What does a digital strategist do?
A digital strategist decides where and how a brand should exist across the web, social, search, email and paid media, and in what order. They study the audience's digital habits, audit what the brand already has, set objectives that can be measured and build a roadmap: which platforms to prioritize, what the site needs to do, what content to make, how paid and organic work together and what success looks like in numbers. Then they oversee the plan as campaigns run and adjust it when the data disagrees.
The role sits above the individual channel specialists. The SEO specialist, the social manager, the media buyer and the email marketer each own a lane; the digital strategist decides how the lanes fit together and argues for the budget. In an agency they often lead the planning on a pitch and the measurement on the account.
Why it matters
Why a digital strategist matters
Channels are easy to add and hard to run well. A brand with a site, six social accounts, a newsletter and three ad platforms is doing a lot of things and probably none of them properly. A digital strategist chooses. They say which two platforms the audience is really on, what the site is for, what the ads should send people to and what to stop doing. The result is a smaller digital footprint that does more, and a marketing team that can explain why each channel exists.
In practice
How a digital strategist works in practice
- 01
It begins with an audit and a question: what is the business trying to achieve, and what does the audience do online that the brand can be part of? The strategist maps the customer journey from first awareness to purchase and loyalty, identifies the moments digital can influence and assigns channels and content to each. Objectives are set with numbers, and a measurement plan is written before any creative is briefed.
- 02
In delivery the strategist works through the specialists, briefing campaigns, reviewing creative against the plan and running the reporting rhythm. The roadmap is revisited quarterly: channels that are not working are cut, experiments that worked are scaled, and the plan is rewritten when the platform rules change, which they always do.
At RIOT
Digital strategists at RIOT
The Mirror Mix launch film we made for e.l.f. reached about five million views, and the Meta ad engine we ran for Homebase from February to April 2025 produced creative on a rhythm set by what the platform reported. Both are digital strategy with a film crew attached: the question was not only what to make but where it would live, who would see it there and what they would do next.
Watch out
What people get wrong about digital strategists
Expecting a digital strategist to be a specialist in every channel. They need to understand each one well enough to brief and judge it, not to run it. The other mistake is separating digital strategy from brand strategy: a roadmap built without knowing what the brand stands for optimizes toward whatever the platforms reward, and the brand ends up sounding like everyone else who follows the same best practices.
