Why the time for digimarketing (digital marketing) is now, and how it will change marketing. The 4 P's of digimarketing.
Presented in Hanoi by Ian Fenwick (digiAindra) with Le Thuy Hanh, to launch the Vietnamese edition of DigiMarketing: The Esential Guide to New Media & Digital Marketing
Digital channels of course are channels that transfer information by discrete values (digits) rather than by continuous measures…analogue….
And it’s more than just web. You can’t say you’re doing digital marketing if you just have a website. In fact it’s you about 113 million others (http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/). Digital marketing is all about unifying your marketing across digital media.
I suspect many of you are. Some of what I have to say will be not be new to you. I hope however there will be something new for each person!
Three areas I would like to cover: why digimarketing is an opportunity, how digital media are distinctive, and why that makes a difference for marketers.DigiMarketing is NOT the same old same old…
Start with the opportunity
Marketers are lagging their markets: digital media are underspent
The web is truly a global phenomenon. Lighter shades are lower penetration. Africa, one of the lightest regions, is big on mobile and may leapfrog fixed web to mobile web
Notice the web is increasingly an Asian affair. Already over 40% of web users are in Asia, and that represents only 22% penentration.
Emerging markets have already over-taken developed markets in terms of numbers of web users…and that gap will widen.
And remember again: digital is more than just web
Digital being underspent, the dramatic misallocation of resources, means that first there’s a good chance your competitors aren’t yet into digital, so you can steal a march. AND second that you get more bang for your buck: because less is being spent in digital, those that spend there get better exposure.
And digital is the future…I’ve met people that argue that in terms of time spent with different media, digital won’t overtake traditional media for another 10 years; I’ve met people that think it will happen next year…I’ve met people who say it already happened!I have never met anyone who says it won’t happen.
Nowhere I think is the shift more dramatic that in print…this is daily newspaper readership (in the US) by year of birth
It’s NOT that news isn’t read…it’s the papers that aren’t read…people still what they’ve always done…they just do in different media. That’s why the shift to digital has been so rapid: people don’t change what they do…they still read news, they still watch the content that used to be called TV. Difference is that they read news on-line; they watch TV by buying DVDs of TV shows; or watching the shows on-line…or on their iPods, or on their mobiles.
The IBM Institute for Business Value survey of more than 2,400 households in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Australia covered global usage and adoption of new multimedia devices and media and entertainment consumption on PCs, mobile phones, portable media players and moreNotice for moderate usage (1-4hrs a day) in these countries internet and TV are already neck-and-neck…and for heavy users internet is well ahead. And btw these numbers are for personal internet use, not business.http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22206.wss
The marketers that jump first will be the ones that survive
Another advantage of starting early: you learn first. In digital everyone’s learning…start first and get a head start
Much of digital is “pay as you go”: upfront costs are quite low (unlike say TV commercials). Sometimes, as with Google AdWords, all the costs is performance based: no-one clicks, you don’t pay
So 3 aspects to the opportunity
(image: horse to car; evolution of man…joke)
What’s so special about digital media?
In the old days, trains ran on tracks of different widths, different gauges…so interoperability was very limited. Not until the gauge standardized could railroads really take off
Digital media speak the language of binary code: those zeros and ones. This becomes the standard gauge for our age. Digital media can interact.Every ad can now be a direct response opportunity…as we’ll see every response opportunity is a data collection opportunity…using rewards to coat the data-collection pillIn a moment we’ll be talking about people wanting to Participate, design marketing that allows them to do that…This analogue billboard is made a little bit digital with a simple pixel box, allowing people to vote with their mobiles…notice that now the advertiser gets a measure of who noticed the board, who cared enough to vote…and gets their phone numbers!
QR codes (used on a daily basis by 50% in Japan) make things more interesting. They are decoded in the mobile and can become a picture, a coupon, additional text, a website link…
Can even put them on taxi windows
Perhaps the biggest change is in the media model itself.
Media used to be a top-down affair
Digital changes all that: based around internet publication and distribution (near free)…a new model emerges
Where everyone can be a creator…and a consumer. Reach is now determined by interest not financial resources. An interesting quirky video can be seen by millions with little or no investment required.
And digital is increasingly mobile
So if you aren’t using mobile…you’re missing out on an incredible opportunity.Yet most mobile marketing is terrible: spam SMSs…what a waste
Digital devices are unique…most of realize our mobiles are unique…each has a different (phone) number; and that when connected to the web, our computers and devices are unique (a unique IP address)…but our iPods are unique too…that’s how we can subscribe to podcasts…and…
Digital cameras are unique: so we don’t know who photographed every page of the latest Harry Potter book, and put it on-line (illegally) before the publication date…but we do know the camera used!
This is great for marketers: because digital devices are unique, we can collect data drip by drip, and personalize what we send to the customer…the Holy Grail of 1:1 marketing
This is great for marketers: because digital devices are unique, we can collect data drip by drip, and personalize what we send to the customer…the Holy Grail of 1:1 marketing
So what does all this mean for marketing?
I think you’ve all heard of the 4P’s of conventional marketing…some add “people” and “promise”
Well there another 4P’s for digimarketing
The most important is to start from PermissionMost digital media are highly user-configurable. That means if I don’t want to hear from you or see you, I don’t need to. I can block your banner ads; I can mark your email as spam; I can block your useless SMSs. And blocking is for ever. Once I’ve shut you out you will probably never get back in again. No matter how relevant and entertaining your messages become. I on’t know cos I blocked you out.So get permission at the start: opt-in, easy opt-out, consumer driven content and frequency.It only makes sense. What’s the point of talking to people that don’t want to be talked to?
The second distinctive feature of digital is that people participate…they ain’t simple couch potatoes. They do things.
But today ‘s consumer is active, engaged (or wants to be), lean forward, not lean back.We move from reach and impressions, to sustained engagement. What we once called “sticky”. I want participants interacting with my digital marketing…so they learn more about my brand (and shape how they wish), and have less time to be with my competitors’ brands.
Games of course are highly participative and immersive. This example builds on the MK brand, both in logo etc and in restaurant design. And bridges to the real world, with avatar clothing available exclusively via spending in the restaurant
And of course viral is in some ways the epitome of participation: consumers actually do all the heavy work, choosing friends they think would appreciate that quirky vdo clip and passing it on to them
This Dove Evolution outstandingly successful, not just in impressions…but in INVOLVEMENT…do a google search for Dove Evolution and see all the blogs and sites that discuss it…go to YouTube and search for the spoofs that people bothered to make on their own time. This is brand participation, brand involvement.If we don’t get consumers involved in participating with our brands, they’ll be participating with our competitors’ brands.
Viral’s not just for consumer goods. IBM China did this instead of ads in trade press for IT managers. Notice the branding throughout; right on topic; with the IBM solution at the end.
Of those who read blogs: 31%read daily (22% of all active internets daily); 40% weekly (28% of all)
Here’s our digiAindra blog
Look how untrusted corporate blogs are
The Walmart blog…it’s not a blog…it’s an ad! A blog doesn’t sound like that
Look at the well-respected Dell blog. It actually started about a week before that Dell laptop caught fire
I’m sure you saw the picture…question is: what should the Dell blog do? Keep quiet?
No! everyone has heard about it, so they linked to the picture, they said what they were doing…building trust, not advertising
Social network sites depend 100% on participation
In March, 2009 was 2nd most popular page on all Facebook, behind Barack Obama; as of July 12 it was down to #8; Michael Jackson had taken #1 and #4, Obama kept #2; Vin Diesel #3; Dr House #5; Facebook #6; Will Smith #7Now has 3.5 m fansThe only catch? The page wasn’t created by Coke, but by two Coke fans in Los Angeles, Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski. Theywere finally contacted by Coca-Cola and politelyasked to partner with Coke to manage the Page.
And this is our digiAindrafanpage…pls come and join!
Not only driving purchasing but also helping you build key word counts for search engine optimization…a real win-win
Move to real time
This guy started over as customer support, started using Twitter on his own initiative…see his job title…real-time customer service
And this is me
At least you should monitor…and really should have a presence
Several free or near free tracking services
The participation, the sustained interaction, doesn’t just involve the participant…it yields the digimarketer information about the participant. It helps us build their profile…and understand them better.But it’s important to build that profile gently, bit-by-bit, without freaking the participant out with privacy concerns.
This Profile/Privacy tension promises to be a major issue for digimarketers. The evidence is that customers are happy to give up privacy if they believe they are getting some benefit in return. Look at the Discovery Channel Shark Week promotion: if you logged in with your Facebook id, and gave permission, the site build a video around you (and also got your FB data and your friends)…Adidas did a similar one around Star Wars.
Final P, personalization: we use the profile to personalize our offers on 1:1 basis.
Hard to find a really good example of personalization. This is Amacon when I am not logged in. Not personalized
This is what happens when I log in. My page which they have built around my behavior. And I have only purchased once at Amazon, but all the searches I’ve done have contributed to this page…which is far more interesting, to me!, than the unpersonalized pageI believe that we will become accustomed to personalization, and marketers that don’t/can’t provide it will be at a massive disadvantage
Final P, personalization: we use the profile to personalize our offers on 1:1 basis.
So the 4 P’s of digital marketing complement the 4 Ps of marketing!
(image: horse to car; evolution of man…joke)
Look at a recent digimarketing campaign by Queensland Tourism: the Best Job in the World. Life on an island in perfect conditions, and get paid $150,000 for 6 months. All you have to do is blog about it at least once a week. You apply by making a 60 second video.
1million site visits in 7 days….server crashes…complaints to Australian embassies around the world
But massive off-line publicity…picked up by traditional media world-wide
Then this!
So the lesson is with digital success can be massive and global, and we need to be ready…or we get the blame. Very hard to contain success. But surely this is a problem that could/should have been dealt with