An interesting and probably first of its kind case study challenge was conducted India Social, where in any organization that had taken travelled the social media route and attained success could participate and exhibit their tactics. The winners of this case study challenge were Pratham Books (1^st prize), Fastrack (2^nd prize) and Cleartrip.com (3^rd prize). Let us, introduce these organizations in brief in the benefit of the audience – Pratham Books was established in 2004, as a non-profit Public Charitable Trust with an objective to enable the democratization of children education, Fastrack which was initially launched (in 1998) as a sub-brand of Titan (an arm of Tata group) became later on an independent brand in 2005, with focus on watches for urban youth and Cleartrip established in 2006 is one of the top online travel companies in India.

In this article we have made an attempt to analyze and understand the similarities and dissimilarities in the social media strategy adopted by these winners. The interesting aspect to notice was that the context of these companies varied to a great extent – Pratham (NGO, products & services), Fastrack (high involvement product category), Cleartrip.com (high involvement services category). This insight essentially signifies that any company (irrespective of its business focus & domain) that realizes the true potential of social media and dedicatedly implements it in the right manner, has an opportunity to reap satisfactory results. We have analyzed their social media strategy based on criteria – platform selection, stakeholders targeted, activities undergone and the impact measurement.

As indicated in table1 Pratham used six social media platforms, the highest of the three competing firms, followed by Fastrack which used four, and Cleartrip which used three platforms. However, the common platforms amongst all three were Facebook and Twitter. An interesting point to be noted is that Orkut, which was the first social networking website to gain prominence in the country, was not preferred by any of the companies. Also, the match between the product category in which  a particular company was involved and the platform it chose was incredible, for instance in order to familiarize users with the books it prepared Pratham ensured it had presence on Scribd and YouTube, where its users could read the free books that were uploaded. Similarly, Fastrack, which is the country’s famous brand known for its luxurious products, ensured its presence on YouTube and Flickr to demonstrate its product varieties and new arrivals. Lastly, as Cleartrip doesn’t have any product to demonstrate, it probably didn’t needed to be present on YouTube, Flickr or Scribd, and hence was just present on Facebook, Twitter and Blog. This strengthens the argument that the key question to be asked is not on how many platforms should the company be present? but on which platforms should  the company be present to justify the objective and the product/service the company is offering?

We, further analyzed the usage of most common platforms – Twitter and Facebook. As shown in table 1.1 it could be noted that the number of people whom Fastrack and Pratham books followed, was nearly matching the number of people who followed them on Twitter. This strategy is highly debated in the industry where many experts feel that it is not necessary for a company to follow every customer who follows the company on Twitter. However, it makes sense and the empirical proof here strengthens the argument that it is indeed necessary to follow those customers who follow the company. The only exception was Cleartrip, where it seems follows the tide of industry experts.

The table1.2 indicates the number of fans on the fanpages of these companies on Facebook. Though, the numbers could not be compared with each other due to the high variance in the business context of these firms, in general one could realize that product with fun, luxury, style (hedonic) attract more response which was very clearly evident in case of Fastrack. Also, the connect, with right target audience of Fastrack which is primarily youth, is easily possible on these social networking websites, which makes it inevitable to avoid them.

The most important criteria to compare these companies, was the kind of stakeholder involvement that they considered. As Pratham’s stakeholder involved a wide variety of member organizations, the focus on the entire community was very important for them, to ensure the co-ordination between community members. However, the focus for Fastrack and Cleartrip was clearly on existing and potential customers. Also, Pratham had to concentrate not only on the external stakeholder members, but also the internal staff to ensure they were in sync with the overall business and social media strategy.

So far, we have discussed regarding the presence of companies on various social media platforms, however the crucial element is not the presence, but the kind of activities that are undergone on these platforms. Hence, we analyzed the range of activities that were conducted and the impact measurement tactics employed by these firms. We are sure that it would be an eye-opener for the readers of this article that none of the impact measurement tactics are traditional internet performance measurement ones (like CPC, CPM, hit ratios, pages visited). The impact measurement tactics have been very well framed and they match the activities that were conducted, which essentially indicates that there could be no standardized evaluation tactics, but they need to be tailored according to one’s requirements.

This case studies exhibited in this article may not be the industry’s best practices, but we felt that sharing these case studies on which data was publicly available and confirmed (by India Social) provides authenticated learning.  We are sure there might be such innumerable case studies, which are yet to be identified and understood. To sum up, the key learnings from these three interesting case studies would be:

• Depth and not the breadth of social media platform that matters.
• Firms should be prepared to face the negative discussions on social media
• Synchronization between the product category and social media platform is very essential
• Identifying the presence of right target audience on right social media platform is the key.
• Conducting appropriate activities and measuring their impact in the most suitable manner is what matters at the end of the day.

The start provided by India Social in organizing such events, and an attempt to publicize the social media strategy that firms follow is a welcome move and we are sure the criteria of evaluating entries would become stringent in future. Some of the criteria that could be seriously considered are:

1. Whether firms outsourced the social media campaigns or developed in-house
2. What were the cultural challenges that these firms faced while adopting social media?
3. How could they measure the financial impact of these activities? (Note: We understand that many a times social media campaign are not supposed to be revenue generating activities, but still it needs to be accountable in some manner to justify the manpower resources that needs to be committed for these activities, if done in-house)
4. Are there any mechanisms to measure the input (primarily manpower) costs and compare their output?

Leaving aside all these analyzes the reader has read so far, we would like to share our personal experience with these winners when we posted the “congratulations” message on their respective fanpage on Facebook, guess what? we received a prompt acknowledgement from Pratham, which probably justifies its brand name (Pratham in Hindi language means, “first”)!!!!

Often marketers are criticized for ignoring the digital media and relying too much on the traditional media like print and television. With almost 20% penetration of internet globally and close to 80% in developed world, there is a case to reach the consumers in a more cost effective way. However, most of the top and middle management of any company is digital immigrant and not digital natives (anybody born after 1990 -A digital native is a person for whom digital technologies already existed when they were born) which means that most of the decision makers are still  not comfortable with the digital medium. I would argue that in any organization with consumer products, it is not only the marketing department but also the other departments that should take advantage of the digital medium in increasing their effectiveness.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media is the term used to describe the social networks, blogs and other online conversational media. Social Media Marketing is to utilize the social media for marketing, sales, public relations (PR) and customer service. Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing are often used interchangeably though in strict terms Social Media is a sub-set of Digital Media. Sometimes, many people confuse social media with social networking sites. I would like to clarify here that social media is any conversational media, including blogs on the internet.

Why Social Media Marketing?

Some of the usage statistics of internet are staggering like there are over 1.5 billion users of internet across the globe. There are over 200 million blogs, over 400 million users of Facebook (by the way, Facebook replaced Google as the most visited site last month in the US), 50 million users of Twitter, etc. The short video below explains how big is the internet as a medium now

www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6MfnuvH4Rs

The staggering number of conversations on the social media can provide wealth of information to any company or to any function within a company. In order to illustrate my point, I did a search on Blackberry on Twitter and was myself surprised to get the wealth of information for different functions of RIM (makers of Blackberry). In the figure below, I have indicated which function can use which tweet:

It can be seen in the above image that just following the Twitter conversations provides opportunities for any company to connect directly with the users. Any negative publicity can be converted into a positive publicity if the problem is attended to proactively. There are opportunity not only for customer service also for sales and product development. The product development department of RIM should try to conduct a market research to find out if other users also are complaining about the track ball. The company specific information is available somewhere in the cloud and now it depends on the companies to either take advantage of it or ignore it.

A survey from eMarketing (refer figure below) shows that most of the marketers view social media as a tool to engage customers.

The above chart gives great insights into the advantages of social media marketing. However, I do not agree with Customer Service getting the last spot. In my view customer service should be the most important aspect of benefits of social media as it would lead to better customer satisfaction and would help spread the positive word of mouth. Another advantage that is not listed in the chart is the fact that digital marketing is much more measurable than the traditional form of marketing. It is possible to measure the reach as well as the lead generation.

Social media marketing is highly cost effective as the money needs to be spent only on the bought media. The own media (company websites) and the social media is free and hence the total cost of promotion on digital media is much lower than the traditional media. The amazing video below from Eric Qualman vividly illustrates the economics behind social media marketing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypmfs3z8esI

Can companies afford to ignore the Social Media?

It would be a big mistake if any company feels that it can afford to ignore the social media. With social media, the companies are under continuous scrutiny by its current and potential consumers. United Airlines learnt its lesson the hard way when one of its customers loaded a video on You Tube on damage to his “Taylor Guitar” due to mishandling by United Airlines. The hilarious video became a huge hit and finally United Airlines had to pay not only the compensation but also it took a huge hit to its image. Enjoy the video -- it is worth the time.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

This post has been written with inputs from Deepak Taneja

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Today, the mobile phone can be used for doing many more things than just the voice calls. SMS, internet, games, content download and many other things are possible on the mobile phone which gives marketers the opportunity to connect with consumers beyond traditional and digital media. Mobile advertising is in its infancy but is still catching the imagination of the marketers. Most of the organizations have increased the outlay for digital media and it is expected to lead other forms of advertising in terms of growth.

Size of Mobile Advertising

There are many estimates on the current size of mobile advertising and they vary a lot due to differences in definition and methodology. Similarly the forecasts also differ substantially but all the analysts have the same conclusion – the growth in mobile advertising is huge and is likely to exceed any other form of advertising. Recently, Juniper Research estimated that in 2009, the market size for mobile advertising globally was $1.4 billion and is expected to cross $6 billion by 2014. Strategy Analytics expects the mobile advertising to reach $10 billion by 2012 from $1 billion in 2008. Gartner estimates that it would exceed $12 billion by 2011. Wow this is getting bigger and bigger!!!

Kelsey forecasts that the US mobile advertising would increase from $160 million in 2008 to $3.1 billion by 2013.

Benefits of Mobile Advertising

Mobile phones are personal devices and have managed to add so many features that it offers many advantages over traditional advertising:

1. User base – There are over 4 billion mobile phone users across the world compared to only 1 billion internet users and 1.5 billion PC owners. It is likely that on a few years time there would be more users of internet on the mobile than on the PC. The high penetration of mobile phones is an opportunity that most of the marketers cannot afford to ignore.
2. Targeted – Mobile phones have typically one user per phone and hence the advertisements can be personalized. Studies have shown that the personalized advertising is more effective. Carriers have a lot of data on the user including his usage pattern and that is very handy when it comes to advertising.
3. Locally relevant advertising – Mobile phones have the ability to provide information on location using GPS or Cell-id. This enables targeting users in a specific locality. Local shopkeepers can give ads in a very cost effective way to a selected audience.
4. Viral Advertising – Mobile phones users can easily share content with friends and family and if an ad is catchy, it is possible to trigger viral marketing. We have already seen the impact of viral messaging in various countries where revolutions have taken place against dictators by viral messaging
5. Ubiquitous – user carries his mobile phone at all times and he also reads everything that comes on the mobile. This means that the ad would at least be read and hence there is a more likelihood of action on it.
6. Interactive - This is one significant feature that mobile phones bring to marketers. They are interactive devices and their users will invariably use them to receive and originate communications. Marketers therefore do not have to battle to get their audience to respond and interact as in traditional forms of media.
7. Permission based advertising – it is possible to take user permission for the advertisement. The advertisements in this case become more targeted and highly actionable.
8. Multiple Forms of Advertising – Mobile phones have various features like SMS, MMS, gaming, etc. and hence the opportunities to advertise are also many times more.

Forms of Mobile Advertising

Mobile phones provide various opportunities to interact with the user and hence an opportunity for advertising. A few forms of mobile advertising are listed below:

1. SMS/MMS Based
2. In-Game
3. In-Application
4. Display on Web
5. Search
6. Bluecasting
7. Mobile Coupon
8. In-Maps

As per Strategy Analytics, Search, In-Game and In-Application form of advertising has the maximum potential as they are non-intrusive and pull based and hence there are no privacy issues in it. The figure below gives the split of mobile advertising across various forms.

Mobile Advertising Ecosystem

The mobile advertising ecosystem is a complex ecosystem with varied entities. The role of the operator is the most critical in the user experience but the role of handset vendor cannot be ignored. The value chain and the ecosystem entities are depicted in the figure below.

There are multiple handset types (basic, enhanced and Smartphone) with multiple features that make the permutation and combination tough to deliver the mobile advertisement consistently. A advertising agency might decide to send a MMS ad without realizing that only 25% handsets have MMS capability or the banner ad may be seen differently depending on the screen size. Hence it is critical that the advertisers, advertising agency, handset vendors and operators work in tandem. The ad network is in the middle of the value chain and hence assumes higher responsibility in managing this complex relationship.

Measurement Metrics

There are a few measurement metrics that mobile advertising has directly borrowed from the online advertising and then there are a few measurements that are still in the development stage. A few established measures are:

• CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions) - Each time an advertisement loads onto a user’s screen, the ad server counts that loading as one impression. CPM is the cost of thousand such impressions. In other words, if CPM is $2, then for every thousand times the ad is viewed, the advertiser has to pay $2
• CPC (Cost per Click) – In this method, the advertiser pays only when the advertisement is clicked. Most of the advertisers are unsure if they would be able to get visitors only by way of impressions and hence are interested in paying only when a consumer clicks on the ad and reaches its site. In such a scenario, the ad platform may decide to quote a CPC rate based on the performance it expects from the ad placement. The ad agency/platform calculates the CTR (Click-Through Rate) by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions) and then quote the rate on CPC basis. E.g., for a CPM of $2 and expected CTR of 1% (i.e. one out of 100 people who saw the ad would click on the ad), out of 1000 ad impressions, 10 people would click on the ad. To recover $2 CPM, the CPC based rate should be $0.2. However, this is only an indicative way of determining CPC rate and there are two primary models for determining cost per click: flat-rate and bid-based.
• CPA (Click per Action) – This is method in which the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement.

Other measurements that are still under development are branding measurements (ad recall, purchase intent, etc.), reach and frequency and the viral impact.

Future Drivers of Mobile Advertising

1. Better feature handsets – Smartphones
2. Evolution of local search
3. Faster networks – 3G/EVDO/LTE
4. Flat Data Plans
5. Better Web Browsers – xHTML
6. Better location capabilities – GPS
7. Highly Localized Communication – WiFi/Bluetooth

Issues that need Urgent attention

Despite the clear advantages, mobile advertising revenues are still small. There is a distinct need to address a number of key areas if mobile advertising is to truly take off and gain credibility among its marketing counterparts, as well as securing a sustainable business model. Below are a few areas for consideration:

1. Privacy issues – Users do not want to be disturbed which means the operators would need to strike balance between revenues from mobile advertising and respecting the privacy of its subscribers. Consumers place their trust in their operator – and they cannot afford to abuse this trust by delivering irrelevant or unwanted content to their mobile device. At the same time, they must drive wider user acceptance and illustrate the tangible benefits of mobile advertising from an end-user perspective. The only way they can balance these two requirements is by providing the option for the consumer to easily opt-in/opt-out and by ensuring that the content that is delivered to them is relevant, by enabling subscriber control of the advertising experience through Ad Exposure Management. The legislation on privacy is also weak around the world
2. Ecosystem – The players in the mobile advertising ecosystem are from different industries and backgrounds. The operators need to engage with different entities to be able to effectively secure the revenues. With the opening up of the mobile ecosystem, the influence of operators is diminishing. New entities are appearing in the mobile ecosystem that now have an enhanced stake in the mobile revenues. The operators still have inherent advantage of having more data about its subscribers and hence they can make the ads more targeted. However, the operators would need to understand that they cannot do everything and would need to let go of the advertisement platform development.
3. Measurement - Informa also recently revealed that Proctor & Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser, spent approximately $6 billion on advertising in 2008, of which $10 million (approximately 0.17% of its total advertising budget) was allocated to mobile advertising. From both perspectives, the difficulty of effectively measuring the success of a mobile advertising campaign is often cited as one of the main reasons why this channel remains unproven by the advertising industry. The industry is still working on CPM model as it still does not have the capability to measure CPA and CPC forms. Similarly, clarity is needed on how to price and measure ads on maps.
4. Technical Challenges - The mobile audience is fragmented across multiple platforms, with multiple sellers, multiple carrier networks, multiple devices, and multiple business models, all of which hinder consistency of execution. In such a highly fragmented landscape, identification of a user, user session, browser, or device can pose a significant problem, hindering the ability to deliver the right ad to the right user at the right time. We need to find a solution to this.

Hate them or love them, online communities are here to stay and are likely to have a big impact on the consumer behavior. Patrick Dixon in his lecture (video at the end of the post) has outlined how social media is likely to impact our personal lives, behavior and the way we do business. Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. The way social media is defined, it includes the social networking sites, blogs and social book marking sites. Common social media marketing tools are Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Facebook and YouTube. Given the high usage of social media across the world, it is an unexplored goldmine for marketers.

Social Media started as a medium for people to connect but with the passage of time, as the communities grew in size, companies started to use it to increase their brand visibility and connect directly with the consumers. Since this platform provides a possibility of 2-way communication, it is a double edged sword. The companies can get great feedback or rave reviews of their new products but at the same time they must be prepared to hear the issues related to customer care being faced by consumers. One bad experience quoted by a consumer may prompt other consumers to cite their bad experiences and soon the entire social media can turn into a brand bashing forum. Hence, there needs to be a clear social media strategy on part of companies with perfect alignment across all functions including sales and after sales service. It is not the job of marketers alone to enhance presence on the web but the other functions also play significant role in it.

Many companies made the mistake of ignoring the power of blogs and social media. Dell was one such company which ignored a post by Jeff Jarvis on his blog Buzzmachine. The post was written out of frustration on the customer service delivery of Dell. The post attracted the attention of other readers who were facing similar problems with Dell and soon it started to rise on Google Rank. Dell was in complete denial and even rubbished the power of blogs by saying that there is only a miniscule size of population that reads blogs. Ultimately, it had to pay heed to the complaint after a lot of negative media coverage. However, Dell learnt its lessons from this episode and set up a team to proactively engage the blogging community. It now believes that the most vociferous customers could actually be the best customers for the company and bloggers whose complaints get solved are also likely to give positive publicity to the company by writing about its proactive approach to problem solving. Dell now test markets its upcoming products on online communities.

There are many advantages of utilizing social media as it allows a less structured 2-way conversation. The reduced communication barrier between the company and the consumers leads to a better quality feedback. Through the social media, companies can identity their advocates who can help create the word of mouth for its products and can solve customer problems proactively at lower costs than conventional methods. If the company plays its strategy well in an honest way, it may soon gain the status of a trusted advisor. It is easy to keep an eye on the current trends and preferences through online communities. Marketers can stop trying to guess what their customers are talking about, and instead join the online communities and talk to them directly. The next big question is whether to build your own community or join an existing community. The answer is simple yet complicated – it depends. It depends on the situation of a company like size, market position, ability to engage consumers, need for consumer insights, etc. So there is no one size fits all strategy here. However, we can still use a simple framework to determine the best way forward.

Are you an established player? For a new company, it is beneficial to join existing communities rather than creating its own community as it would find it difficult to attract people to join its own community. A brand that has a large number of consumers would find it easy to form a community even if it is able to engage just 2-3% of its consumers. Sometimes, a company has such a fan following that it may already have multiple communities and there might be need to consolidate them. Apple and Google have large fan followings and probably there are hundreds of communities tracking these companies

What do you want to do by engaging the communities? If you want to spread the word about your products then it makes sense to engage the existing communities and promote the products in a way that encourage the members to share about your products with their friends. A Facebook application can be very useful in spreading the word around. However, if the intention is to seek consumer insights about your products, then it would be better to build your own community

What is your budget? Smaller budget means that you would need to device innovative ways of engaging the existing communities.

Do you want to reach out to new target segments? If your company wants to reach out to new target segments who are still not its consumes, then it makes sense to participate in existing community/communities

Do you have a cult following? If you are McLaren or BMW, you may want to give that special exclusive club feeling to your consumers. This kind of need requires an exclusive platform and hence makes sense to develop your own platform. Engaging on an existing community site may not provide the feeling of privileged to your consumers in this case

What is your product? If your product is a low involvement product, then it would not help if you build your own community as the consumers would not feel the need of joining your community. In this case, it would be much better to participate in existing communities.

Even if you decide to create your own community, it would be wise to engage the existing communities as well. The existing communities could serve as a ground for getting the consumers to join your community. It is important to treat social media strategy like a product or services strategy and there is a need to put high priority resources behind it. Social Media should be part of the broader marketing strategy and should be reviewed at the highest level.

The above framework is just a guide and the situation of each company is unique. Every company should analyze its situation before deciding its social media strategy. What is important is to have a social media strategy. Even no participation is a strategy if made out of informed choice. 

Consumers, Lifestyles and Online Communities -- impact of new technology, communications, wireless networking on business and personal life. Patrick Dixon -- Futurist / Futurologist conference keynote speaker (38 min) 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz02IhU-AuE

Online Communities Change the World -- marketing and consumer (4 min)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeB9kElnO3Q

Also Read: Potential of Mobile Social Networking

                          Mobile Operators & Social Networking

Last friday, In a meeting with few elite marketing brains, I was amused to hear that online research will reach to the “Digital Consumers”, the “Digital Consumers” motivation may be very different from the normal consumers. This innocent comment made by one of my peers made me think really hard on the fact that can you actually classify a consumer as “Digital Consumer”?

At the mention of Second Life , Twitter, Widgets, Wikis or any other Web 2.0 application, people often undergo a marketing (and common sense ) bypass. This is because of jargon peddled around by “digitized marketers”.I believe the most damaging thought is the idea of “new socially connected consumer”.  Who operates in a hyper connected cyber-world of his own and who shrouds in mystery, in making marketers really nervous.

I’d like to state that firstly there is no such thing as the “digital consumer”. There is no great mystery about how they think and what they want. Secondly these consumers are doing exactly the same thing what people have been doing for centuries-i.e.communicating with each other.

The fact that technology is enabling them to communicate with each other-faster, closer, when mobile and 3-D virtual worlds-is being perceived as something extraordinary! People are just talking to each other, just that they are not doing that in a pub and talking to 5-10 peers but interacting with 5 -10,000 on online.

Web 2.0 or now Web 3.0 has just one message for marketers, get away from broadcast mindset, where marketers tell consumers what to think and buy. Instead we have to realize that it is the interaction and conversation that really counts, and this is taking place between consumers across multiple mediums.

Digital age has given consumers more ways to converse; it has made it easier for marketers to find what they are conversing about and who these people are.

As marketers we need to think about influencing, informing and stimulating the conversations that are already taking place. Identify influential and important people and work with them. It is today even more important than ever to come up with a Big Idea! An Idea which can communicate across channels, and where each channel can communicate a different, self-contained element of the brand narrative, but in combination with other channels, which will unite to create a larger brand world. A 360 Degree Idea.

Old Age marketers need to realize, that they are no longer initiating the conversation about product benefits to the consumers-but they should try and become a part of the conversation that the consumers are having with each other. The consumers are no longer niave to be told about the benefits which product offer, she wants to be the benefit creator herself!. Brand Value will spread not through mass media in future but through networks of the humans talking to each other.

While in past 5 decades the marketing landscape and tools available have changed, Internet has reminded us that the consumer behaviour and many marketing basics have remained the same.  The most basic rule being trust and respect!

If there has been a time for change in marketing, this is it.

“Achieving more with less” is the only marketing approach in the minds of CMOs across the globe. They all are seeking a wolverine that would help them reassure the maximum buck for their money. This is the time for the digital medium today!

In this environment digital space will be undergoing a rebirth of sorts. Most marketers will slash their marketing dollars; opportunity will have its doors wide open for digital space owners to go on a fierce onslaught of traditional media space. In these tough times not only will digital marketing survive, it may actually thrive during the lean times, continuing its inexorable theft of ad spends from traditional media tactics. The CMOs would need to believe that this medium is much more mature and proven.

The fact that digital marketing’s impact can be assessed almost real time and with limited investments will be its unique advantage. You don’t wait for a week to access TVRs, a click on Google analytics will tell you know how your consumers are interacting with your brand.

Well just like an Elizabeth Taylor marriage, Digital doesn’t require much long-term commitment!  Pay for Performance ads can go up and down on a daily basis.  Email and SMSs can be sent (or not sent) based on your dynamic marketing objectives. Even banner ads can usually be negotiated with an advantageous measurability clause. Try that with your favourite channel on TV or Press! Other than keeping your digital interface a web or wap page up to date, the only core digital tactics that require substantial ongoing effort are organic search optimization, and web site analytics and testing.

With diminished outbound marketing budgets, increasing revenue from current customers will be the focus, either through more frequent purchases, or larger ones. Digital marketing will be the perfect vehicle for communicating with customers and incentivising additional purchases. Customer life cycle marketing (persuasively combining email, IVR and text messaging) will gain favor as companies will strive to close a higher percentage lead closures.

The superior targeting ability of digital marketing will enable brands to focus their reduced marketing budgets solely on likely prospects. This will accelerate the trend toward use of behavioral targeting and retargeting in Digital ad placement. And the bonus will be very little financial waste associated with advertising to people who have no interest in a product or service.

Behavioral targeting will mine a user’s web page visits and search terms to serve relevant ads. If a prospect reads several pages on Yahoo! about a brand and does a search on Google using a related term, an ad for the brands dealers could be served up just in time.

Re targeting would take the concept one step further, enabling companies to advertise only to people who have visited their web site previously without interacting with its online purchase page or lead tracking module. With average conversion rates hovering around 1-2%, this would be an ideal way to reach the other 98% that have taken the time to visit the brands site but haven’t yet converted.

Additionally, search marketing will continue to expand since it is the only tactic (other than Yellow Pages) that puts the marketer in the middle of the consumer’s purchase psychology funnel.

Finally the Numbers Don’t Lie!

The Orwellian nature of the Internet, Digital marketing offers superior measurability and trackability in comparison to traditional media. This is of course due to the fact that every mouse click is tracked, usually anonymously.

When implemented correctly, banner ads, organic search, paid search, blogs and social media, email, lifecycle marketing and all other Digital marketing tactics provide a user by user scoreboard that can be utilized to ascertain precise return on investment metrics for each campaign.

Aren’t this big enough reasons for brands to make a shift in their marketing plans.