6 Critical Elements In Creating Successful Web-Marketing Campaigns by
Jerry Bader
With the growing realization that the marketplace is not what it used to be,
more and more companies are turning to the Web as the marketing environment
capable of reaching a dispersed diaspora of 'Long Tail' (Chris Anderson, "The
Long Tail", Wired Magazine) interested prospects with a relevant memorable
marketing message.
Realizing that you now have an economically viable multimedia platform that
evens the marketing playing field, you must carefully consider how to proceed.
If you merely transfer your traditional print advertising and direct marketing
mailings to the Internet, you will be left behind.
Any business can put together a successful Web-based marketing plan if they
take the time to define the six critical elements of a Web-marketing campaign:
1. Marketing Purpose 2. Marketing Objectives 3. Presentation Vehicle 4.
Information Format 5. Marketing Venue 6. Achievable Expectations
1. Marketing Purpose
Marketing is all about building a brand personality that relates to an
interested audience of either business-to-consumer or business-to-business
prospects. Prospects search-out brands that help them construct and maintain
their own self-image or at least an image that they aspire to, an image that
they are comfortable communicating to others. The purchase, for example, of a
Macintosh computer says as much about who bought it, as it does about that
person's computing requirements.
"Thus, while the psychological/emotional need is to construct, reconstruct, and
maintain the self-identity, the socio-cultural need is to communicate to others
the self-identity." -Ouwersloot & Tudorica, 'Brand Personality
Propositions'.
Accepting the need to build a brand personality that legitimate prospects can
relate to might very well mean rethinking exactly who you are as a company and
exactly what you are offering on both a psychological, emotional and
socio-cultural level.
Most companies have a well-defined list of functional benefits that they
provide clients; but what you have to ask yourself is, what psychological,
emotional, and socio-cultural benefits do you offer and are they represented by
your corporate image or brand personality? And if you think this only applies
to consumer product companies, you are mistaken. Every company from industrial
widget suppliers to packaged goods manufacturers needs to define their
personality in terms of the emotive benefits they provide.
2. Marketing Objectives One of the most difficult things for small companies to
accept is that sales are the result of establishing an appropriate marketing
framework. Once you recognize that the real purpose of marketing is to create a
relationship with your audience based on an emotional connection in the form of
a brand personality, you are ready for the next step: defining your marketing
objectives.
Successful marketing campaigns rely on strategies and tactics that grow out of
defining eight important marketing objectives.
Awareness: objective one is to make your market audience aware of your
existence, but name recognition alone won't bring in the orders.
Attention: objective two is to draw attention to your company, product, or
service. Your market audience may be aware of your existence but not understand
or care what you do or why they should be interested. You have to do something
to attract their attention before they'll listen to what you have to say.
Comprehension: objective three is to explain to your market audience what it is
you are offering them. Telling people you sell the best widget and provide the
best service is meaningless - your audience must understand how their personal
or professional lives are going to be improved functionally, emotionally, and
socially. Most automobiles will get you were you want to go (functional
benefit), but a Mercedes gets you there in style (emotional benefit) and
displays to the world that you are a success (social benefit). When was the
last time you saw a real estate agent drive around in a jalopy? As focused on
closing the sale as real estate agents are, they instinctively know they must
project a confident, comfortable, successful professional image.
Knowledge: objective four is to provide your audience with the ammunition they
need to make the purchase. Your prospects need to justify to themselves, their
corporate superiors, or maybe their spouses, their purchasing decision.
Prospects must be educated, informed, and enthused with the knowledge that your
company, product, or service is the right choice.
Behavior/Experience: objective five is the creation of a corporate culture that
matches your brand personality. If prospects are frustrated or annoyed by their
experience in dealing with you, your website, or your email landing page, then
all the feel-good advertising in the world is wasted. The customer experience
of dealing with your company must match the image you project.
Involvement: objective six is to evangelize your customers so that they become
involved in promoting your product, service, or company to their friends and
colleagues. People want to show-off their intelligence, good taste, and
business acumen. If your product fulfills your customers' emotional and
psychological needs, they will become your best sales people.
Ability: objective seven is to education your customers so that they can
maximize the benefits from their purchase. Show customers how to increase their
ability to achieve, perform, or excel by using your product or service. It is
absolutely amazing how many 'how to' books are sold by third parties to
supplement the dreadful instructions and manuals provided by manufacturers.
Think about the message you are sending customers when they have to buy a book
with the word "Dummies" in the title, just to make your product work.
Opportunity: objective eight is to give customers the opportunity to purchase
you product or service either directly or through an appropriate channel of
distribution. Spending money on advertising and promotion for things people
can't get is not much value. If prospects can't satisfy their needs when they
want to, you'll have missed your chance.
3. Presentation Vehicle Old habits and ideas are hard to overcome. After all we
are creatures of habit, more accurately we are creatures of pattern. We
understand the world around us by absorbing familiar patterns of action and
behavior. Patterns make it easier for us to deal with the complexities of
modern life and the demands of everyday work. This is a good thing as long as
these patterns serve our needs, but the world of marketing communication has
changed.
There is a new marketing paradigm that needs to be accepted and new sets of
behavior patterns that need to be acknowledged. There was a time when you used
the phone book to lookup phone numbers and the local newspaper to find what
movies were playing; but today, the first place people go is the Internet.
Things have changed and businesses have to change with the times.
Sure every business has a website, that's a given, but most websites are
nothing more than digital versions of company brochures or catalogues that have
been pushed and pulled out of shape by SEO consultants selling the latest
miracle marketing cure - more traffic. Never mind the appropriateness of the
traffic, or the relevancy of the bloated SEO-massaged content, or the
meaningfulness of the marketing message. Traffic by itself will not win the day
or get you where you want to be - this is nothing more than the same old
shotgun volume broadcast approach that we know doesn't work for most companies.
The real issue here is presenting relevant, meaningful, compelling,
informative, memorable material on your websites and landing pages to an
interested audience that actually cares what you have to say - just make sure
you say something worthwhile.
So how do we do it? The answer is Web-based multimedia presentations. Now let's
be clear what we are not talking about: we are not talking about adding
meaningless background music or irritating banner animations to your site. What
we are talking about is using audio and video to present information that
establishes your expertise, creates your brand personality, and delivers your
marketing message so it sticks in the minds of your audience.
4. Information Format Your Web-marketing campaign should consist of a variety
of information vehicles that each build on one another, creating the image and
delivering the information that will ultimately lead to a relationship.
Your Web-marketing campaign should be aimed at achieving more than just a sale;
it should be aimed at creating a satisfied customer who will promote your
company through word-of-mouth. To achieve this end you must deliver a variety
of information to potential clients; information that attracts attention,
narrows decisions, instructs usage, and promotes involvement.
Information as entertainment: when you want to establish a personality or
image, your audio or video presentation should have some entertainment element.
This entertainment element could be in the character of the presenter, the
script or dialog being presented, or merely the style and panache of the
voice-over announcer or on-screen actor.
Information as knowledge: there used to be a Buffalo-based clothing retailer
that featured the slogan, 'an educated consumer is our best customer." They
never had a sale, but all their clothes were discounted the same way on a
sliding scale based on how long the merchandise was in inventory. All their
advertisements explained their policy in clear, concise terms. They understood,
that if customers know and trust their policy they would have confidence that
they were buying from a legitimate retailer at a legitimate price.
Information as instruction: we live in a very complex world where products and
services are increasingly complicated. If we want customers to take the leap of
faith and buy our merchandise and hopefully upgrade to bigger, better, more
expensive versions, then customers must understand how to use the product and
also how to maximize the promised benefits from their purchase. Teaching people
how to take better photographs with the camera you sell is a far better sales
tactic that promoting an extra feature they will never use.
Information as involvement: we all know word-of-mouth is the best form of
advertising. Getting your Web-audience involved in your campaigns through the
use of contests, surveys, and interactive entertainments are only a few ways to
get them involved. But the best way to get people involved in evangelizing your
product is to provide an experience that echoes their psychological, emotional,
and socio-cultural aspirations.
Information as promotion: let's face facts, the vast majority of website
visitors are jaded and cynical and hypersensitive to unscrupulous online
businesses. Most of your Web-audience puts you right next to politicians and
used car salesman in the trust department. You are not going to overcome this
lack of confidence with a website that smacks of high pressure or alternatively
a website that bores people. Present your offer using real people delivering a
well crafted message that reflects your company persona and inspires confidence
rather than puts out danger signals.
5. Marketing Venue The Web's multimedia capability has often been equated to an
egalitarian form of television, where every company has a shot at attracting an
audience without the high cost of buying airtime, but like television it is the
programs people are attracted to, not the commercials. If your website is
nothing more than a commercial your visitors will hyperlink themselves away
from your site at warp speed.
If we equate the new multimedia Web to television, we must construct our
websites as if they were programs, not brochures. An excellent example of this
new style website is the Ford Motor Company's 'Bold Moves' site (http://www.FordBoldMoves.com
).
Your email marketing and Adword campaigns are the equivalent of program
teasers, attracting people to your main site, campaign micro-site, or landing
page based on a content hook and promise.
6. Achievable Expectations We are all concerned about ROI but you cannot expect
instantaneous results. Websites are long-term investments that must be
continually tweaked to conform to your long-range strategic objectives. You
must have realistic achievable expectations: new leads, customer inquiries,
information requests, newsletter sign-ups, and even complaints. You cannot
determine the value of your site based on direct sales alone. If you are not
achieving adequate results, then it's time you rethought your website strategy
in terms of it's multimedia content and program potential.
About the Author
Jerry Bader is Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in
using audio & video to create memorable Web-experiences. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com, http://www.136words.com
http://www.sonicpersonality.com.
Contact info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.
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