Make Digital Marketing Work

This morning I received an email from a company selling an online service that enables virtual meetings to take place.  The title of the email was

“When travel halts, online meetings keep business running”

It began with the an emboldened heading Iceland Volcano Cloud: The Economic Impact and a link to the BBC news article with the same title.

The general gist was a standard sales structure where a problem is highlighted (travel plans disrupted), the effects of this problem are explored (people cannot get business done due to lack of mobility and face to face meetings), and then a solution offered (virtual meetings online).  The technique is called SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, and Needs), and is as old as the hills.

My issues with this email are pretty comprehensive and go beyond the ambulance chasing nature of its “Oh look, natural disaster, buy my product” cynical premise.

The Link on the BBC site concentrates on the businesses hardest hit by the volcano, namely airlines and travel companies.  No mention of this is made in the email.  Their losses are enormous compared to the fairly minimal losses that are expected to hit other sectors such as those targeted in the email.

We live in a world where voice and video are available on technology in our pockets and where email enables instant exchange of information.  There is nothing ground breaking about virtual meetings in 2010, and I hope that their ill conceived attempts at using email marketing to take advantage of a crisis situation fails, with resultant loss of reputation.  I am not frightened to name them.  I simply do not want to give them any publicity.

Email marketing has a bad reputation amongst a lot of people.  My argument has always been that it isn’t email advertising that is bad, it is clueless marketers who use it badly, and this is a perfect (and very sad) example of this.  Email is an incredibly powerful tool and an essential part of the Interactive Marketing Mix, but it should be treated with more respect than my inbox was treated to this morning.

We have written before about how the word strategy is abused within the world of digital marketing and the temptation to rely on tactics, but one of the biggest casualties is often the Marketing Process.  To explain it I need to define terms.

• A marketing strategy is the big picture plan that looks at the resources available to you.  That can include the budget, available channels, your skill set, the prevailing market conditions, distribution, your customers themselves and of course all of the 4 Ps from the marketing Mix.  Collectively these  form a battle plan of how to create customer satisfaction, product sales, and secure revenue for the organisation.
• A Marketing process is the application of this strategy as a turnkey solution.  It consists of a series of tactics.  Imagine a machine that you turn the handle and it produces results out the other end, so that whenever the process is activated, you can predict the results of what will happen each time.

As an example, a process could consist of writing a blog post about your products and then promoting the blog post on Twitter and Facebook.  Each time you do that, you can expect a number of people to click on the promotional links and read your blog post.

This is definitely a process, but it isn’t a strategy and nor is it strategic because it only gets people reading your blog post.  It delivers nothing in product sales and it can’t legitimately claim to have secured any profit for the organisation.  If it has a bill attached to the activity it has in fact cost you money.  The best you can say is that a few people have now heard of you.

That kind of process can only be considered tactical and the sad fact is that tactics are what an awful lot of digital agencies offer to clients.  The results can be hugely disappointing.  As a strategic digital agency, we appreciates the need for bottom line results  and work across the various digital channels such as Search, Social Media, User experience, Web Design, Email, eCRM, analytics, and advertising.  Because of this we have a different proposition to make to clients than traditional tactical digital agencies.  That can be a little difficult to appreciate because the focus for us is on customers and the bottom line rather than technical disciplines.

An awful lot of online activity results in a lot of noise that ultimately achieves very little.  To avoid this. your online marketing strategy must place a focus on the commercial needs of the organisation and engages prospects, It should also plan the route through to a point where customers are created nurtured and retained.  That is why an online marketing strategy should be the basis for online marketing processes, and should also be a priority for all organisations.

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.

I was going to start off by writing that the Interactive Marketing World is changing but that’s a bit like saying we all get older every day.  Of course it is changing it has been changing ever since the first banner ad appeared on a website.  It’s been changing since the first email was sent asking people to click through to a website and it has been changing ever since the first context sensitive ads appeared.  It’s always been changing and has moved at warp speed.

My point though is that a fundamental shift is happening at the moment.  The individual disciplines are becoming mature now, and new channels are not so much new as just recognitions of things that had been happening anyway and embraced into the overall interactive marketing mix.  What is changing is that the focus is moving away from the disciplines and towards the over arching strategy that binds it all together.  Its moving Away from a toys focus and into a business focus that looks at the results and what it actually achieves for business.

I would argue that even though you can generate metric ton load of traffic for your site that unless you are able to convert it, then it is a waste of time.  I would also argue that even though you have the best most necessary products in the world, unless people know about them you have wasted your time. That’s what I am talking about, joining the disciplines up into a cohesive chain that provides an overall strategy for a customer.  It begins with a group of people who have never heard of you and leads them through a journey that ends with regular customers who buy from you habitually and who tell everyone they know about how great you are.

Some of the early clients I worked with would say that they didn’t need to have time spent generating more traffic because they were satisfied with their current traffic levels but they didn’t understand that if you are optimising every part of the chain then the results are not just greater, they are exponentially greater.