Make Digital Marketing Work

I see t all over the place online, and particularly on commercialised blogs.  People have content articles which you start to read when suddenly a hover ad in a style sheet dims the article you are reading and demands that you interact with it, or close the article.  Well guess what, I close the article and I suspect everyone else does as well.

Some of them do at least have a close option on them but others are so badly written (or so determined to get a click and a bit of commission at any cost) that the rest of the site becomes useless and pointless for the visitor.

This kind of advertising isn’t a million miles away from the shop assistant who immediately accosts you and pesters you from the moment you walk into their shop until the moment you get fed up and storm out vowing never to go back.

In both cases there is absolutely no engagement, and the only thing in their eyes is dollar signs.  It is also an attitude that is more likely to actually prevent a sale from happening than pretty much anything else

Any sale is completed by consent from both sides.  These types of site are not destined to produce any real revenue for the owner because the vast majority of visitors will close down and go somewhere else.    As a result any useful content that the site has amassed is completely wasted.

We know that Google’s Adwords work because they give you exactly what you are interested in at exactly the time you are looking for information on it.  Compare that to an Ad that isn’t targeted and won’t go away and interrupts you whilst you are researching something else.  How likely is that ad to succeed?

As a professional I am incredulous that people persist with these tactics and would urge everyone to sit and think about what they were doing.  There is a way to market, advertise and promote yourself online and it works.  Why would you want to pick techniques that didn’t work?

Over the last year, whatever trade show or marketing conference you went to  most of the noise was concerning video (apart from people often getting social media  wrong of course).  YouTube was the obvious sacrament that was held up to the awe struck masses and the commandment was given go forth and record a marketing video.

I actually remember something like that being said a year ago tomorrow when I went along to the Business Startup show.  Now its not that I am not a visual person.  I have indeed seen some highly informative videos on YouTube, (most of which have been giving advice on how to fix various parts of a bicycle), and I have seen some pretty swish video presentations either from conferences or filmed in the office that had some quite high production values.  I have viewed the mobile phone thirty second wonders which give you low production values but enough information so that it doesn’t grate on you so much, but there are also a lot of people who have tried to make videos, as commanded from the speaker’s podium and I don’t know about you but I don’t think the vast majority of them work at all.

There are exceptions like the wonderful anecdotes of yesteryear usually given by someone in their seventies or eighties on a Youtube Channel, but the reason I think they work is because there is a calm honesty to these short presentations, and it shows.  They are very different from what I am talking about and I think it can be summed up with the view that audiences value authenticity over perfection, and also an understanding that the camera doesn’t love everyone.

I know that MLM and alleged business coaches get a bad rap on this blog but they do highlight exactly what I am talking about, which is where the content takes second place to the ego.  Back when I first started designing websites we used to have a saying that if company owners started spending too much time chasing fame on the television (we were new and interesting creatures that TV shows seemed to want to talk to), then it was a sure sign that their business was in trouble and the ego was now driving the business into the ground.  More often than not this proved itself to be correct but there does seem to be something about digital marketing that unleashes a frustrated need to address the world and achieve as close to celebrity status as possible as you give your own version of Gordon Gecko’s ‘greed is good’ speech to your assembled online audience.

I’ve been trained in camera technique and so I know how difficult it is and all too often tense,  unfocused eyes stare into a camera lens and deliver a performance that is more worthy of a travelling freak show than an Oscar.  It really is like watching the very worst early auditions from X factor.  It might amuse but it won’t get the person delivering it taken seriously.  Nor will it make their dreams a reality.

Whether it is a close up in an office or set against a backdrop of the Hollywood hills, all too often there is a complete lack of sincerity in the delivery and no benefit that I can perceive.

Video is a powerful tool, but video demands respect and should not be attempted without preparation.

One of the big announcements last year was that Google had expanded it’s search robot’s capabilities to take account of Adobe Macromedia Flash files.

Back when I started building websites in the mid 90s I was lucky enough to work with some of the best young designers in the business at that time, many of whom now head up departments and whose every murmur is greeted with hushed reverence.  At the time we were making things up as we went along because there wasn’t anyone who had yet defined specific rules of how to do things or demonstrated effectiveness as a standard.  Most of the time we discovered new and interesting things because everyone I worked with was incredibly bright.  One of the things that we embraced completely was Flash, and created some absolutely beautiful sites.   Here are some lessons that we learned with pre release and early versions of the software

Flash wasn’t easily updateable.  In fact every time you needed to make a change to a seemingly innocuous piece of text, you had to spend ages working on it, and present the client with a rather large bill that they didn’t appreciate.  That problem got sorted when Flash started to talk to external data sources.

People get carried away with Flash.  These were the days of the flash introduction and people seemed to think that having an advertising like introduction (similar to TV channel introduction animations was a good thing).  Usability taught us that users didn’t stick around to watch them.  Later a ‘skip this’ button was added to the animation and then it was (mostly) dropped completely as analytics showed us that users preferred to get straight into the meat and veg of a site’s serving and ignore any little tasty treat that stopped them getting to the content.  The important thing we learned was that the web was not a broadcast medium and that lesson has stood me in extremely good stead over the years. It was about that time that I started using the phrase that a website is workhorse not a work of art.  The key is to understand that the site is for the users not for the organisation producing it.

Flash couldn’t be seen by Google.  This was the killer to the large flash sites as your content didn’t exist in Google and so neither did you.  All but the clueless abandoned flash only sites in development, and the clients who insisted upon it pretty soon were having crisis meetings about how to get any meaningful figures on usage, whilst they looked at a pretty short report showing how many times the homepage had been viewed and not a lot else.   Google’s announcement at being able to crawl and index Flash changed the rules of web design again.

Flash did find a place amongst Hybrid sites that presented information in HTML and also provided Flash animations.  It meant that users could choose to view rich animations that delivered information as well as standard text and graphics.  Sites that have persisted in this and not undergone redesign since the announcement in 2008 have run the risk of having their content duplicated in Google’s index and whilst I haven’t heard of specific examples of this particular scenario, Google did treat general cases of duplicate content with extreme prejudice.  At any rate the writing has been on the wall for a company with a hybrid site to redesign it as matter of urgency.

Flash couldn’t be seen by every browser.  In many ways this is still as much of a problem as it has always been.  Computer browsers don’t treat Flash with the same disdain that they used to but a myriad of mobile and alternative device browsers have been added and the vast majority of sites do not account for them.

That brings me full circle.  There was a belief in the beginning that Flash sites were brand building and I sat in meetings back then making claims about ‘brand and content coming together to provide a total experience’.  I am less convinced of that argument now and have seen examples of content tests setting Flash based animations against standard HTML and graphics in comparison tests.  The inconvenient truth that I have witnessed is that user tests seem to conclusively show that users prefer HTML.

My instinct tells me that Flash isn’t inherently bad, it is just used badly which gives it a bad reputation, but I also think that designers need to ask themselves very carefully why they elect to use Flash.  In the end I come back to my two maxims.  At any rate, I do hope that the all inclusive single Flash movie that people used to create and parade as a site will be a thing of the past.  Users didn’t spend that much time on them.

The site is for the users to use and we should make it as intuitive and informing as possible.

And

A website is a workhorse not a work of art.

What do you think?

There is a huge amount of debate going on the web suddenly where everyone is talking about Strategy.  Most of it is concerned with Social Media and both singular, (Strategy) and plural (Strategies) are being bandied around.  The thing is that most of the time the people saying it are not talking about strategy (either singular or plural) at all.  What they are talking about is tactics.

Just so we get this right.  A strategy is the grand plan, and in marketing terms it has a business goal.  That business goal might be to increase sales (and if we are talking about digital media I would argue that any strategy that doesn’t have this goal is shooting too low),  it could be to raise brand awareness, gather more prospects, increase customer retention (which by nature should include an element of increasing sales as well).  The point is that it is tangible.  It is related to the business as a whole and says “This is what success looks like and this is how we are going to measure it.  I like to apply an acid test when I define a digital marketing strategy and that is to ask myself “Would David Ogilvy agree with me and understand what I was talking about”.  It’s amazing how focused this little mantra can make you.

Now at no point in defining my strategic goal have I used the words blogging, Facebook, Twitter, email, eCRM, display advertising, social media, search, SEO, SEM, Website, user experience, usability, accessibility, backlinks, Google, Bing, ad exchanges, PPC or any of the other terms that make up the digital marketing armoury.  That’s because these are not strategies, they are tactics.  Another dead giveaway for when people don’t understand the difference seems to me to be when they start talking about strategies in the plural.  It’s a pretty intense and complicated thing for a campaign to achieve one strategic goal so bandying them around like baubles on a Christmas Tree is a dangerous thing to do and could quite likely lead to a confused campaign.

Once the strategic goals have been set my next task is to look at the customer.  Another little mantra I like to use comes from my days as a drama student.

(As an aside, I was probably the worst drama student in the world but there were lots of extremely cute girls that were also drama students and I was in a minority of heterosexual men so this suited my strategic goal at the time and enabled me to employ many tactics to achieve it.)

The mantra takes Stanislavsky’s seven questions of An Actor Prepares and refers them to my customer.

• Who are they?
• Where are they?
• When is it?
• What do they want?
• Why do they want it?
• How will they get it?
• What must be overcome?

There is another three that I like to add in as well which are:

• What will they do with it once they have got it?
• What do they currently think?
• What do I want them to think?

This paints a very clear picture for me of my two ends.  I know what I want to achieve and how to measure it and now I know a lot about the people who are going to help me do it.

At this point I start to look at my tactics.  I look at how to contact them, and I start to plan the journey we need to undertake together in order to reach my strategic goal.  It’s only at this point that I will start to talk about the elements of digital marketing that can help us, and there is absolutely nothing to gain by limiting myself to one tactic.  I want to use as many as I can and as many as the budget will allow.

This process keeps me focused and ensures that everything I do has the goal in mind.

I suspect it’s no different to a boxer whose strategic goal is to knock his opponent out in the fifth round.  He looks at the strengths and weaknesses of his opponent, studies previous fights and looks for ways to achieve his goal.  He then decides to tactically use his jab and concentrate on body work.  He plans the journey the fight will take so that he is ready in the fifth to land his big punch and achieve his strategic goal.  Never will he talk about his body work strategy.

There have been a couple of examples recently about how desperate some organisations are getting in these troubled financial times.  The pressure is definitely on to sell more and get more pie in a shrinking dish, but I would argue that  consumers are more attuned to look for false claims and snake oil selling tactics in rough times.  I would also argue that employing these tactics now is a worse idea than at any other time.  The resultant damage to your brand and loss of trust could take years to put right during a recovery when other brands sneak an advantage.

The sales process begins with you stating you case.  Create a story that satisfies your needs and engages with the consumer.  After that it’s time to deal with objections with a FAQ. The first thing to be aware of is that you should help your FAQ as much as possible by not making outlandish and plainly untrue claims on your site about your products.  The court of Social Media will be in session in no time and it will find you guilty.  This is a tough one for a lot of established brands to get as their ’snake oil’ selling tactics have worked for years, although going back to the point above consumers are more likely to dig during lean times and so the threat of being found out is very real and probably very likely of finding you out.

Think of your FAQ in terms of the 4 marketing Ps as this will highlight a lot of objections to you.

Price - Is it too expensive for my target audience, how can I make it more affordable and how can I help people appreciate its value better.  Can I add volume and seasonal discounts, bundling, spread payment, early payment?  Do I give a money back guarantee?

Product – What makes my product better than the other products, does it have a clear advantage I haven’t mentioned yet.  What are the reasons why someone should buy my product and not my competitor? Is it better made?  Is it more functional?  Does it fulfil a niche? Does it last longer? Do I offer after sales service, does this product make it easier and more cost effective for people to accomplish tasks?  People never buy a product they buy a solution to a need.  Your product should therefore focus on how it solves that need.

Placement – Where can I buy it?  Can I only buy it here? How soon can I get it?  Buying it today and getting it tomorrow is a powerful tool as that produces an effective solution with little effort to a customer need.

Promotion – Where else is the product being used effectively?  Who else has got it?  How long have they had it.  What has it achieved for them and how much has it saved/earned for them.  Is it exactly what they needed and will they give you a testimonial.   Does a promotion entitle me to receiving more if I buy it now?

Testimonials are the stories that enable a consumer to see your product working in their world.  It is a powerful and persuasive tool that is capable of clinching the deal.

By giving reasonable and accurate information about your product and then dealing with the objections you will start to build a relationship with consumers on a one to one basis and from there you will build trust.  If you follow that up with testimonials from other consumers, you will make it more likely for a consumer to convert to a customer.

It used to be said that ‘the big idea’ that permeated agency output was all important and that the channel was secondary.  What was meant was that a good idea would translate to any media (although they usually meant TV) and so it was just a case of adapting it.  I’ve sat in meetings in rooms painted with blue skies (see what they did there?) whilst the great and the good of the creative team argued about the difference between pantone colours 2592 and 2602.  (As an aside if anyone can tell me the intrinsic difference between the two and why it’s worth two hours of two highly paid individual’s life arguing about it then I’ll buy the drinks).

I felt at the time that this was all a bit ridiculous and far too up its own arse and I am even more convinced of it now.

Then along came digital, and everyone proclaimed that it was just another channel.  I’ve been guilty myself of towing this party line to make sure that the delicate sensibilities of the creative department were not offended and they didn’t suddenly erupt in a re-enactment of mount Vesuvius as it destroyed Pompeii.  I know better now than to play that game, and would much rather be the little boy asking why the emperor has no clothes on.

Here is an analogy to explain what I mean.

There was a hierarchy of things, with brand and mass advertising occupying the high seats of power on the client’s right hand.  From there came PR and direct and a multitude of below the line suppliers.  Then there were the dogs of digital who padded around on all fours sniffing the distinguished guests and looking for the scraps, whilst everyone complimented them on their intelligence and fine breeding.  All was well in the universe and everyone knew their place whilst the people were told to admire the fine clothes of the emperor.

Then came the knock on the gates and the people of the kingdom rose up to create havoc in the order of things.

The very definitions that denoted an agency’s place in the hierarchy is vanishing quicker than the new receptionist and account manager at an agency Christmas party.  Consumers don’t care if the media they interact with is called Brand building, advertising, direct response, PR, experiential or anything else.  What they care about is whether it engages with them and facilitates a relationship with two way communication.

Does this emperor truly care about and listen to his people? The megaphone of power marketing is being ignored, and the royal decrees that it issued are now rejected as twaddle.  Moreover, there are mutterings that are spreading throughout the kingdom that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

Now the people are demanding that their needs and experiences are taken into account because they know best what they want to wear.   Consumers have overtaken agencies in knowing what they want to achieve and what they want to get out of the media they consume.

So where does this leave us?  The high table is in confusion and in the general melee the dogs are having a wonderful feast whilst the people cheer.

The actual point is that we will still need creative and creative ideas but instead of thinking of it in a simplex manner the creative will now be conceived with the added ability for customers to interact with it as they want to, and consumers will surprise everyone by how they choose to interact with it.  This is what we term as ‘duplex creative’.  If something is duplex it is two way and it flows.  Simplex is the advertising of the 80s, semi duplex assumed that the advertiser could choose the direction that it was led, but only when you reach full duplex communication is the customer’s needs actually served.  It can go either way and be led by either party.  Communication is the secret to all relationships and is definitely the key to customer relationships, because the focal point is the customer.

This is why I believe that the old ways are gone forever.  Naturally I think that the digital dogs will inherit the places at the top table but I also think that old media itself will morph into new and exciting forms of media.  What I hope I have seen the last of is someone looking at me and saying “but what is the big idea?”, and be under any illusion that what they are saying is intelligent.  The big idea is that we are going to be brave enough to interact on a personal level with customers.

That big enough for you?

In my post yesterday I talked a lot about Digital Marketing strategy and how some Offline and integrated agencies could have problems adapting.  This world isn’t so removed though from the wisdom of the great men of advertising though.  One of David Ogilvy’s most well known sayings was:

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular. “

He was of course referring to the way that sentences were constructed but the key point here is that you should use a tone and style that is familiar to consumers.  For the point I am making I would suggest using the channels, language and grammar of the Internet.   Grammar in these terms refers to yuser experience, SEO awareness, viral and all the other buzzwords that populate our trade press.  Some of us have watched and helped these channels evolve (Digital Pioneers?), whilst other people discovered them when they became popular but there is another sort of person and that is the Digital Native.  These are people for whom online and a tweet are as familiar as a pint in a pub.  These are the people who talk in the ‘vernacular’ of digital media and whose creative minds are tuned to the available channels.  Consequently these were the people we decided to look at when we were assembling our creative offer.

There is always a risk when you bet on youth.  Sir Matt Busby with the Busby Babes and Arson Wenger with his dedication to the Arsenal Youth are parallels that have struck us as poignant.  One thing for sure though and that is consumers are not going to put up with, nor respond to the bolted on and shoe horned offline creative that has traditionally been appearing in digital media.  The acid test is whether the creative produces effective return on investment for the client, not whether a panel has decided it warrants a reward (of course both is a goal that everyone should strive for).

My personal feeling is that Mr Ogilvy would have relished the new media around today and would have been unafraid to learn the vernacular and bet on youth who understood all the grammatical points of the channel.

It’s everywhere at the moment.  Media agencies, marketing commentators and clients are all in the mood to change as the cry goes out for the marketing industry to re-invent itself.  Reinvention though is a big thing to undertake and there has to be a genuine will there to create something new and better if the pitfalls are going to be avoided and the new marketing just turns out to be the same marketing with whole host of different acronyms.

From my point of view I see the need to fundamentally change the view that ‘the message’ and ‘the big idea’ are not all powerful links in the chain.  This has to be replaced with the consumer and customer and engaging with them in a relationship.

Part of this is creating content that will facilitate two way communications and provoke discussion.   Another important part is how your overall Digital Marketing Strategy fits together.  These two elements will take you and your prospects on a journey together from the point of first contact right the way through to the point you have created relationships with regular customers who buy from you habitually and also refer you to others that they know.  This is the basis of the Interactive Mix.  It provides an end to end solution for acquiring, converting and retaining customers, and is proven to work.

I can see why a lot of offline and integrated agencies are going to have a few problems adapting to this new world.  It is because their disciplines have grown up with the idea that a message will be heard and picked up by consumers.  That they will identify with and accept the message and then rush to the shops to buy your product.  The problem is that consumers these days:

1)      Will not believe what you tell them

2)      Will not believe what you show them

3)      Will believe what a friend (no matter how little they actually know them) tells them

4)      Will go with the majority

5)      Will voice their concerns and dissatisfactions with you brand

6)      Will defect and find different alternatives

7)      Can stop you talking to them

8)      Expect you to treat them well in return for buying your product

9)      Will punish you for lying to them

10)   Expect you to listen to them

That is a world where suddenly the concept of message led communications feels a bit like a roman gladiator turning up on a modern battlefield with its smart bomb technology and automatic weapons – a bit inadequate. That is why changing the lyrics of an old, well known song to include your brand name, brand message, and creating an ad with a cute kid and a doting mother just doesn’t cut it anymore.  Consumers are too sophisticated for that now, and if that is what you serve them they will assume you are lying to them, won’t believe what you tell them and punish you for lying to them.  You could conceivably lose a whole swathe of customers.

For agencies, ingrained in this way of thinking, I can see problems, because the temptation will be to play lip service to this new world whilst egos demand that sooner or later everyone will get back into line and ‘the message’ will rule once more.  The problem is that clients won’t stand for that either now.

My personal view is that Online/Interactive/Digital agencies are better placed to deliver these strategies because they have grown out of the channels that consumers are now screaming for.  They haven’t had to adapt to them, it is a native language.  When I visited Egypt for the first time I contacted a local guide, when I learned how to dive I chose an instructor who had been diving since aqua lungs became recreationally available.  Its the same with Digital Marketing.  If you understand where the channels came from, how they developed and how to interact with people through them, then you have a much better idea of how to deliver a winning strategy to clients.