The executives of today’s companies face the tough challenge of connecting with the best marketing actions that their firms need to promote products and services and, above all, reach their natural audience. And it is a technological challenge because many of these executives are not digital natives, do not have digital knowledge, and are unaware of much of the potential that online marketing puts at their service, so much so that they do not even know what they need.
The technological gap is in many cases evident among managers sufficiently competent in their professional fields. Not surprisingly, managers qualified as talented in the new digital marketing are extraordinarily appreciated by the companies they hire. It is a process of reinforcing digitization that not only will not go backward but will also increase its complexity.
The new managers, who have to be trained in the digitization of companies, have to attend to the application of new technologies and implement renewed forms of communication in a process that is much broader and that affects other areas of the operation of corporations, such as logistics or human resource management.
Information on the options available to carry out advertising actions and online campaigns is not lacking. They are leftover. There is a notable saturation of advice in the form of miracle recipes, arguments from gurus, and not a few courses, conferences, talks, or promotion of entrepreneurship that promise and that highlight the importance of social networks, of personalized communications through blogs, or the role of audiovisual models and formats.
Managers with a little introduction to digital marketing, with a little perspective and less advice on business digitization, have to make strategic decisions for their companies about online advertising without truly understanding how the associated technology works and what the implications are. Quite a technological challenge.
The normal thing is that when in doubt, they look at what the neighbor does. But, as in offline marketing, in conventional advertising, what can work for one company, even for the competition, does not have to work for another. Even for the same business purposes.
The showiest and spectacular digital marketing actions can, at the moment of truth, be of little use, offer low economic returns, expenses, and even a final image in the view of all that lasts, that does not conform to how you want it to. the values of the company are perceived. Something that can even damage the reputation of a company. So what should managers with no digital marketing experience look for? What strategies work?
We go in parts and answer these two questions, in the idea that they can serve as support to change the perspective on the value and scope of digital marketing within the management of a company.
Table of Contents
What should managers look for in the new digital marketing and what works?
Digital communication with customers is bi-directional.
Brands have to establish communication channels with their current users and work to promote identities and values to generate attraction.
Everything to create a community around the brand that works as a two-way communication link. A clear example of this new perspective on the brand-client relationship is the work of community managers who create a brand voice with authority in social networks, an authority that is always willing to join the interaction by establishing dialogue bridges.
Prosumers and smart consumers.
The importance of the Internet in deciding on products and services can be seen in the role of new types of consumers. The prosumer generates and consumes content and is a good ally to spread the information that brands want to advertise.
Smart Consumers buy only after evaluating the opinions of others about what they want to acquire or after analyzing each of the features and options of what they are studying buying. For brands, knowing what they think, how they decide what to buy, and when to buy these new consumers is vital.
Generate relevance
The globalized and hyper-communicated audience is generating a negative effect that is very harmful to the commercial aspirations of companies that want to digitize their communication. This effect is called attention deficit.
Something that translates into the western world that 80% of advertising communications do not generate any notoriety for the brands that produce them. To generate relevance, a basic strategy in the new marketing book is to add value to the content, relevance at what levels, and not to promote brand messages.
Understand the customer
At the point where you know what the customer needs, digital marketing must go one step further and understand what makes the user behave as they do. And understanding habits has to translate into offering you what you want when you want it. Brands should listen to what their potential customers are saying and do everything they can to bring positive communications to them.
Big data
Big Data is the great promise of online marketing, which offers to ensure accurate knowledge of what interests companies about what happens on the Internet. It is about putting mathematical algorithms to work that select relevant information about clients, competitors, or business opportunities with which to support the same advertising campaigns.
Real-time actions
The new digital marketing provides fast, direct interactions and feedback with the public in real-time that has an inestimable value to improve the reach of the campaigns but that, at the same time, supposes a great responsibility precisely with that connected user who observes and judges all brand interactions.
Personalized marketing
After establishing communication bridges to speak in the language of the users, surround yourself with them, and understand their habits, everything is given. Online advertising must be personalized or, in any case, it is potentially or highly customizable.
If you want to fulfill your objectives so as to offer users collaborations and help that they perceive as a value associated with the brand that makes a difference with respect to others and that in some way privileges them, the creation of content adapted for specific audiences represents one of the objectives inherent to the new actions of current marketing.
Communication channels
Tablets and mobile devices such as smartphones are the references of the new digital communication on which online advertising campaigns have to rely. These are terminals highly valued by users, in which vital data of citizens are contained and which behave like databases that are accessible with a few actions. Building customer loyalty with mobile applications, with useful apps that help improve interaction and direct communication with users, is also vital for brands.
E-commerce
Online stores are no longer a complement for physical sales of companies to become a communication vector for brands with a lot of added value. More and more it begins to become strange that a brand does not have applications for online sales. Something that also begins to be perceived as inappropriate because it is old and not very useful. Online stores have become a formula for popularizing products and services.
Well-targeted SEO
The vast majority of users who operate as smart consumers use search engines like Google to locate what they want. Appearing as the main result or first response to these information and content searches is one of the basic goals of the actions that SEO strategies seek. Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization.
The main idea is to appear as an answer in keywords that match the user’s search and that is related to what the companies offer. SEO is one of the cheapest digital marketing actions in relation to the benefits it generates in favor of the online visibility of brands, products, services, and corporate identities.
The development of digital marketing continues unstoppable and the option to adapt to its new interaction formulas is more than essential. Experts in this field speak of many changes, such as the transfer of renewed forms of digital collaboration between companies that fight for the same commercial niches, in what would represent a surprising change in the way of doing business.
Online marketing is a new frontier that executives of companies who are not digital natives have to bet on conquering. Obsessions and negativities do not fit in terms of the digital policies of companies. On the other side of the border, and with knowledge and control of the factors that count, there are business premises.
