Digital Marketing

While the need for digital marketing may seem obvious in 2014, there are still clients who remain reluctant to dive in. Here are 4 steps to lead them to water:

Show them how active their target really is online.

We worked with a senior marketing team who was unconvinced that digital marketing was right for their target. We created a consumer profile that showed who our consumer was, from demographics to psychographics, and included media consumption information that was already familiar to them (TV watching, etc). Once they were nodding along, we layered in digital consumption information, such as the multiscreen effect of the target watching TV with a tablet/phone in their hands. We further showed how media (magazine) properties had augmented their traditional offering with digital, and were enjoying stronger consumer engagement as a result. Show them how their competition is succeeding in digital marketing. Following up on the consumer discussion, we presented some key examples of the competition’s digital marketing activity that showed resulting deep consumer engagement with the brand, including a study in which digital activity could be tracked to sales. In addition, we demonstrated live how targeted advertising works, doing a Google search for a competitor’s brand, and then watching the brand pop up and follow us during our subsequent web browsing. Show them what gold standard digital marketing is from companies/brands they respect. We took a break from being followed by the competition to review work from brands like P&G’s Always (“Like A Girl”), to show how digital marketing has become a central part of brand-building rather than an add-on. Test and Learn: Give them something bite-sized to try. While our client was reluctant to green light a large portion of spend in the digital space, they were newly intrigued by and open to exploring digital marketing. We proposed several projects with varying degrees of commitment and complexity, from a standalone iAd effort that could be tracked and benchmarked against all other iAds for engagement, to a fuller social media effort around education in their industry. They chose the former, and we delivered a campaign that exceeded Apple’s engagement benchmark by 140% and resulted in 50,000 location searches for product availability. And now the question isn’t IF they are going to do digital marketing, but what the scope will be. Give these 4 steps a try, and get your clients excited about digital marketing! Feel free to share out if you find this valuable, and let me know how it goes– I’m eager to hear about your experience.