Web consumers are driving an entirely new tool-set to replace dated, outbound campaigns. How can organizations reach a greater audience? How effective are these new tools exactly?
Before Digital Marketing
The Internet was built on interaction. When internet marketing emerged, it was the exact opposite of one-way information mediums that pushed messages to consumers such as:
- television
- radio
- teletext
Early Internet adopters took to it in much the same way as early adopters of radio, but on a larger scale. Individuals sharing common interests soon became whole communities connected to one another using tools like Usenet and message-boards.
The interactive promise of the Internet, even in its infancy, was kind of a big deal. Early email advertising campaigns adopted the same one-size-fits-all push strategy as television and radio, with limited success. Today, however, things are changing. Mass campaigns are growing less effective. A recent Gartner report advises,
“Mass marketing is no longer a long-term strategy. Mass-marketing campaigns have a 2 percent response rate and are on the decline, whereas by 2015, digital strategies, such as social and mobile marketing, will influence at least 80 percent of consumers’ discretionary spending,” said Adam Sarner, research director at Gartner. “Marketers still need to shift their traditional campaign management strategy around executing campaigns to a customer and move toward a digital marketing, two-way engagement approach.”
The reason for this is clear – Internet usage is evolving rapidly and organizations are being forced keep up, or risk stagnation.
The Rise of Social Networks
Web 2.0 has delivered a richer interactive arena for its users, and a greater selection of communicative tools, which are endangering bulk marketing strategies like email .
Social networking tools such as Facebook include web-based, email-style and instant messaging, which are integrated into its value-adding features such as shared photo albums and games. Today, sending holiday photos to friends as an email attachment seems almost as archaic as mailing Polaroids, and marketing campaigns using this outmoded medium risk irrelevance with their intended target audience.
Facebook can be more than a social-networking site for organizations; it is a platform that facilitates addressable branding. It can be the one of the the keys to the success in a holistic a multi-channel digital marketing campaign.
Used in conjunction with Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, Facebook can reach a wide audience of Internet users, and recent modifications to the service have enabled a greater level of targeted advertising. The Like button can now be used to address a fans entire contact list – viral marketing technique.
Other Digital Marketing Tools
Of course, utilizing social networking mediums alone will not guarantee the success of a interactive multi-channel marketing campaign. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are great for generating buzz, but they must be used in conjunction with other methods in order to convert to sales. Targeted banner ads should hook users into the product website, where the rules change, and different marketing tactics can be deployed:
- Interactive Video, when well executed, can immerse a visitor into the product world. Calls to action are dramatically presented as part of a story where they make the decisions, and retain site visitors for up to two minutes longer. Offering regularly updated content in the form of Webisodes encourages visitors to return.
- SMS is the key to direct digital marketing. Recent advances in the technology have paved the way for interactive text messaging, which can be triggered by instructing visitors to send a keyword to a short code. An interactive text campaign is launchable via any advertising medium (from traditional print, television and radio to a sign-up widget on the website) and is an effective method of building a database of directly addressable consumers.
Striving for Smarter Numbers
The tools for a successful digital multi-channel campaign are well established, yet measurement of the effectiveness of each technique still has some way to go. Many marketers are failing to implement precise attribution metrics, relying instead on guesswork, which leads to a lack of focus and can have a negative effect on ROI.
Using interactive SMS to drive direct marketing and sales is one definitive route around the foggy metrics issue. It provides organizations with:
- A database of willing customers (they signed up, after all)
- An immediate delivery mechanism for targeted, profiled advertising, which is ‘sticky’ and stays with the user, wherever they go
- The ability to track the results of the campaign down to subscriber level and measure its effectiveness.
With this level of interaction available to businesses at a low cost, is it any wonder that bulk marketing is going the way of hoop skirts and hat pins?