How to manage your future with interactive marketing
Mar 30
“ Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014 as marketers shift dollars away from traditional media…” Forrester Research 002180.forrester.interactivemarketingprojections
As mentioned in the report titled “US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014,” interactive marketing spend will increase from 12% today to 22% in the next five years. Money will shift from traditional marketing and advertising channels into social media, email and mobile marketing”.
We have discussed this powerfull trend in past posts of Hot Business Issues (December 20 and November 21, 2009) and pointed out that a major issue troubling businesses is how one can be sure that the money is efficiently spent. Simply transfering money from mass media to search marketing and online display advertising is not always the answer. Without a strategy and appropriate tools with which to measure success, little if no advantage is gained.
At the same time, consumers are demanding more from businesses. They want appropriate and relevant content tailored to their needs for information and knowledge. Thus, we come to some very simple conclusions useful for businesses in their efforts to take advantage of this new trend.
1. Foremost is the realization that interactive will definitely cannibalize traditional media.
2. More than 40% of marketers believe that “marketing is the strategic leader in their organization. and Forrester predicts that CMOs will begin to buy their own technology and focus on interactive solutions like Web analytics and email marketing.
3. Search Marketing has a leading share of the interactive budget and will continue to be very important in the future
4. Social media become an integral part of the interactive marketing mix. More companies will embrace social media and Forrester points out that 64 percent of marketers already invested in social media applications and 30 percent more will be added by the end of 2009. This creates a need to measure user interaction and activity with your brand on social networking sites.
5. E-mail marketing will continue to grow fast since marketers see this as an economically efficient method to reach customers. Forrester points out that email marketing is overtaking direct mail as a better way to communicate with customers.
6. And finally we see the evidence of strategic mobile application development. Everyone is participating these days in developing mobile applications.. With the increase of applications, an opportunity will arise for marketers to use this means to reach their customers.
Linkedin
Twitter
Apr 16 at 23:28
This is a really good article in which you make some excellent points. I would add:
1) The only way to cope with the Inbound Marketing phenomenon is by using Marketing Automation tools and procedures.
2) That no matter how great these tools are, the Process behind using them and the ways in which you train, setup and empower your people to use them properly, is vital. An idiot with a high-powered circular saw is going to damage himself and ruin the workpiece – a master craftsman with the same saw is going to produce some great results.
It may help people to think of the process of Inbound Marketing Automation (IMA), as we call it, by dividing it into 4 phases:
1) Attract more visitors to your website through SEO, Social Media Marketing or SMM, and PPC.
2) Engage their attention with industry leading content (website copy, white papers, videos, podcasts). And laying out a content map for this is essential, as the content must be tailored to each individual prospect’s need, AT THAT INSTANT IN TIME (i.e., as they move around their own buying-cycle, the information they need to nudge them to the next step varies).
3) Qualify these visitors by grading their profiles and using their digital footprints to rack up a score and hence “know” their quality. And, while you are qualifying them, nurture them from cold leads to hot prospects with multi-touch drip email campaigns.
4) Automatically feed these hot sales ready prospects directly into your CRM and automatically notify the assigned sales rep (based on product or territory or whatever…).
Our website contains a Resource Library of white papers, tools, videos and an extensive glossary, all covering the above 4 steps in more detail.
http://www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca
May 07 at 00:06
Dimitris
Social Media, and the open online conversation is taking-control over the traditional methods used by Marketeers, it is now the time of customer-facing experts who can lead the organization based on their dynamically-changed knowledge of “what users wants”.
Unlike what this article say about email marketing , I believe this method will soon loose its effectiveness, just like its ancestor, the direct-mailing , it is all spam, people already hate it, and we all thank all those smart-technologists that are seeking ways to help us escape all this spam.
This is why we love to build websites with a good CMS, such as Drupal, that easily connect site owners and content managers with their users, and we tell all our customers to be true, tell their audience how they can help them, and work hard on focusing the content for where their competitive edge is.
Thanks for the great article, and keep it coming
Millo
May 11 at 17:20
The amount of $55 billion is very promising and this is another good reason to consider the effectiveness of the advertisement. Unlike other traditional media, Internet marketing offers tools and methods to evaluate the effectiveness in a precise way.
May 13 at 16:56
On 05/11/10 1:40 AM, Michael Tsogas wrote:
——————–
Tailoring marketing message is very important to everything we do when it comes to any marketing planning and execution. It is very crucial to spend time; thoughts and possibly money to create a powerful marketing message that would help and stand out amongst the clutter and beyond any competition.
Simply, marketing message is the content for collateral material, website and any marketing initiatives (print, online, TV, radio…)companies use to promote products and services. If well put together, marketing message should speak to prospects while grabbing their attention and clearly explaining how variety of products and services will solve problems; what is unique about the company; and what differentiates the company from the competition.
In order to create a powerful marketing message you need to take the following into consideration:
- Your Target Market: Work hard on identifying the target market and narrow it down so you can tailor an effective message that appeals to that group.
- Problems and Solutions: Identify how what you are offering might be the solution to your target’s problem. Define the pain so your marketing message addresses it while offering an immediate solution through your company. Concentrate on the “what is in it for me?” and how services and products are geared towards offering a solution.
- Share Testimonials: Go beyond telling the audience about your solution by proving to them that what you have to offer actually works. We are bombarded by over 3000 promotional messages on a daily basis which is resulting in building resistance to any sales pitch we encounter. On the other hand, we tend to believe others who are similar to us and who experience positive results. That is why, it is important that sharing testimonials from your customers showing results that were achieved.
- Why You? Make it clear why customers should choose you over your competition. What makes you different? Communicate your differences in an understandable fashion.
Michael Tsogas