Make Digital Marketing Work

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.

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.