<p>If you ask a web designer, a search agency, an email marketing bureau, a social marketer and a display ad specialist how to spend your marketing budget they will all, with one voice say &ldquo;Give it all to me&rdquo;.&nbsp; That has given rise to the myth that one form of digital marketing is superior to another.&nbsp; The truth is that it depends how and what you want to achieve.&nbsp; I always explain to new clients that digital marketing is very similar to talking to someone attractive in a bar.&nbsp; If you just walk up to them and your opening shot is &ldquo;How about it&rdquo; your chances of success are not high and even if you do get a positive response it probably isn&rsquo;t likely to be a match made in heaven.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s much better to get to know the person and develop a relationship with them.&nbsp; Find out what they like and whether you are compatible.&nbsp; Communication makes good lasting relationships, and different digital marketing techniques suit where you are in the relationship cycle.</p> <p>We developed a marketing model for this which we call The Interactive Mix and it looks at the entire strategy of creating a relationship from first contact to regular buyer.&nbsp; It has four constituent parts.</p> <p><strong>Drivers </strong></p> <p>Drivers are used to get the word about you out there and amongst customers who have probably never heard of you but are open to conversations and the possibility of a relationship.&nbsp; The aim of a driver is to grab a potential customer&rsquo;s attention.&nbsp; For this Search is an excellent media to use, especially if you can get results with natural search as it is all free.&nbsp; On the other hand this takes time energy and effort to build up.&nbsp; Unless you have identified a brand new niche that everybody is talking about then you will need to look at other things to underpin this.&nbsp; Paid for search is another low cost alternative as is Social media.&nbsp; In both cases you will need to take a canny approach to things.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t just set up your blog and write in it.&nbsp; If you do you will be shouting into a void forever.&nbsp; Instead look for other blogs with related topics (Google alerts is great for this), and leave comments to get the conversation going.&nbsp; If your content and opinions are good enough people will spot them and then click through to your content so you will be spreading the word.&nbsp; Back this up with Tweets to relevant discussion topics and you will start to get the conversation going.</p> <p>For your Pay per click search don&rsquo;t focus on brand names or your company name.&nbsp; Focus on phrases that describe what you do.&nbsp; Keep it short, keep it relevant, and intriguing.&nbsp; Experiment with different worded copy until you find the one that is optimised but don&rsquo;t stop there, keep trying to improve it.&nbsp; Google will reward you for an ad that performs well and achieves a high click through.&nbsp; Using this technique you can bring the overall cost of your CPC activity down. &nbsp;With all your driver activity your aim is to get people who are intrigued by you to click through to somewhere, usually a website to find out more.&nbsp; This leads s to the next step in the strategy</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Acquirers</strong></p> <p>Acquirers begin the relationship with people open to the idea of a relationship.&nbsp; If I go back to my bar analogy generally a good first question is to find out a person&rsquo;s name.&nbsp; In digital marketing terms this is their email address .&nbsp; Think of this as the first transaction between the two of you.&nbsp; You are asking for something so you must offer something.&nbsp; I advise clients that content is a great thing to offer at this stage.&nbsp; It can be a white paper, a report, a series of articles, a top ten tips list.&nbsp; It will obviously be different for everybody but the point is that it is low cost (ideally no cost) to you but f perceived value to the visitor.&nbsp; It doesn&rsquo;t have to be high value, just enough value for them to want to give you their email address and agree that they would like to receive more information like this from you.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s one of the basic foundations of permission based marketing.&nbsp; It will also enable you to build the relationship on to the next stage of the process.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Converters</strong></p> <p>You know something about them and so now you can start to make other offers as well in your communications.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t just blindly offer everyone the same thing.&nbsp; Segment the data you have and add to it with each communication.&nbsp; Typically this is achieved through email, but social media can offer a good secondary approach as well.&nbsp; Email is immediate and lingering where as social media tends to get out of date quite quickly and can mean you end up repeating yourself to the annoyance of your audience.&nbsp; Combining the two and playing to their individual strengths often produces the best results.&nbsp; The key here is to make your communications timely, personal, relevant and useful.&nbsp; So use their first name in your copy, if you can, make offers that you have picked out for them specifically (I mean for their data segment).&nbsp; Ask questions as part of the transaction so you can make future offers more relevant and timely.&nbsp; All this should be feeding your database and helping you target more effectively.&nbsp; Some will answer willingly and some will not, it&rsquo;s all part of managing the process down to the point where your consumers receive that email that offers them exactly what they need at the time they need it, and so in response they click on the offer and become a customer.&nbsp; Payday! That&rsquo;s great but the job is not done yet.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Retainers</strong></p> <p>A lot of companies are great at winning business but do not tend to hold onto their customers.&nbsp; Pareto&rsquo;s principal states that 80% of your revenue will be generated by 20% of your customers.&nbsp; So focussing on your best customers is therefore a good idea to maximise the 20% activity in order to generate 80% of your sales.&nbsp; These are special people and you need to treat them right.&nbsp; You do this by carrying on your email and eCRM activity to give them special offers only for them.&nbsp; Be careful though. &nbsp;Do not over communicate with them.&nbsp; Look at your unsubscribe rates and if they suddenly shoot up you are probably messaging them too often.&nbsp; Cut back and measure the response and unsubscribe rates carefully to get the optimum level.&nbsp; If handled correctly these customers will start to see you as a key supplier and increase their spend with you. &nbsp;They will also start to tell other people and become drivers for you, which repeats the process.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>I am happy to answer questions or address comments that people have on this, and hope it helps you.</p> 2009-10-15T09:36:55Z -1.611 177 6939 true 1 32408 get-the-interactive-mix-right 0 2009-10-15T13:10:38Z 2009-10-15T17:10:54Z

Digital marketing channels offer new startups a method to promote a new business at a price access point that puts it within reach of almost everybody. Understanding how it all fits together is the key

1 2009-10-15T17:10:54Z