks but again this will depend on the nature of platforms. Digital platforms offer a variety of metrics but there are also comments and other forms of reactions, which are provided by platform users. The organization can decide to update its strategic orientation based on acquired feedback. This should not take time to be implemented because the impact on business performance can be very drastic.

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**7. Determinants for successful marketing platform strategy**

**3.** Flow: how well the platform fosters the exchange and co-creation of value.

gravity. For example, Apple needed to attract both developers and users.

example, Apple provides developers with the OS and main code.

**1.** Develop customer-centric, not platform-centric, marketing strategies

moving from screen to screen and consuming content.

Boncheck and Choudary (see [20]) provided the following list of a successful strategy:

**1.** Connection: how easily others can enter into the platform to exchange and transact. **2.** Gravity: how well the platform attracts participants, both producers and consumers.

The authors argue that the success is achieved through the following building block:

**1. The Toolbox** creates connection by making it easy for others to enter into the platform. For

**2. The Magnet** creates influence that attracts participants to the platform with a kind of social

**3. The Matchmaker** promotes the flow of value by making links between producers and consumers. The Matchmaker captures rich data about the participants and leverages that data to facilitate connections between producers and consumers. For example, Google matches the supply and demand of online content, while marketplaces like eBay match buyers to

Dreyer (see [21]) provided the following to be the key strategies from marketing to the

• The ultimate objectives should revolve around how they reach, engage, and influence consumers, not platforms. They should first pursue to answer how these consumers are

• Marketers need to place the customers at the center and explore how the platform can

enrich the delivery of the value to the customers. Balancing between content.


#### **6.3. Program formulation and implementation**

A good strategy can fail due to poor implementation. If the business entity has decided to attain technological leadership, it must strengthen its R&D department, gather technological intelligence, develop leading-edge products, train its technical sales force, and communicate its technological leadership [16]. Many managers think that doing things right (implementation) is as important than doing right things (strategy), but the fact is that both are critical to success, and companies can gain competitive advantage through effective implementation [18].

The following are steps for building a successful digital platform [19]:

