Make Digital Marketing Work

I saw a quote this morning that proclaimed twitter and social media is like a bunch of teenagers experimenting with sex.  Try as I might I can’t help but agree wholeheartedly with this.  Every generation thinks they invented sex and cannot conceive of a time when anyone other than themselves were having sex.  No amount of tales of copulation in the street at the end of the first world war or clandestine couplings in Green Park during the Second World war blackout will ever persuade the current generation that anything happened between couples for any other purpose except procreation before they worked out that they had genitals.  Not even tales of the swinging sixties or pre aids 80s can do anything to dispel this view amongst the young that the multiple orgasm is something they invented.

(Yes I know I am going too far, but you get the point?)

So it is with social media.  A generation of digital natives has come along and is now telling the fuddy duddy directors of companies that they do not know what they are doing and need to change the way they do business into some kind of hippy social media love in.  I think the analogy stands up with everyone sitting around and talking about things they do not fully understand and have limited experience of but with a dogma that is born of idealism and against a backdrop of an uncertain world.

I could just as easily be writing about my own experiences of early adulthood in the 80s or my mother’s in the fifties or my grandfather’s in the 30s as I could be writing about the world of business today and in every example whilst the younger generation has something to say you wouldn’t take every word as gospel would you?

Marketing activity of any kind and specifically digital marketing needs to be part of an overall marketing strategy and needs to produce a return on investment.  Don’t let anyone tell you different.

I am cheating slightly because I have already written a fair amount of this entry on another blog entry by Aliza Sherman

as a comment but I couldn’t keep quiet.

There is a brand new organisation that has been set up.  They are called the International Social Media Association (ISMA).  Their site (which I cannot grace with a backlink and retain my self respect) features a logo of the world with an undefined insect in the middle of it (now there’s some appropriate brand association) and clouds form the background, presumably to display the blue sky thinking of the organisation.  Basically it’s a walking cliché.  The standard of build has some issues as well, and it might be that I am a snob but if you work in the web then you should at the very least know the difference between good and bad web design from both an aesthetic and technical point of view.  There are free tools out there to help you so there is no excuse.  It is generating a lot of traffic though especially seeing as how it is only a few months old, and has already managed to amass over 140 backlinks.

I may be old and cynical but it seems to be that as soon as someone creates a new defined boutique discipline in the wired world, then the first thing that happens is that someone decides to create an ad format for it and then writes a book, then someone declares themselves a consultant or expert and starts touting themselves around the exhibition circuit and also writes a book, then someone else simply cashes in on the growing hype and only writes a book (and gets most things wrong in it), then someone creates an Association of (enter boutique name here).  Usually (not always) all four of these people are chancers who are making it up as they go along.

I’ve been wondering for a while what with the recent adoption in SEO circles of a well known phrase in academia, if I started an Association of Digital Natives and offered training at a thousand bucks a pop together with a certificate whether

A) Any idiots would send me money

B) Whether anyone outside of academia would get the joke.

This pretty much sums up my attitude (as someone who has been a digital marketing professional for fifteen years working for top agencies all over the world) to most certification programs.

If someone starts talking about Social Media I would say ask them about what the two words mean… both of them.  If you practice in the media you should at the very least know what the word means even if you do work in a particular segment of it.  Next ask them what they can actually achieve for your buinsess in terms of actual hard delvierables and get them to sign a money back guarantee on that.  If they start to waffle on about how social media doesn’t work like that, then end the meeting abruptly.

So much of what I hear about “Strategy” this and “Strategies” that isn’t strategy at all, its tactics.  Using Twitter isn’t a strategy, neither is Facebook.  Digital marketing strategy is about deciding what success looks like and how to measure it and then using the tools at your disposal to achieve the strategic goals you have set.

So much of social media that I see amounts to nothing more than a few people having a chat with no clear objective in mind.  If that was suggested in a boardroom as a sales tactic it would be laughed out of the room quicker than a Wall Street banker vanishes to the Hamptons at weekends in summer.  Aimless tactics of this nature might be something some companies want to waste money on but they should be under no illusion that any of that activity adds up to marketing.

ISMA Itself is offering free membership to people (which by nature means that membership is worthless and they will take anyone) and a series of graded paid memberships together with an accreditation program for $2,795.  When I looked for information about the founders I was greeted with video and photographs with saccharine sweet smiles and a mention of expertise dating back to early 2007.  Well sit me down and hand me the caffeine, a whole two years ago.  Tempted?  No we were not either.

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.