Laying Strong Digital Foundations

An excerpt from "Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation," by Damian Ryan and Calvin Jones, published in February 2009

The good news is that you’ve almost certainly already started the process of defining your digital marketing strategy. Before even picking up this book you’ve probably been thinking about digital marketing in the context of your business, about what your competitors are doing online and why, about how your customers and prospects are integrating digital technology into their lives, and about how you can best exploit these new and exciting digital channels to foster longer, more productive relationships with them. These are the components that will form the foundation of your digital marketing strategy:

Know your business: Is your business ready to embrace digital marketing? Are your products or services suited to online promotion? Do you have the right technology, skills and infrastructure in place? How will digital marketing fit into your existing business processes, do those processes need to change, and are you and your staff ready to accommodate those changes?

Know the competition: Who are your main competitors in the digital marketplace? Are they the same as your offline competitors? What are they doing right (emulate them), what are they doing wrong (learn from them), what aren’t they doing at all (is there an opportunity there for you?) and how can you differentiate your online offering from theirs? Remember, competition in the digital world can come from just around the corner or from right around the globe. The same technologies that allow you to reach out to a broader geographical market also allow others to reach into your local market. When you venture online you’re entering a global game, so don’t limit your analysis to local competition.

Know your customers: Who are your customers and what do they want from you? Are you going to be servicing the same customer base online, or are you fishing for business from a completely new demographic? How do the customers you’re targeting use digital technology, and how can you harness that knowledge to engage in a productive and ongoing relationship with them?

Know what you want to achieve: If you don’t know where you’re going, there’s a pretty fair chance you’ll never get there. What do you want to get out of digital marketing? Setting clear, measurable and achievable goals is a key part of your digital marketing strategy. Are you looking to generate online sales, create a source of targeted sales leads, improve your brand awareness among online communities, all of the above or perhaps something completely different? Your goals are the yardsticks against which you can measure the progress of your digital marketing campaigns.

Know how you’re doing: The beauty of digital marketing is that, compared to many forms of advertising, results are so much more measurable. You can track everything that happens online and compare your progress against predefined goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). How is your digital campaign progressing? Are certain digital channels delivering more traffic than others? Why is that? What about conversion rates? How much of that increased traffic results in tangible value to your business? Measure, tweak, refine, re-measure. Digital marketing is an ongoing and iterative process.

The process of formally defining your digital marketing strategy forces you to sit down and analyse the market in which you’re operating with a critical eye, and to really think about the different components of your business and how digital marketing can help you to achieve your business goals.

Don’t get too bogged down in the technical details – remember, digital marketing is about people communicating with other people; the technology is just the bit in the middle that helps it to happen. Your strategy should provide you with a high-level framework – a bird’s-eye view of the digital marketing landscape with your business centre stage; the details will come later.

"Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation is available from Amazon »

Proceed with Caution: Use Social Media Carefully to Listen to Consumers

By Denise Lee Yohn, brand as business™ consulting partner

Have you heard what’s hot lately? It’s the latest marketing trend. Using social media to listen to consumers, that is.

The spotlight has recently shone on companies like Jet Blue, UPS, and Southwest for having used social media to learn about their customers’ problems and to respond to them quickly. Such attention makes sense. After all, participation in Twitter, Facebook, and other social media is growing exponentially and popular brands like the National Basketball Association have amassed huge social media audiences – why not pay attention to all of that’s being said to and about your brand?

Plus these new platforms channel customer information to companies on an ongoing, real-time basis. Rather than waiting weeks or months for research or financial results to paint an outdated and oftentimes fuzzy picture of consumer sentiment, companies can now identify opportunities or learn about problems as they arise and take action immediately.

But there are some risks involved in using social media for consumer input and companies would be wise to proceed with caution into the fast lane of tweets and posts. Here are three suggestions for how to use social media carefully to listen to consumers:

1. Be selective about who you listen to.
Engaging in social media can be like drinking from a fire hose – the quantity of information is overwhelming. Twitter alone now has over 7 million unique visitors and there were approximately 240 tweets per person in the last quarter of 2008¹. It can be difficult to determine who and what you should be paying attention to.

That’s why you should stay focused on your target audience and ensure you are only listening to that group and those who have strong influence with them. Case in point: Lightspeed Research recently conducted a market research survey after a social media outcry over an offending ad by Motrin caused the company to discontinue the ad and issue a public apology. Although the blogosphere was ablaze about the topic, the research revealed that almost 90% of women had never seen ad – and once they did, only 15% said they didn’t like it.²

So it’s important to take the time to filter out voices that may be loud but that don’t impact your business. Thanks to new applications like TweetDeck, it’s becoming easier to separate out the opinions that matter to you. Also different social media are frequented by different groups – so be sure you’re listening in the right places.

In some cases it might not even make sense to engage with social media as a customer input tool for now. Historically social media users have been early adopters of technology and media. Although the audiences are now becoming more mainstream, it’s important to monitor your target audience’s usage of social media and tailor your approach accordingly.

2. Understand the limitations of social media.
In addition to over- and under-representing certain groups of people, social media has other inherent limitations.

First, user comments are usually not detailed or in-depth. They may illuminate surface-level problems or opportunities which should be addressed with quick customer-service fixes or short-term promotional activities – but a home video or a 140-character text message is probably not going to deliver the rich insights that fuel meaningful innovation or make the case for strategic business shifts. So balance the attention placed on top-of-mind and offthe- cuff comments with the understanding of deeper, more nuanced issues.

Also beware the “E! effect” – that is, the tendency for the sensational and the scandalous to get the most play (named after the TV show which thrives on sensation and scandal.) Whether its videos on YouTube or tweets on Twitter, the topics that are discussed and shared the most have high news value but may have low real consumer value. Analyze who is saying what and look for corroborating information from other sources to differentiate between a flash in the pan and points with substantive impact on the brand:customer relationship.

Finally, social media can sometimes act like a large suggestion box. It yields very positive comments and very negative ones, but rarely do you from people whose opinions lie in the middle. Non-response bias can mislead those who use social media to monitor current brand performance or brand context, so it shouldn’t be used for those purposes. The input from the self-selected audiences of social media should be verified with a more representative sample.

3. Use social media to complement traditional market research
Social media is a useful supplement to traditional research methodologies, but not a replacement for them. Social media can be used to put issues on the company’s radar screen and point to areas for further digging – or it can be used to gather quotes or stories that flesh out findings from survey research. You may also use it to recruit participants for research studies as long as the respondents are screened carefully. But social media should not be used in the absence of more reliable, representative research methodologies.

Some companies that previously shied away from traditional research now embrace social media listening as a cheaper, easier method for collecting consumer insights. While the maxim “some information is better than none” may seem to apply, these companies actually end up only “knowing enough to be dangerous.” Social media may give them a misplaced sense of confidence in the limited and biased information it contains. Innovation always yields promising new uses and applications – social media is no different. Pioneering brands have adopted social media as a vehicle for advertising, promotions, customer service, corporate relations, and more. Gathering consumer input is a natural extension of these uses and social media is a powerful way to forge stronger bonds between company and consumer.

But as with all innovation, social media users would do well to respect its boundaries. Before jumping on the social media bandwagon, check out the road it’s traveling – and proceed with caution.

¹Nielsen Online, 03.18.09, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitters-tweetsmell- of-success/

²Advertising Age, 3.30.09, http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135605

Denise Lee Yohn is an independent brand as businessTM consulting partner who has worked with clients like Sony, Nautica, and Frito-Lay to operationalize their brands to grow their businesses. Read more by Denise at http://deniseleeyohn.com/bites/best-bites.