Godfrey Parkin - Digital Marketing: Strategies for Online Success

Digital
Marketing

Strategies for
Online Success

Godfrey Parkin

Published in 2009 by New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd

London Cape Town Sydney Auckland

www.newhollandpublishers.com

Garfield House, 8688 Edgware Road, London W2 2EA, United Kingdom

80 McKenzie Street, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

Unit 1, 66 Gibbes Street, Chatswood, NSW 2067, Australia

218 Lake Road, Northcote, Auckland, New Zealand

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text copyright 2009 Godfrey Parkin

Copyright 2009 in artworks: Godfrey Parkin

Copyright 2009 New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd

Godfrey Parkin has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 978 1 60765 195 6

Publishing Director: Rosemary Wilkinson

Publisher: Aruna Vasudevan

Editor: Julia Shone

Inside design: Sarah Williams

Cover design: District-6 Design

Production: Melanie Dowland

Reproduction by Pica Digital Pte. Ltd., Singapore

Printed and bound in India by Replika Press

The paper used to produce this book is sourced from sustainable forests.

T his book is a guide to succeeding in todays business world, the marketing rules of which have been forever changed by the collective power of the online consumer.

At the end of this book you will find a guide that summarizes the action recommendations covered in this publication. It takes you through the strategy development and implementation process step by step, and poses the questions that you need to answer to build a successful emarketing approach, or an entire ebusiness. Although you will learn the essential tactics for mastering every element of the emarketing landscape, this book is about marketing strategy, not about web technology.

You can learn technical hints, tips, and website optimization secrets from my seminars or from hundreds of other sources. But there is little point in building a website or fine-tuning your emarketing tactics unless your strategy is right in the first place. To build a competitive strategy to capture the loyalty of your online consumers requires rethinking your vision for your business from the ground up. It also requires an intimate understanding of what this online environment is all about, from the perspective of your business, from your competitors point of view, and particularly in the eyes of your target customers as individuals. Without those insights, you cannot begin to put together a digital strategy that has any hope of succeeding.

This book will provide you with the insights and inspiration, as well as the step-by-step processes, to succeed in marketing to the new consumer.

Wherever it is necessary to dip into technical detail I do so in laypersons terms. A glossary is included at the back of the book for easy reference and for clarifying any term that is not clearly defined in the text.

Though I am a closet geek, Im not one of those people who believe that technology in itself has any real value. There are many instances where new technology is merely a solution looking for a problem. I have been immersed in this world of the web for too many years, have linked customers, businesses and brands through too many online experiences, battled too many IT policy makers, been frustrated by too many miracle software packages, been disappointed by too many consultants, and confronted too many medieval corporate prejudices, to be anything but pragmatic about technologys role in strategic business growth.

Properly used, the internet unleashes personal communication and experience-sharing on a scale unprecedented in history.

Through that pragmatism, theres a very simple, powerful, burning light that all of us need to keep in focus: properly used, the internet frees customers and marketers from the constraints of time and space, which in turn unleashes personal communication and experience-sharing on a scale unprecedented in history.

Any online marketing model which still uses the internet as merely a cheap means to broadcast canned one-way messages is simply missing the point. All companies need their brand bibles for defining what their brands are and how they seek to be perceived. But those brand bibles need to evolve constantly to stay relevant to changing consumer environments. Marketers can actively add huge value to their brands by embracing the power of the web as a catalyst for exploration, organic growth, experience-sharing, and relationship-building making every customer both a convincing salesperson and a compelling advertising medium.

So why are the brilliant examples of how it should be done so few and far between? Why is it that almost every digital project that I get involved in seems to be seeking to use technology to recentralize the locus of control, to choke off collaboration and to make marketing more tightly administered than ever before?

The answer is that most businesses have an increasingly fuzzy vision of what their future should be, so their tendency is to clutch tightly to the past. As the world around them changes faster and faster, the future becomes ever more blurred and uncertain. Without a bright light to head toward, they feel safer not to move away from their fundamentals and put their efforts into shoring up their defences. Those companies that do stumble forward usually head in the general direction that they have always followed, tactically groping their way through the fog, turning to dodge obstacles, and grasping at opportunities reactively as they fly by. Without a vision, they have no idea where they are headed. Without a vision, they cannot put together an effective strategy.

You first need a clear idea of what you want to build before you dig the foundations.

One of my recent clients wanted to throw out all the marketing solutions currently in play and start from scratch. Well, nothing wrong with wielding a new broom. But it is the strategy of starting from scratch that I take issue with: this company wanted to get a new content management system and build a new website, then create new marketing communications activities that would run on it. The argument is that you first need a good foundation before you can build.

But surely you first need a clear idea of what you want to build before you dig the foundations?

Throughout this book I will be using the terms marketing, emarketing, marketer, and online consumers repeatedly. Without becoming too academic about terminology, this is what these terms mean to me:

MARKETING is the overall set of activities, processes and attitudes that a business applies to understanding the needs of its customers, and developing, supplying and communicating products or services that address those needs. It includes all the activities, inputs and outputs that might be classified under the traditional Four Ps of Marketing: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. Since the web is increasingly one of the places where individuals and companies market, marketing includes what you do online.