Planning Digital Activity –Don’t lose sight of the basics!

Evolving digital developments in web 2.0, user-generated content, Twitter and mobile applications are at the forefront of industry and academic debate and practice. Authors like Don Tapscott in his book Wikinomics and Andrew McAfee, from MIT Sloan School of Management, in his new book, Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges, explore ways in which organisation can apply web 2.0 platforms for sharing knowledge, new ideas both inside and outside the organisation to shape the way we work.

Whilst the boundaries and possibilities of web 2.0 are pushed everyday, these new frontiers can be distracting and marketers must not lose sight about the basics of the marketing planning and direct marketing that inextricably links digital campaign success to targeting the right customer at the right time! A key consideration from the outset is to set your digital marketing strategy in the context of your broader marketing strategy and organisational goals. As digital marketing has moved from a peripheral, or add-on marketing activity to the centre of most organisations customer focus, the vision for their online presence, developing its community, its acquisition and retention strategies, the online brand experiences and positioning, must be developed with clarity. The vision should be for the immediate but also 18-24 months down the line, and in the context of an integrated marketing strategy that takes a holistic approach and is informed by customer insights.

The marketer’s kit bag of SWOT, PESTEL etc should be applied to the task of regular market analysis and whilst the web with its transparency aids this scanning process, the rate of change, increased competition and technological disruption necessitates innovative and flexible planning and implementation. Established direct marketing techniques such as database marketing, testing, targeting, timing, tracking and measurability are more relevant than ever in the digital domain. For example, the Cartoon Network launched a digital campaign earlier this year to six to ten year olds for their Incredikids brand leading up to school holidays.

What is clear is that more and more customers expect a two-way interaction or dialogue with organisations that can benefit both parties. For example, direct banking specialist, First Direct (FD) has unveiled a new website that aggregates ‘live’ comments, even uncensored negative ones, about FD by online customers in an attempt to be more transparent and understand. Innovations like this can be a risk but both customer and organisational expectations online have changed considerably and like Web 2.0, such advances must be incorporated both in terms of marketing philosophy and function in the digital world.

Shall I learn web analytics or marketing research?

In the last decade web analytics has grown into a self-contained industry but there has been a limited amount of collaboration with the traditional marketing research industry. Perhaps that is changing now.

Traditional marketing research uses the well known questionnaire or focus groups to arrive at some decision that is used in marketing. It is a well established industry and over US$28,000 million are spent each year on marketing research. Suppliers are present throughout the world. Familiar names include Nielsen, Taylor Nelson Sofres, IMS, Kantar, GFK, Ipsos, Synovate and Arbitron. Full-service agencies provide all research facilities to a client. Smaller entities provide specific services such as consultancy, fieldwork, telephone call centres and computer analysis. Many advertising agencies offer market research. Professional associations represent the interests of suppliers, users and other communities; these include ESOMAR, the MRS, and many more.

On the other hand, the Web Analytics industry has grown from the 1990s when web counters were easily available and visible on web pages. In 1995 log file analysis programmes created, mainly to ensure web pages functioned properly. By 2000 Key vendors based on log file analysis were firmly established: these included Accrue, WebTrends, WestSideStory and Coremetrics. However problems with Log Files were becoming clear... JavaScript Tags emerged as a new standard for collecting data from websites. With tagging a few lines of code are added to each page, when a page loads, these tags cause data to be sent to a data collection server. So work shifted from the IT dept. to a web analysis software vendor and the number of services on offer expanded. Google even gave their services away free of charge.

All companies have web pages, so all companies have a need for web traffic analysis. This means the Web Analytics Industry has grown. It even has a trade and professional body called the Web Analytics Association. http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/

Has traditional research embraced Web Analytics? Well the answer is no, there is a love-hate relationship. Market Researchers are the masters of human relationships and consumer behaviour. Conversely Web Analytics people are masters of the manipulation of massive data sets, they are techie, they work best alone. For the CAM student it is wise to embrace both, because Web Analytics are still hiring, and there are signs that the two industries are coming closer together. To survive in the future you need to understand both traditional market research and web analytics.

Internet Advertising

For the first half of 2009 (January – June) spending on internet advertising grew a further 4.6% to £1.75 billion which overtook TV ad spending for the first time in history.

In a joint research project, conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, it was identified that whilst the market place for advertising was hit hard by market conditions, with advertising spending reduced by £1.5 billion overall in the same period of time, internet advertising continued to grow.

OK, that’s all well and good, but what does it mean? Well, Internet Advertising as a medium for communications is finally ‘coming of age’. Organisations and their marketing teams are finally beginning to understand the medium, how it can be used effectively and the benefits it can deliver.

Is it fair to compare online ad spend with TV ad spend? They’re two completely different media, with differing levels of reach, interaction and content... but, as a benchmark, it is easy to compare the shift in spend on the two to demonstrate how important online advertising has become.

As a component of the advertising industry, online advertising has matured as a medium and can offer organisations different features and benefits over and above those of the more traditional advertising media such as...

• Online Advertising Networks that bring together those who want to host and those who want to advertise
• Direct response mechanisms to better measure responses and performance
• A variety of online vehicles and display formats
• Improved targeting through semantic analysis

...and all of this is occurring via a platform that is seeing an increasing numbers of internet users with faster broadband connections across the globe.

Now, I’m not saying forget everything else – internet is best – but internet advertising needs to be a considered part of any integrated communications mix. It is different to other media, but is similar in its role and tasks and as such can be used to achieve a variety of tasks (remember DRIP?) and synergise with other communications tools, media and vehicles. However, it should not be used in the same ways as other, more traditional, advertising media... unless you want to confuse, a more synergistic approach is needed.

Take a little time to reflect on your own online advertising, are you using this digital media in the same way you use (or have used) the more traditional media and, if so, is that the most effective approach?