Traditional Media and Digital Marketing: Good Friends or Vicious Rivals?

Digital marketing is like the new, cool and super hot chick on campus. Everybody wants to be her friend, everybody wants to get to know her – even change to impress her. Suddenly – you’re in! The new cool kid is your best friend, and you’re totally cool together doing cool things and achieving cool goals. BUT, does that mean we should neglect our old friends; should we jump ship entirely and cut ties with those less-exciting and progressive peers to devote all our time to this new, shiny friend? I mean, she’s totally hot right now…

Okay, okay. I admit. I’m pretty bad at making metaphors about how digital marketing is like the Regina George of the marketing world right now. I’ll forgive you if you didn’t follow, but the question I’m posing is:

Should IMC campaigns neglect traditional media used for communication and focus solely on the digital aspect? Should we drop older media methods in IMC plans?

*drumrooooooll*

SOURCE: Giphy

You tell ‘em, Michael Scott. No!

Organisations need to ensure that digital marketing activities are conducted in a manner that is integrated with other, more traditional marketing media communication efforts. Murray (2010) believes that “social media’s marketing potential is lost if it is not woven into the overall marketing strategy.” Various authors and the marketing discipline at large have similarly adopted this view, arguing that social media and digital marketing as a standalone marketing strategy is not sufficient.

And this is perhaps where the difficulty lies; digital and social media is a dynamic platform that has shifted the marketing paradigm in ways never previously encountered. A focus on dual communication rather than a ‘talking at’ behaviour is executed in online marketing, whereby organisations demonstrate a desire to be involved with dialogue rather than drilling one-way communication down the consumers’ throat. With the obvious contrast between the marketing natures when it comes to traditional vs digital age marketing, how can organisations effectively integrate all marketing communications in a synergistic and effective manner? Keep the message singular, even though the methods of message delivery and communication will differ. Dialogue with consumers (the emphasis of UGC) does not mean that your brand message should change – but rather, your brand message should be so concrete and evident in other media vehicles and embedded into the firm that you are excited by the implementation of opportunity for conversation with consumers to arise.

Firms need to understand that this massive shift to the digitisation of communication efforts is not an indication that traditional methods should be abandoned! IMC is, after all, oriented around a single message being conveyed through a number of communication vehicles. Digital is an opportunity to further enhance those integrated messages, and boost the effectiveness of IMC campaigns! As Rakic and Rakic (2014) suggest, an integrated approach to marketing communications that involve both traditional and digital platforms allows firms have an integrated representation in more touchpoints. More brand touchpoints for our consumers? Umm, yes please!

SNS and digital marketing are fabulous, we all know this. But they shouldn’t be stand-alone efforts, but rather an integrated element in an IMC campaign… even if we are obsessed with the digi-opportunities.

The suuuuuper, dooper important point I’m trying to make is: the involvement of digital marketing in your IMC plan is exactly that: integrated. If you steer off and create an online campaign that does not actively reflect other marketing efforts and brand message, then your IMC plan is in fact, not really that integrated at all. The emphasis of the IMC is consistency across all media efforts. Kaplan and Haenlein (2011) offer five points of caution when generating viral marketing for organisations, and they absolutely nail it with their second point: Viral marketing needs to be backed up by traditional forms of communication. If you’re doing to drive all your marketing efforts into the digital platforms, don’t forget about the other aspects of your IMC strategy;  in order to maintain momentum, organisations need to complement digital marketing with traditional forms of communication, too, that all share the same consistent message.

And while we’re on the topic of successful integration of digital platforms in IMC campaigns, here’s a youtube video I highly recommend! I know, “not another stupid YouTube compilation…” But I promise this one doesn’t disappoint. Whoever curated these viral marketing videos as a part of their IMC campaigns really knew what they were doing!

Tell me your thoughts: do you believe that digital marketing should be actively complemented by traditional media platforms such as print and personal selling? Or can digital marketing be enough on its own? Do you have any awesome examples of digital marketing done well, like a viral video?

List of References

Kaplan, A. M., Haenlein, M. (2011). Two hearts in three-quarter time: How to waltz the social media/viral marketing dance. Business Horizons, 54. 253-263.

Murray David (2010): “Boosting Social Media Traffic: Who Coes There?”, Franchising World, vol. 42, issue 10, 15-1

Rakić, B., & Rakić, M. (2014). Integrated marketing communications paradigm in digital environment: The five pillars of integration. Faculty of Business Studies, Megatrend University, 11(1). 187-204.

SEO: The Pros, Cons & Reality

Emphasis on search engine marketing (SEM) is growing at an increasingly steady rate. This is a result of slowed growth in viewership in mediums such a network television, and more emphasis being on the internet and web searches. When we want to find something out, or are looking for a solution, we tend to refer directly to an online search engine, and this generates large opportunities for organisations that have the right stuff to fulfil our consumer needs. Today’s blog post is going to focus specifically on SEO – Search engine optimisation – by addressing some pros, cons and the reality, woo hoo!

So what is SEO? Let’s start by clarifying what the heck SEO actually is. Beal (2015) defines SEO as the following: Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

In more simple terms: It’s what affects whether your website appears/ranks when keywords are used in a search engine. We, as digital marketers, can control SEO to an extent, and it is very impactful when done well. If you’re still confused, this YouTube video by Search Engine Land does a beautiful job at explaining it. 

Fun Fact: to ‘google’ (verb) was added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006. You google, I google, everybody is googling! The implication for firms? Get on the SEO bus and make your organisation as google-friendly as possible. If you’d like a list of the most popular search engines, take a look here; but I’m sure you’ve already guessed which one is first. If you haven’t, why not give it a google?! Heh…

The Reality: Your Competitors are Doing It. In 2014, CMO reported that 85% of surveyed retailers said that SEM (SEO and paid) was the most effective customer acquisition tactic. This industry belief suggests that most organisations have put an emphasis on improving and sustaining their SEO. U.S figures show that $9.02b was spent on mobile search improvement for firms, and 47% of respondents admitted to a budget increase regarding SEM within the next year (CMO, 2014). It’s also predicted that by 2018, mobile search spending will account for 85.9% of the US digital search advertising marketing. If you want to be truly competitive, SEO is not something you can ignore. Your firm may provide a better product or service than your competitors, but if you aren’t taking full advantage of SEO, you are neglecting a plethora of growth opportunities (and your competitors are having a fiesta because they’re benefitting from it).

The Pros

• 60% of clicks go to the first result (rankexecutive.com)
  That’s a big deal; that leaves 40% for the second and remaining results relating to the keyword. It goes without saying that if your firm is SEO focused, you are potentially investing in millions of sales. More than half of the market is going to put your organisation into their consideration set, and that could bring some VERY nice results! Not to mention, according to digitalmarketingphilippines.com, 70-80% of consumers will actually ignore paid listings in search engines due to organic results appearing more authentic – a big thumbs up for SEO!
• Your results are often permanent.
  Yes, you will be required to do some maintenance work to keep your high position, but quite often it is difficult for it to be taken away! If you pay an external organisation to program your website to cater to an engine’s algorithm, once you’ve stopped paying, your site won’t suddenly revert back.
• Results of SEO, in comparison to PPC, are often lower in cost
  Whilst there may be an initial investment, SEO is a long-term payoff. In essence, it is referred to as the ‘gift that keeps on giving’. Whereas PPC charges an amount per user interaction, once your website is in the top searches via an engine, you will be receiving glorious traffic without having to pay per visitor.

The Cons

• Each search engine has its own requirements. Sen (2005) clarifies that a web site optimised for one search engine is not necessarily optimised for the others. For example, if you aim to optimise your website by varying your codes to suit a particular search engine’s algorithm such as Yahoo’s, it may be totally ineffective for another engine like Bing.

• SEO can be a long process
  This is a little subjective, because personally I believe the process is well worth the payoff. However, it must be recognised that SEO can be costly and take some time. Whether you decide to pay an external organisation or attempt the process yourself, there are financial and time sacrifices required.

• 75% of search users will most likely never scroll past the first page
  That leaves 25% of the market for anything beyond those top searches – which can be disheartening for firms who are struggling to reach the first page (it’s no small task).
• Search engines may decide to update algorithms overnight
  This could mean that your investment in SEO is out the door quite rapidly, and unfortunately it can quite out of the firm’s control. It means that a significant amount of invested time can be swept away in a short amount of time; clearly a devastating event for a digital marketers.

Source: digitalmarketingphilippines.com

If you’re not confident which SEO tools you should looking at, Marcela De Vivo has compiled a list (2015 edition) of the best SEO tools she’s discovered over her fifteen years as a digital marketer – click here to have a look. Alternatively (and ironically), you could always ‘google’ organisations that offer SEO services.

So, tell me what you think: do you believe SEO is an integral part of any search engine marketing plan? Or should we just stick to paid listings to guarantee exposure to markets? Let me know your thoughts on the topic.

I Like Big Data and I Cannot Lie: Why Big Data Matters

Big data is presumably a term you’ve heard on numerous occasions (and if you’re a marketing student or working in the industry, you’re probably sick to death of hearing it), or it may be an ambiguous concept you’ve hardly taken notice of …. Yet. Why do I say ‘yet’?

Big Data is the future. As predicted by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson back in 2012, “We’ve become convinced that almost no sphere of business activity will remain untouched by this (big data) movement”. And I agree!

Big data refers to datasets so voluminous that they cannot be reasonably analysed through traditional database management systems and software programs (Byrnes, Moffitt & Warren, 2015). They contain both structured and unstructured data and consist of a significant amount of information. A major purpose of big data is that it seeks to glean intelligence from data and convert it into a business advantage.

This is why organisations love the big data: It allows them to make meaningful connections through analysis of consumer behaviours, which will ultimately lead to improved decision making and performance. Ultimately, the huge amounts of data that may seem unrelated can actually prove to be highly correlated and lead to marketing opportunities that would otherwise be forgone. As Mark Hollison so wonderfully puts it, the impact of big data on marketing means that “…maketing can finally become more about math than magic”.

A great example of the marketing implications of big data can be seen by the famous Target and teenage pregnancy incident. A statistical model generated by the analytics team behind Target correctly identified (based on purchasing data and patterns accumulated by their data systems) that a teenage girl was pregnant, and sent her coupons for baby products. Of course, her father wasn’t too impressed – especially considering Target knew about his daughter’s pregnancy before even he did.

Source: marketpunch

Creepy or impressive? I suppose that’s subjective; but what isn’t subjective is the fact that big data can produce some astonishing results, and is being utilised by society at large. In fact, it drives almost all sectors of society – financial, life sciences, accounting, retail manufacturing, American’s favourite pie, carjacking…. (if you’d like to know more about the carjacking and pie, click here to see Kenneth Cukier’s TED talk about the amazing future regarding big data and its implications). Big data is guilty of revolutionising all aspects of our lives, from enterprises to consumers, from science to government.

Big data doesn’t just magically produce results, however. There are many processes which go into creating meaningful relationships from the mass amount of data. Considering, as suggested by Warren et. al (2015), that 90% of the data is unstructured, creating value from big data requires extraction, cleaning, data integration, modelling, interpretation and so on so forth. Much like any revolutionary shift in society, there are challenges that come with big data. Gehrke, Jagadish, Labrinidis, Papakonstantinous, Ramakrishnan & Shahabi (2014) highlight the following challenges associated with big data: heterogenety, inconsistency and incompleteness, timeliness, privacy and data ownership and a human’s actual capacity to “absorb” the results of the analysis and not get lost in a sea of data.

Undeniably, the potential rewards underlying the use of big data speak for itself. There are huge strategical and organisationally beneficial outcomes awaiting those who are able to correctly utilise the information. And that is why, from a strategic business view, we like big data and we cannot lie.

How do you think big data will impact the future, in both a business and societal sense in general? Got any interesting big data success stories or failures? Please let me know! 

Sources:

Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2012). Big data: The management revolution. Harvard Business Review.

Warren, J. D., Moffitt, K. C., & Byrnes, P. (2015). How Big Data Will Change Accounting. Accounting Horizons, 29(2), 397-407.

JAGADISH, H., GEHRKE, J., LABRINIDIS, A., PAPAKONSTANTINOU, Y., PATEL, J. M., RAMAKRISHNAN, R., & SHAHABI, C. (2014). Big Data and Its Technical Challenges. Communications Of The ACM, 57(7), 86-94. doi:10.1145/2611567

Hollison, M. (2015, January 9). 5 ways big data will change sales and marketing in 2015. Retrieved September 4, 2015, from http://www.inc.com/mick-hollison/5-ways-big-data-will-change-sales-and-marketing-in-2015.html