Digital Marketing for Modern Business

This is the first in a series of 12 lessons on Marketing and Managing an Online business.

There is a very big problem that marketers and businesses face in todayaEUR(TM)s business world. This is a problem that marketers of old did not have to face, or at least faced much less. That problem is that consumers today are incredibly good at ignoring marketing messages. It used to be you could just plaster up your signs or run your ad spot, and youaEUR(TM)d get through to people with reasonable success. Today though, people just tune out. We are so inundated by marketing messages, every day of our lives, that weaEUR(TM)ve become incredibly adept at simply turning a blind eye to them. After all, if we actually paid attention to each and every marketing message thrown our way each day, we wouldnaEUR(TM)t have time to eat or sleep. Consumers today are exposed to between 3,500 and 5000 marketing messages per day compared to just 500 to 2,000 messages per day in the aEUR~70aEUR(TM)s1. ThataEUR(TM)s an absolutely huge increase and the odds are, those numbers are probably only going to keep rising. Big corporations have money to burn and if anyone thinks the likes of Coca-Cola, Apple, et al are going to stop hitting us with ads every chance they get, itaEUR(TM)s time to think again.

So what do you do then if you arenaEUR(TM)t a Fortune 500 company and you donaEUR(TM)t have eleventy-billion dollars? Well the answer is that you have to make the marketing messages you do put out there count for more, and you need to do it in a couple of key areas. The first area is in the effectiveness of those messages in getting through the ad blindness and actually reaching the target. The second way is through cost effectiveness. You need to make every dollar you spend on marketing and advertising count for more. With the number of marketing messages that get ignored on a day to day basis, you canaEUR(TM)t afford to spend a single penny on being just another member of the blur.

Engaging Your Customers

So how do you go about making your messages more effective at reaching people and ensuring that they donaEUR(TM)t just shut you out like they are almost every other promotional message thrown their way? Simple, you engage them.

Well, ok, maybe simple isnaEUR(TM)t the best word to use, because in reality, itaEUR(TM)s simple in concept and theory, but not so much so in practical application. After all, a lot of very big companies, with very big budgets, make very big mistakes with it and end up with very big flops that cost them very big piles of cash. So letaEUR(TM)s talk about engagement for a second.

Engagement basically means that rather than marketing at your target customers, you need to market with them. Remember, the days of just beaming out a thousand messages to your target market and having them run in to your business to give you all their money are gone, long gone. So you need to stop thinking about your target market as a pile of money that could be yours if you just drive your ads into their brains hard enough, and more like your little kid.

Wait, what? aEUR~Like my little kid?aEUR(TM) youaEUR(TM)re saying. Yes, exactly, and hereaEUR(TM)s why. Little kids are almost exactly like consumers in one very important way. Little kids are incredibly good at completely ignoring things they arenaEUR(TM)t interested in. Try bringing a six year old to the opera or your book club and see how long they pay attention for. ItaEUR(TM)ll probably be somewhere between zero and three seconds. Unless you give them something they want to pay attention to, they will not, on the contrary, they cannot spare even a shred of attention. So what do you do? You give them what they want. You bring them to the opera with a comic book. You bring them to your book club with their Game Boy.

Your target market is no different. No, IaEUR(TM)m not saying you should buy them all Game Boys or comic books, but you should give them what they want. You need to engage them on their terms, in a way that will make them want to pay attention to what you have to say, and unless you do, you will just be one more billboard among a million others that theyaEUR(TM)re ignoring. This isnaEUR(TM)t necessarily easy, and it often takes some creativity, but there are plenty of ways to do it. How you engage your potential client or customer really depends completely on what your market is and who your targets are. Beer companies, for instance, engage their primary targets (young males) by making funny and highly memorable ads that feature ridiculous premises (in fact, if you look closely youaEUR(TM)ll see the trend towards funny commercials is rapidly growing). How you do it will depend on who youaEUR(TM)re marketing to and how they want to be marketed to. Luckily for you, the internet gives you a ton of ways to find out this particular information, and a ton of ways to actually deliver your messages in ways that people want to be marketed to.

Cost Effective Marketing

Now how about that cost effective marketing bit? Well, letaEUR(TM)s face the facts, most businesses, more than likely yours included, donaEUR(TM)t have the seemingly unlimited budgets that some gigantic corporations do, and so just pouring wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of money into marketing efforts is probably out of the question. Every single dollar spent on marketing has to be making a difference. Unfortunately, for most traditional marketing channels, thataEUR(TM)s not so easy to do. WeaEUR(TM)ve all heard that old expression, aEURoeI know half of my marketing works, I just donaEUR(TM)t know which half.aEUR? Well, that statement is almost painfully true. That is, if youaEUR(TM)re one of the companies lucky enough to have half of your marketing working! The reality is, even if half of your marketing is doing a great job, the other half is draining money from you, so wouldnaEUR(TM)t it be nice if you could identify it and either sever it from your marketing mix, or tweak and adjust it to be more effective?

That is the key to cost effective marketing. Knowing exactly what is working and what isnaEUR(TM)t. When you know what doesnaEUR(TM)t work, you know exactly what needs to be changed. When you know what does work, you know exactly what you should be doing more of. But when youaEUR(TM)re not sure, then you know almost nothing, and youaEUR(TM)re swinging in the dark. Unfortunately, for a great deal of companies, this is how their marketing operates. TheyaEUR(TM)re putting in the time and money, and theyaEUR(TM)re doing their research, and theyaEUR(TM)re seeing some results, but they donaEUR(TM)t actually know exactly where those results are coming from, how much better or worse those results could be with changes to their marketing campaigns, and where those changes should be made if they turn out to be necessary.

Think about it, you spend thousands of dollars every month on a nice full color 1/4 page ad in the local Yellow Pages. ItaEUR(TM)s got a nice description of your business and youaEUR(TM)ve got a great photo of your staff. You know it looks great, you know you love it, but what donaEUR(TM)t you know?

Well, first and most importantly, you probably donaEUR(TM)t really know how many new clients it brings you. You know youaEUR(TM)re getting new business every month, and you think it probably comes from that ad, and you might even give your customers a aEURoehow did you find us?aEUR? survey. But the odds are, if youaEUR(TM)re anything like the vast majority of businesses, you donaEUR(TM)t know the exact percentage of new customers, or the exact dollar value in new business, that are being generated by that Yellow Pages advertisement.

You also donaEUR(TM)t know if your ad is performing to its full potential or not. It looks good, sure, but does it perform as well as it could be? What if you changed the headline? What if you used a photo of your product instead of your staff? What if you changed the font?

Seems like frivolous stuff right? Well it isnaEUR(TM)t. In fact itaEUR(TM)s extremely important and can make huge differences in how that ad performs, and how much value you get out of the thousands of dollars you spend on it every month. Unfortunately, itaEUR(TM)s almost impossible, or at least a huge pain in the butt, for you to test this and therefore highly unlikely youaEUR(TM)ll ever really be sure if the 5 new clients the ad provides each month could actually be 10 of 15.

This same principal applies across most marketing channels, especially the ones commonly used by small and medium sized businesses. Marketing is all about getting the best success rate possible from each ad or marketing message you put out. But without knowing these key metrics, youaEUR(TM)re really in the dark about how well your campaigns are performing, and in turn, how the dollars you spend on those campaigns are performing.

Next time: Where the Internet Comes In

John McGovern is currently the Managing Partner and Founder of an Insurance Consulting, Internet & Marketing firm based in Central NJ. His expertise is in identifying; designing and implementing environmental risk management solutions for businesses. He also assists any company strategically manage their business in an online environment. Highly regarded for consistently creating business solutions for companies in the industry, he also helps companies develop strategic business development & marketing plans to grow specialty niches into their firm. Mr. McGovern can be reached at 732-706-1950 and at www.igetyoudiscoveredonline.com.

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