Digital Marketing The Obama Way As is often the case, we benefit from what comes ‘tried and tested’ across the Atlantic to these shores. Online engagement and using digital marketing for more targeted marketing communications is no exception. The web campaign run by Barack Obama’s team in the US presidential elections gives us a great insight into how powerful digital marketing can be. Building interest in politics, engaging the masses and tackling voter apathy are always going to be some of the biggest challenges in the lead up to an Election. Many of these challenges for political parties are no different to the challenges faced by many businesses and brand marketing professionals looking to acquire and engage customers with their particular business’ offerings. We can learn alot about how digital marketing works for any campaign when we look at Barrack Obama’s successful Presidential campaign. The Obama story is of course an exceptional one – to get such a groundswell of support and interest with little cynicism for a brand, for example, would be a difficult task. Yet what is interesting about the story of his digital campaign is the way in which digital was integrated fully into the Obama campaign, rather than been seen as an additional extra. What was revealed is that if technology is used correctly to harness interest, it is clear that the results can be huge. The brilliance of Obama’s digital campaign was not its size, but what he did with it. From the very beginning, across every touch point, it was about lead generation. He slowly and consistently built up his database over time. He then cut and sliced it, analysed it, and targeted the relevant segments. For instance, Obama’s volunteers captured the email addresses of various event and rally attendees. And as he amassed the names, so he put them to work. The phrase “one click canvassing” was coined as Obama facilitated the viral impact through digital channels like no one else – even creating an iPhone application that automatically trawled contacts for those in swing states, to help supporters communicate quickly, and showing a perfect understanding the immediacy of mobile. And as the database grew exponentially, so did the donations. In a similar way to Barrack Obama, the Liberal Democrat’s Nick Clegg’s lack of baggage and freshness to the campaign trail gave that particular digital campaign a very credible foundation. Added to this, there was a robust and well designed site around user experience which recognised different voting journeys of any visitor to the site , from the uninformed, to the engaged, to the supporter, to the volunteer, to member and donor, and ultimately, to the activist. This is the basis of mass customisation - where many differently minded visitors find an easy path to satisfy their individual online needs, and sign up for further personalised engagement: by email, by event invitation, or by joining ‘ACT’; the Libdems online community network of discussion groups. Clear ‘Call To Actions’ on homepage and key landing pages are used to target the key audiences. And thought is given to what the experience will be when they get there, and any e-CRM dialogue that would ensue. Social media integration also plays a significant role in allowing community groups to build a voice and engage digitally. You Tube, Facebook and a Ning based community site are integrated, building on the power and advocacy of social networks. In summary, the results of using digital marketing for more targeted marketing communications have been tried, tested and proven, including in recent topical campaigns such as those for Barack Obama and Nick Clegg. For more detailed results on the effectiveness of these campaigns see : http://www.bluestatedigital.com/casestudies/client/obama_for_america_2008/ and http://www.beingonline.co.uk/casestudy-libdems.aspx Online communities really do work Networking brings results What do they include? There are many networking platforms online, all allowing you to go at the pace that’s right for you. They come in all shapes and sizes but there are a few ‘must haves‘to look out for: Profile builder - Your profile is essential to your networking success - the more detail you add the more effective your profile will be, allowing other users to target you and your business according to shared interests. Invite and Share - every network should come with an ‘invitation’ engine for you and other existing members to invite new members to join. Groups – allowing you to establish new business relationships by joining industry, professional, and other relevant groups. Groups can be created under any subject or sector and by any member. Some groups are specialised, dealing with specific industry interest such as how my industry is dealing with SPAM in email marketing whereas others are more generic in nature like business issues such as HR or Accounting. Discussion Forums – as a group member you can create a threaded discussion to encourage opinions and views in areas of shared interest. These in turn generate deeper connections. When these groups are defined by a local area, many meet outside the virtual world to build further on the social nature of connections. Blogs – commenting on blogs or the ability to create your own relevant blog within your network group is again important to create visibility and stand out within your group. Events – and finally you must be able to organise events and easily keep track of who's attending. Latest Activity - Au up-to-the-minute activity ‘feed’ of everything happening across your network including group discussion overviews and status updates from members. How to get started There are a lot of things you can do to get started on the networking front. But remember these online networks don't work for you unless you work at them. 1. Clearly define for yourself what you have to give and what benefits you expect to receive from connecting with people online. This may sound obvious, but it is a critical first step. Deciding your focus is key. Requests for support and connections are most effective when they are very specific. Who do you want to connect with? Which roles? Which industries? And what do you have to offer? Think not only in terms of your business development objectives, but other assets - your contacts and expertise. Write it all down - you're going to need it later. 3. Create a profile. Remember, much of the benefit of online networking is that you can build your business ’passively’, by creating an attractive profile for yourself. Photos are important, but take care to pick one which presents the image you want to convey to others. Most sites will let you poke around as a guest without setting up a profile first. But when you’re ready to set up your own, do it properly and fully. Most sites have some way of showcasing new members, so if you set up an empty profile, you're missing out completely on this additional exposure and potentially damaging your reputation. 4. Participate. You can't reasonably expect to derive value from a networking site unless you are also willing to create value. Watch for opportunities to contribute your expertise to the conversation - whether it’s a simple post on a discussion thread or a comment on a blog - or even to make connections between two other people, just as you would want others to do for you. 5. Focus. Time is precious and you want to get a return on your activity. Identify the niche communities where the people who interest you are active. Your best avenue for finding these niche communities is to connect with some of the people in that target group in the larger, public networks, get to know them, and then find out where else they connect. 6. Pull, don’t push too hard. Focus on awareness, not persuasion. Your participation and your profile will create awareness. Those who are interested will be attracted to you and will come to you for information and assistance. 7. Be consistent. Long gaps in your participation will be noticed, and if your participation conveniently peaks for the two weeks before your marketing campaign, people will see it as manipulative. Where to start Find some general-purpose networking sites to begin to make contacts. Some of the best ones for business development purposes are LinkedIn, Ning, Facebook, Plaxo, Xing and Google’s Buzz. A good place to start is LinkedIn.com. Seen as the premier social networking vehicle for business purposes, it has over 60 million users in over 200 countries. Although sometimes perceived as a career-building platform, it has now become accepted as the best place to get started and participate. It allows you to connect at an individual or group level. An increasingly popular platform is Ning. Relatively new to the UK, Ning allows you to create your own networking site and re-brand it to fit your corporate identity. This is known as ‘white label’ functionality. With a little initial technical help, you can also have full control over the layout of the main page and the appearance of all of the features, rearranging, removing, adding, and renaming your menus. Although often seen as a personal social networking space, Facebook is now encouraging industry groups to create a network around a cause or topic. Then you can join or invite others to join this cause as a fan. For example the digital marketing community uses platforms like Facebook to lobby government for more online inclusivity. As with other tools it’s a way of introducing people to others who share common interests or goals. An up and coming network is Plaxo, originally a way to keep, share or trade your address book online. Now their latest offering is Pulse – in which you will be able to create a ‘unified’ social media experience across the web. With an approved connection, Pulse will make it easy for you to see exactly what your business connections are creating and sharing online. And let’s not forget about good old Google, which recently made a major land grab for the social networking space by launching Buzz with plenty of interesting new features, particularly for mobile users. Wherever you network online – and whoever with – choose options that are most relevant to your business. Seek out and connect with business leaders and don’t forget that often niche social sites or groups will allow you stand out from the crowd more than generic ones. And finally, let’s remember that online networking can and does lead to building new business relationships that ultimately add to the bottom line. It cannot be seen in isolation, however, but just as another tool to add to your marketing mix. Adrian Lennon is Client Strategy & Business Development Director at Being Communications. Being offers services in online branding, web development, e-mail marketing, e-commerce, online advertising, online reporting and learning management systems. For more information contact Being by phone on 028 9073 5980, online at www.beingonline.co.uk or by email. March 2010 If you still think social media have little to do with the serious business of b2b, think again. Web marketing expert Adrian Lennon begins a series of reports. Many people outside the IT industry see social media as frivolous. They associate Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter with frenzied enthusiasts who have nothing better to do than swap photos and puerile platitudes. Relationships first, sales later Over a series of articles, I’d like to offer my tips on how the following can really work for your business: 1. Building a reputation through blogs 1. Building a reputation through blogs It’s also important to make blogs personable. Not only are they an opportunity to show off your knowledge, they can also show your company’s human side – proving your people are approachable and have empathy. First steps What should I write about? And, of course, write regularly. How hard will it be to set up a blog? http://www.blogger.com/ What do I call it? How do I get my blog noticed? Exactly the same applies for My MSN. Place a link to your blog in your online ‘signature’, so that any posts to forums, outgoing emails etc will promote your blog.Place your blog on all the major search engines. AddMe.com will submit your blog free to the top 14 search engines. SubmitExpress.com will submit your blog free to the top 20 search engines. Submit your best articles to related industry portals Should it be public or private? You have some degree of control over your visibility within the blogging service's community. For example, if you make your blog public, it may be listed by your blogging service under Recently Updated Blogs each time you make changes. If you want to keep your blog private it can be password protected to limit access. But if you want to drive more traffic to your blog and increase the number of readers who might click and buy through your blog, make it public. You can easily change this setting, so you can experiment a bit first in private – and then make it public when you're ready. How do I keep it going? Adrian Lennon is Client Strategy & Business Development Director at Being Communications. Being offers services in online branding, web development, e-mail marketing, e-commerce, online advertising, online reporting and learning management systems. For more information contact Being by phone on 028 9073 5980, online at www.beingonline.co.uk or by email. Feb 2010 - Customer is still king in the new digital worldDigital marketing is unquestionably the fastest developing area of marketing. In most lines of business, benefits can be reaped through reviewing the opportunities that digital technologies provide and how they impact customer behaviour and their online engagement. Any online approach should always begin with the customer. Understanding who the customer is, how the marketplace works, and how they use the online channel is just as critical to making a success of digital marketing as it was for traditional marketing. But in many cases, businesses aren’t sufficiently agile to take advantage of these new digital opportunities. The frustration is caused by many factors. In particular truly understanding how the web can help listen to the customer and leverage the insights revealed. To successfully manage your company’s digital channels to market it is worth being aware of the current trends in digital marketing, trends that endorse the premise that customer is indeed still king in the digital world: 1. Customer-centricity and customer insight – catering for all customer types and following trends and measuring satisfaction 2. Customer engagement – increasing how many times the customer interacts with your online brand 3. Digital marketing optimization - improving the efficiency of your digital marketing through reaching more of your target audience at a lower cost, and converting more 4. Web 2.0 and customer participation and conversations – using the newest technology to help listen to and help customers achieve their goals. Increasingly it has become a crucial role of the digital service industry to communicate the significance of these trends to industries that are less digitally savvy. Developing how your company uses the web for marketing research and as a customer listening tool should also be considered. The use of websites and email communications are a convenient means of soliciting feedback, essentially representing sales insights from the ‘front-line’ - insights which can effectively help shape a company’s future services. For those who have adopted digital marketing, there are some basic questions to ask in assessing whether your online activity is customer-centric: · How satisfied are my visitors? Do I know ? · What are my visitors at my website to do? · Are they completing what they set out to do? · If not, why not? If yes, what did they like best about the online experience? Sam Decker, formerly E-commerce manager at Dell, who helped develop the customer-centric strategy for Dell's $8 billion US consumer business, has stressed the importance of this activity by referring to ‘customer oxygen’. He says “Your company needs to breathe ‘customer oxygen’. The word ‘oxygen’ is important, because it reflects the idea that the customer’s perspective should infuse just about every business decision you make each day. This oxygen should flow from the CEO and beyond, as a customer-centric culture affects every division, department and function.” So it may come as some relief to know that even in the new digital world, human experience and listening skills are still key to making a success of digital marketing and delivering positive customer experiences. |
