Digital Directions: A Road Map for an Uncertain Economy
As the economy grows more uncertain, a common reaction is to cut marketing budgets. But before following the crowd, you may want to look for the silver lining.
It is likely that your competitors will cut their marketing spend, thereby reducing their media presence. With a few adjustments in your marketing plan, you have an opportunity to eclipse the competition while remaining mindful of budget restrictions.
Now is the time to engage the full range of interactive digital media to create a powerful, targeted marketing mix.
Why? Traditional media buys typically have long leads before their effectiveness can be measured, providing little opportunity to tweak campaigns. By the time measurable results arrive, your budget is depleted.
While traditional advertising can be expensive, digital media offers a wide range of affordable advertising options. With the ability to build highly customized campaigns that can be tracked up to the minute and down to the individual user, search engine marketing should be part of almost any advertising campaign.
But before you shift your marketing strategies online, you need to take a look at your customer data.
You’ve likely been collecting data from numerous channels, like your Web site, call center and direct mail. But if you are like many companies, collection may be as far as it goes. Now is the perfect time to analyze your data.
A thorough analysis may uncover a trend that can be acted upon in a significant way, such as repositioning your Web site. As major overhauls are time-consuming and expensive, it may be easier, less costly and potentially more beneficial to create a targeted micro-site focused on a particular product, service or niche.
With the intelligence gathered, this site should be optimized to yield meaningful results from major search engines. A micro-site is a good way to test the accuracy of your analysis and it can be the basis for a site overhaul later. You may also consider creating several search engine optimized landing pages to target different audiences.
Landing pages are a powerful way to stretch one’s Web development investment. A landing page designed around a specific search query, such as “hammer,” can send a prospect to the home page of a hardware store, where they will have to navigate through that site to track down the product.
Alternatively, if the search engine had directed you to a landing page for that same hardware store where a variety of hammers, nails and tool belts were featured, you not only have a result that brings you closer to making a purchase, but that offers cross-selling options. This is where valuable online customer relationships can begin.
If you want to do something a little bigger than a landing page to help your search visibility, a micro-site can be your next step.
Micro-sites are one of the best ways to promote a product or service at lower cost then a corporate site, and can provide greater flexibility. Additionally, these sites are often more fun to visit as they can be built around a single creative concept.
Here’s an example from my company: We based the Oprah, Dove, and the Girl Scouts of America micro-site upon Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, (http://www.omagazine.info/doveawards/), and it provided an engaging environment built around user-generated content.
Here are a few more effective ways to build your brand with digital marketing:
The blogosphere
Advertising on a community site whose audience is inclined toward your product or service can build strong brand association. By getting involved as an active contributor with valuable content, you become part of a community and are able to monitor what is going on in your industry’s corner of the blogosphere.
To take it a step further, consider micro-blogging through services such as Twitter or Pownce. Here you can keep a group informed of your every move on a moment to moment basis and learn what they are up to as well.
Podcasts
Often overlooked as an advertising vehicle, podcasts can also reach a core demographic. For example, if you’re looking to reach a tech savvy audience, consider TWIT, This Week in Tech’s podcast. Or, create your own custom podcasts. Startup costs are minimal, and if you offer valuable information, you can create a meaningful relationship with your listeners.
Niche and community web sites
The Internet has no shortage of Web sites with unique audiences. MySpace and Facebook are two major communities but there are many others that are even more geared toward specialized interests. Check Ning.com for examples of easy to create niche social networks.
Mobile
Mobile allows users to connect with people in unique ways. For example, we worked with PayPal to create a mobile shopping environment (www.livebuyit.com/mobile) that brought mobility to e-commerce.
How does it work? If a user spots a product in a store front window, in a magazine, on a billboard or almost any place and they see a PayPal ID, they simply text the ID code from their mobile phone and the product is purchased and shipped directly to their mailing address.
Widgets
Widgets are distributed components used to present data through a user interface. They break into three major types.
The first is the desktop widget, which lives within the highly coveted real estate of your computer’s desktop or as an add-on to the operating system. The second is the embedded widget, which is typically placed into blogs, Web pages and personal pages such as Facebook. The third type is the mobile widget developed for smart phones.
Widgets are powerful because they are trackable, easily distributed and if the content is compelling, they will show up everywhere. Creating a custom widget can be a great broadcast medium for advertising or sponsorships.
Here’s a shopping widget we developed to serve up favorite items for avid shoppers on a daily basis (www.luckylookout.com/widget). This widget has a calendar based system on the back-end that allows an administrator to serve new products on any date and for any duration.
Viral content
The current rage is creating content that is so compelling, humorous or off-the-wall that people are driven to pass it along to friends. Well known examples include the JibJab spoofs, the Cadbury drum playing gorilla, and of course, Diet Coke-Mentos’ eruption videos.
One of my favorites is Blendtec’s Will it Blend, a Web site with 3.5 million viewings of the infamous iPhone in a blender video. More importantly, Blendtec quadrupled blender sales after the video hit.
This can be a great marketing tool on a small budget. It is even possible to create live streaming content from your mobile phone with services such as qik.com. However, purposefully creating content in the hopes of it going viral is a long shot. Have fun and get your content out there but don’t expect it to explode unless you’ve really got something unique or you have content that serves some positive social value.
We worked with a major pharmaceutical company to help create personalized video messages directed toward caregivers of specific medical conditions. These campaigns generate tremendous pass-along appeal because of their personalized nature. Once customized by a friend or family member, a collection of video clips are automatically edited and sent to the recipient. The final video presentation speaks directly to the caregiver, even going as far as having the video spokesperson refer to family members by their first name.
Measuring success
Measuring the effectiveness of traditional media is often subject to a significant amount of interpretation. Digital media metrics, while not perfect themselves, are often more precise and more targeted. They can more easily track niche groups or even individuals right through to a sales conversion. This said, when money is tight, it may be comforting to see where one’s budget is actually going.
Alan Ruthazer is founder of SiiTE Interactive.
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