The Internet and primary research

Primary research involves gathering data for a specific research task. It is based on data that has not been gathered beforehand. Primary research can be either qualitative or quantitative.

Primary research can be used to explore a market and can help to develop the hypotheses or research questions that must be answered by further research. Generally, qualitative data is gathered at this stage. For example, online research communities can be used to identify consumer needs that are not being met and to brainstorm possible solutions. Further quantitative research can investigate what
proportion of consumers share these problems and which potential solutions best meet those needs.

The Internet and secondary research

Research based on secondary data should precede primary data research. It should be used in establishing the context and parameters for primary research:

•  The data can provide enough information to solve the problem at hand, thereby negating the need for further research.
•  Secondary data can provide sources for hypotheses that can be explored through primary research.
•  Sifting through secondary data is a necessary precursor for primary research, as it can provide information relevant to sample sizes and audience, for example.
•  The data can be used as a reference base to measure the accuracy of primary research.

Companies with online properties have access to a wealth of web analytics data that are recorded digitally. These data can then be mined for insights. It’s worth remembering, though, that it’s usually impossible for you to access the web analytics data of competitors – so this method will give you information only about your own customers.

Customer communications are also a source of data that can be used, particularly communications with the customer service department. Committed customers who complain, comment or compliment are providing information that can form the foundation for researching customer satisfaction.

Social networks, blogs and other forms of social media have emerged as forums where consumers discuss their likes and dislikes, and can be particularly vocal about companies and products. These data can, and should, be tracked and monitored to establish consumer sentiment. If a community is established for research purposes, these should be considered primary data, but using social media to research existing sentiments is considered secondary research.

The Internet is an ideal starting point for conducting secondary research based on published data and findings. But with so much information out there, it can be a daunting task to find reliable resources.
The first point of call for research online is usually a search engine, such as www.google.com or www.yahoo.com. Search engines usually have an array of advanced features, which can aid online research. For example, Google offers:

•  Advanced search (http://www.google.co.za/advanced_search?hl=en)
•  Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.co.za/schhp?hl=en)
•  Google Book Search (http://www.google.co.za/books?hl=en)
•  Google News Archive (http://news.google.com/newspapers)

Many research publications are available online, some for free and some at a cost. Many of the top research companies feature analyst blogs, which provide some industry data and analysis free of charge.

Some notable resources are:

•  www.e-consultancy.com
•  www.experian.com/hitwise
•  www.pewinternet.org (US data)
•  www.nielsen.com
•  www.worldwideworx.com (SA data)

Primary and secondary research

Research can be based on primary dataor secondary data. Primary research is conducted when new data is gathered for a particular product or hypothesis. This is where information does not exist already or is not accessible, and therefore needs to be specifically collected from consumers or businesses. Surveys, focus groups, research panels and research communities can all be used when conducting primary market research.

Secondary research uses existing, published data as a source of information. It can be more cost effective than conducting primary research. The Internet opens up a wealth of resources for conducting this research. The data would, however, originally have been collected for solving problems other than the one at hand, so they may not be sufficiently specific. Secondary research can be useful in identifying problems to be investigated through primary research.

The Internet is a useful tool when conducting both primary and secondary research. Not only are there a number of free tools available when it comes to calculating things such as sample size and confidence levels (see the section on Tools of the trade for some examples), but it is also an ideal medium to reach large numbers of people at a relatively low cost.

Research methodology

A research methodology is the process you should follow in order to conduct accurate and valuable research. Research should involve certain steps:

1.  Establish the goals of the project
2.  Determine your sample
3.  Choose a data collection method
4.  Collect data
5.  Analyse the results
6.  Formulate conclusions and actionable insights (for example, producing reports)

Most often, market research is focused around specific issues unique to a business or brand. It is therefore not always possible to get hold of comparable information to aid decision making. This is why it can be useful to start from a specific research problem or hypothesis.

Your research question should guide your entire process, and will determine your choice of data collection method (more on those later).

Key concepts in market research

While the research field can be full of complex terminology, there are four key concepts you should understand before conducting your own research:

•  Research methodology
•  Qualitative and quantitative data
•  Primary and secondary research
•  Sampling

The importance of market research

The modern world is unpredictable, and things change very quickly in the digital age. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to keep up with trends, customer needs, popular opinions and competitors – and at the same time, staying at the forefront of the market is vital to success.

So, how can you keep your brand current and ensure you are meeting your customers’ needs?

The answer is to conduct market research. Market research helps you make informed business decisions. It involves systematically gathering, recording and analysing data about customers, competitors and the market, and turning this data into insight that can drive marketing strategies and campaigns.

Online market research is the process of using digital tools, data and connections to glean valuable insights about a brand’s target audience. In other words, it’s the process of learning about your audience by engaging and observing them online. Technology plays a key role in gathering data and connecting with research participants, and makes the whole process quicker and easier to manage than traditional offline research methods.

Traditional and online market research have the same goals and underlying principles, but online market research has the benefit of using digital technology, which provides a range of benefits:

• The Internet is always on, meaning that data are readily available at any time.
• Many of the processes for finding, gathering and storing data can be automated (for example, you can get an automatic email alert if someone mentions your brand, or you can set up self-administered digital surveys).
• You have access to a large number of participants around the world at the click of a button.
• A lot of the information you will use is already being automatically collected (such as web analytics and social media data) – all you need to do is access it.
• People are often happy to share their own research, insights and methodologies online, so you can access this trove of resources to inform your own research.
• Online market research can be much more cost effective and quick to set up than traditional research techniques.

There are many reasons why you should conduct regular market research:

• Gain insights into your consumers – this can include:
o What customers want and need from your brand
o What customers like and dislike about the brand
o Why customers buy the brand’s products or services
o Why potential customers might choose your brand over another one
o Why (or why not) customers make repeat purchases

• Understand the changes in your industry and business

• Discover new market trends on which you can capitalise

• Find new potential sales avenues, customers, products and more

• Find and engage new audiences

• Allow customers to help steer your business 

If you are able to understand your customers and the greater business context, you will be able to market more effectively to them, meet their needs better, and drive more positive sentiment of your brand. All of this adds up to happier customers and, ultimately, a healthier bottom line.

Key terms and concepts for market research

Term	Definition
Bounce rate	The number of people who view one page and then leave a website without viewing any other pages
Data	Statistics and facts collected for analysis.
Focus group	A form of qualitative research where people are asked questions in an interactive group setting. From a marketing perspective, it is an important tool for acquiring feedback regarding new products and various topics.
Hypothesis	A supposition that is tested in relation to known facts; a proposition based on reason but not necessarily assumed to be true.
Listening lab	A testing environment where the researcher observes how a customer uses a website or product.
Observation/online ethnography	When a researcher immerses themselves in a particular environment in order to gather insights.
ORM	Online reputation management (ORM) Understanding and influencing the perception of an entity online.
Primary research	The collection of data to present a new set of findings from original research.
Qualitative data	Data that can be observed but not measured. Deals with descriptions.
Quantitative data	Data that can be measured or defined. Deals with numbers
Really simple syndication (RSS)	RSS allows you to receive updates without requiring you to constantly visit web pages in your browser.
Research community	A community set up with the intention of being a source for research.
Research methodology	Methods employed in research for reaching results.
Sample size	The number of respondents in a sample of the population.
Secondary research	The collection of existing research data.
Sentiment	The emotion attached to a particular mention – positive, negative or neutral.
Statistically significant	A sample that is big enough to represent valid conclusions.

Introduction to market research

The Internet is built for research. Whether it’s a consumer shopping around for prices, a researcher exploring a topic or a fan looking up their favorite band, the Internet makes finding and analyzing information easier than ever before. That’s because everything people do online leaves a data footprint.

Consumers are able to research companies and products easily, gathering information to compare prices and services with a few clicks of the mouse. Consumers are also able to share likes and dislikes easily, whether that information is shared with companies or with friends.

This process can also work in reverse: brands can study who their customers are, what they are interested in, how they feel about the brand, and the best times and places to engage with them. This is what online market research is all about.

•  Why online market research is crucial to any marketing endeavour
•  The most important concepts you need to know in order to start conducting research
•  Several methods for conducting online research, including surveys, online focus groups and online monitoring
•  What problems and pitfalls to avoid when researching online

Case study: Nike digital strategy

1 One-line summary

Nike transformed its marketing strategy by embracing key digital strategies such as data analytics, social engagement and storytelling.

2 The problem

As one of the biggest sports brands in the world, Nike was not struggling for exposure or attention. However, the brand was noticing that its traditional, big-budget advertising strategy was seeing fewer returns over time.

The biggest market for Nike products consists of young people between the ages of 15 and 25, who spend 20% more with Nike than any other group. But these Generation Y customers weren’t paying attention to big, top-down media, and were looking for a brand that offered constant change and innovation, not just the same old thing over and over.

Nike realised that it needed a new approach to reach this digital audience.

3 The solution

Understanding that marketing in the digital age is a conversation, not a monologue, Nike dropped its spending on TV and print advertising by 40% between 2010 and 2012 – but increased its overall marketing budget to $2.4 billion in 2012.

Nike chose to use a combination of technological innovations, data analytics and social media engagement to reach this new, digitally savvy audience.
Engineers and scientists associated with prestigious organisations such as MIT and Apple were hired to build exciting new technologies and examine market insights. One of their biggest accomplishments was the creation of Nike+ in 2010 – a device that lets users track their exercise regimens, upload these to the web, monitor their progress, and share their achievements socially.
The product range grew to include the Nike FuelBand.

This new community created incredible volumes of data, which Nike used to track behaviours, create online communities and spaces for Nike fans, and build meaningful relationships between the brand and its customers. Nike moved its social media marketing team in-house so that it had a closer connection to this data and the conversations being generated by its fans.

Nike also embraced a range of other digital best practices:

• A strong focus on storytelling: Nike advertising shifted from delivering one core ‘big message’ about its products to talking about inspiration, aspirations and overcoming odds. For example, Nike’s ‘I Would Run To You’ ad (essentially a funny short film) shows the story of a long-distance couple reconnecting by running across the country to see each other.

• Being an authentic brand: The storytelling approach creates authenticity and a sense of community. Nike also strives to understand and engage with the subcultures of each sport, talking to them in the vernacular they are familiar with.

• Understanding and communicating with customers on their terms:When Nike created its big-budget ‘Write The Future’ ad for the 2012 World Cup, featuring soccer superstars Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, it flighted the ad on Facebook and YouTube rather than on TV. Having seeded to a community and primed it with teasers, the ad received 8 million views in the first week and went viral.

• Being remarkable and shareable:Nike put up a 30-storey digital billboard in Johannesburg, South Africa that was populated with constantly-updating user tweets, creating a buzz around the campaign.

• Allowing mass customisation: The Nike iD online store lets fans create their own custom shoe designs and have them shipped. The concept earned Nike over $100 million in its first year.

4 The results

Nike’s new approach – harnessing data for user insight and creating a diverse, social and engaged digital strategy – has had excellent results.

Nike reaches over 200 million fans every day in an interactive dialogue, rather than having to rely on big sponsored events such as the Super Bowl or World Cup to reach this number.

The massive volumes of freely shared user data produce meaningful brand insights, lead to product innovations, and allow the brand to get closer to consumers.

In addition to this:

• Nike share prices rose by 120% between 2010 and 2012 – an important consideration, since every business aims to make money, after all.

• Nike+ experienced a 55% growth in membership in 2012 – as of June 2012, 7 million users have signed up for the service, and the majority of these connect with the brand several times each week to upload and review their exercise data.

• As of August 2013, the main Nike Facebook page has over 15 million likes, the Nike Football page has 19.4 million likes, and the Nike Basketball page has over 5 million – posts typically see a high level of interaction and discussion.

• Similarly, on Twitter, the brand is also engaging millions of fans – 1.7 million on the core Nike account, 1.2 million on the brand’s US-based Nike.com store account, and 1.4 million on the Nike Football account

The bigger picture

All of the chapters in this book are linked to digital marketing strategy in one way or another.

A solid business and brand strategy should be the starting point of any marketing venture, and you should always keep one eye on it as you develop specific campaigns, platforms and approaches. After all, you should always remember that you are trying to reach your chosen audience by communicating to them in the most effective way, to build lucrative long-term relationships.

While strategy helps you understand the questions you should ask, market research is the process used to answer them. From there, content marketing strategy helps you put your ideas into practice, creating materials that engage, enthral, convert and retain customers

Case study questions
1.  What was the key insight that helped Nike develop a holistic marketing strategy?
2.  What role do you think offline marketing and branding channels played in furthering the digital strategy?
3.  What should Nike take into consideration when rolling out new elements and campaigns as part of their marketing strategy?

Tactics and evaluation in detail

Tactic	Outcome
SEO	Customer retention and acquisition
This is the practice of optimising a website to rank higher on the search engine results pages for relevant search terms. SEO involves creating relevant, fresh and user-friendly content that search engines index and serve when people enter a search term that is relevant to your product or service.	SEO has a key role to play in acquisition, as it ensures your organisation’s offering will appear in the search results, allowing you to reach potential customers. A site that is optimised for search engines is also a site that is clear, relevant and well designed. These elements ensure a great user experience, meaning that SEO also plays a role in retention.
Search advertising	Sales, customer retention and acquisition
In pay-per-click or search advertising, the advertiser pays only when someone clicks on their ad. The ads appear on search engine results pages.	The beauty of search advertising is that it is keyword based. This means an ad will come up in response to the search terms entered by the consumer. It therefore plays a role in sales, acquisition and retention. It allows the advertiser to reach people who are already in the buying cycle or are expressing interest in what they have to offer.
Online advertising	Branding and acquisition
Online advertising covers advertising in all areas of the Internet – ads in emails, ads on social networks and mobile devices, and display ads on normal websites.	The main objective of display advertising is to raise brand awareness online. It can also be more interactive and therefore less disruptive than traditional or static online advertising, as users can choose to engage with the ad or not. Online advertising can be targeted to physical locations, subject areas, past user behaviours, and much more.
Affiliate marketing	Sales and branding
Affiliate marketing is a system of reward whereby referrers are given a ‘finder’s fee’ for every referral they give.	Online affiliate marketing is widely used to promote eCommerce websites, with the referrers being rewarded for every visitor, subscriber or customer provided through their efforts. It is a useful tactic for brand building and acquisition.
Video marketing	Branding, customer retention and value creation
Video marketing involves creating video content. This can either be outright video advertising, or can be valuable, useful, content marketing.	Since it is so interactive and engaging, video marketing is excellent for capturing and retaining customer attention. Done correctly, it provides tangible value – in the form of information, entertainment or inspiration – and boosts a brand’s image in the eyes of the public.
Social media	Branding, value creation and participation
Social media, also known as consumer-generated media, is media (in the form of text, visuals and audio) created to be shared. It has changed the face of marketing by allowing collaboration and connection in a way that no other channel has been able to offer.	From a strategic perspective, social media is useful for brand building, raising awareness of the brand story and allowing the consumer to become involved in the story through collaboration. Social media platforms also play a role in building awareness, due to their shareable, viral nature. They can also provide crowdsourced feedback and allow brands to share valuable content directly with their fans.
Email marketing	Customer retention and value creation
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that delivers commercial and content-based messages to an audience. It is extremely cost effective, highly targeted, customisable on a mass scale and completely measurable – all of which make it one of the most powerful digital marketing tactics.	Email marketing is a tool for building relationships with potential and existing customers through valuable content and promotional messages. It should maximise the retention and value of these customers, ultimately leading to greater profitability for the organisation as a whole. A targeted, segmented email database means that a brand can direct messages at certain sectors of their customer base in order to achieve the best results.

Once the objectives and tactics have been set, these should be cross-checked and re-evaluated against the needs and resources of your organisation to make sure your strategy is on the right track and no opportunities are being overlooked.

Objectives in detail

Objectives are essential to any marketing endeavour – without them, your strategy would have no direction and no end goal or win conditions. It’s important to be able to take a step back and ask, ‘Why are we doing any of this? What goal, purpose or outcome are we looking for?’

• What are you trying to achieve?
• How will you know if you are successful?

Objectives need to be SMART:

• Specific– the objective must be clear and detailed, rather than vague and general.
• Measurable– the objective must be measurable so that you can gauge whether you are attaining the desired outcome.
• Attainable– the objective must be something that is possible for your brand to achieve, based on available resources.
• Realistic– the objective must also be sensible and based on data and trends; don’t exaggerate or overestimate what can be achieved.
• Time-bound– finally, the objective must be linked to a specific timeframe.

> Tactics

Objectives are not the same as tactics. Tactics are the specific tools or approaches you will use to meet your objectives – for example, a retention-based email newsletter, a Facebook page, or a CRM implementation. As a strategy becomes more complex, you may have multiple tactics working together to try to achieve the same objective. Tactics may change (and often should), but the objective should remain your focus. We’ll look at tactics in more detail in the next section.

> Key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are the specific metrics or pieces of data that you will look at to determine whether your tactics are performing well and meeting your objectives. For example, a gardener may look at the growth rate, colour and general appearance of a plant to evaluate whether it is healthy. In the same way, a marketer will look at a range of data points to determine whether a chosen tactic is delivering. KPIs
are determined per tactic, with an eye on the overall objective.

> Targets

Finally, targets are the specific values that are set for your KPIs to reach within a specific time period. Sportspeople need to reach targets to advance their careers

– for example, come in the top ten to qualify for the final, or run 10km in under 27 minutes. If you meet or exceed a target, you are succeeding; if you don’t reach it, you’re falling behind on your objectives and you need to reconsider your approach

(or your target).

Here is an example:

SMART objective:

• Increase sales through the eCommerce platform by 10% within the next six months.

Tactics:

• Search advertising
• Facebook brand page

KPIs per tactic:

• Search advertising – number of search referrals, cost per click on the ads
• Facebook brand page – number of comments and shares on campaign-specific posts

Targets per tactic:

• Search advertising – 1 000 search referrals after the first month, with a 10% month-on-month increase after that
• Facebook brand page – 50 comments and 10 shares on campaign-specific posts per week

Crafting a digital marketing strategy

Any activity with an end goal (whether it’s winning a war, building a city or selling a product) should have a blueprint in place for every person in the organisation to follow. In digital marketing, however, there is no single definitive approach – each business must create its own roadmap. However, there are questions you can use to guide the process.

A strategy needs to cover the questions of who you are, what you are offering and to whom, as well as why and how you are doing so. The steps and questions below cover what an organisation should be aware of when creating and implementing a strategy that will meet its marketing objectives and solve its challenges.

1. Context
The first step in crafting a successful strategy is to examine the context of the organisation and the various stakeholders. We’ve covered this under marketing strategy earlier in this chapter, but it bears repeating:

• What is the context in which you are operating (PESTLE factors) and how is this likely to change in the future?
• Who are you, why does your brand matter and what makes your brand useful and valuable?

• Who are your customers, and what needs, wants and desires do they have?
• Who are your competitors? These may extend beyond organisations that compete with you on the basis of price and product and could also be competition in the form of abstracts such as time and mindshare.

Thorough market research will reveal the answers to these questions

2. Value exchange

Once you have examined the market situation, the second step is an examination of your value proposition or promise: in other words, what unique value your organisation can add to that market. It is important to identify the supporting value-adds to the brand promise that are unique to the digital landscape. What extras, beyond the basic product or service, do you offer to customers?

The Internet offers many channels for value creation. However, the definition of what is ‘valuable’ depends largely on the target audience, so it is crucial to research your users and gather insights into what they want and need.

Content marketing is the process of conceptualising and creating this sort of content – examples of value-based content include a DIY gardening video for a hardware brand, a research paper for a business analyst, or a funny infographic for a marketing company.

3. Objectives

When setting your digital marketing goals, there are four key aspects to consider: objectives, tactics, key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets.

4. Tactics and evaluation

Many digital tools and tactics are available once you have defined your digital marketing objectives. Each tactic has its strengths – for example, acquisition (gaining new customers) may best be driven by search advertising, while email is one of the most effective tools for selling more products to existing customers.

5. Ongoing optimisation

It is increasingly important for brands to be dynamic, flexible and agile when marketing online. New tactics and platforms emerge every week, customer behaviours change over time, and people’s needs and wants from brand evolve as their relationship grows. The challenge is to break through the online clutter to connect with customers in an original and meaningful way.

This process of constant change should be considered in the early stages of strategy formulation, allowing tactics and strategies to be modified and optimised as you go. After all, digital marketing strategy should be iterative, innovative and open to evolution.

Understanding user experience and the user journey is vital to building successful brands. Budget should be set aside upfront for analysing user data and optimising conversion paths.

Social thinking and socially informed innovation are also valuable and uniquely suited to the online space. Socially powered insight can be used to inform strategic decisions in the organisation, from product roadmaps to service plans. Brands have moved away from being merely present in social media towards actively using it, aligning it with actionable objectives and their corresponding metrics. This is critical in demonstrating ROI and understating the opportunities and threats in
the market.

Managing the learning loop (the knowledge gained from reviewing the performance of your tactics, which can then be fed back into the strategy) can be difficult. This is because brand cycles often move more slowly than the real-time results you will see online. It is therefore important to find a way to work agility into the strategy, allowing you to be quick, creative and proactive, as opposed to slow, predictable and reactive.

SWOT analysis

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is an ideal way to understand your business and your market.

Always have a purpose in mind when conducting a SWOT analysis. For example, study the external threats to your business, and see how learning from these can help you overcome internal weaknesses. This should tie back in to your business and marketing objectives – strengths should be promoted, opportunities should be sought out, while threats and weaknesses should be minimised as much as possible. A SWOT analysis is part of a situational analysis and identifies the key
issues that direct the marketing strategy.

The Four Ps

1. Products (and services)

Products and services are what a company sells. The Internet enables business to sell a huge range of products, from fast-moving consumer goods and digital products such as software, to services such as consultancy. Online, the experience the user has in discovering and purchasing can be considered part of the product the brand provides.

The Internet has enabled mass customisation. For example, Nike (nikeid.nike.com) and Converse (www.converse.com) allow customers to customise their own trainers. The Internet as a distribution medium also makes it possible for products such as software and music to be sold digitally.

2. Price

The prevalence of search engines and of shopping comparison websites, such as www.pricerunner.co.uk, www.pricecheck.co.za and www.nextag.com, makes it easy for customers to compare product prices across a number of retailers; this makes the Internet a market of near-perfect competition (Porter, 2008)

These stories then go on to build connections between people, ideas, brands and products. Communities of people follow truly great brands because they want to be part of their stories. Apple is a good example of a brand with a dedicated tribal following. People want their products; they want the world to know that they have an iPhone or a Macbook. This kind of tribal following spells success for any brand.

With price differentiation becoming a challenge, especially for smaller players in the market, businesses need to consider differentiating on value. Value is a combination of service, perceived benefits and price, where customers may be willing to pay a higher price for a better experience, or if they feel they are getting something more than just the product.

3. Placement (or distribution)

Product distribution and markets no longer have to be dictated by location. Simply by making their products visible online (for example, on a website or Facebook page), brands can reach a global market. The key is to reach and engage customers on the channels they are using – this is why choosing your digital tactics is vital.

You want to engage customers on their terms, not yours.

Technology such as APIs, SOAP services, RSS and XML allow information and services to be distributed throughout the world. For example, the API for a hotel reservations database allows a diverse range of websites to offer instant online bookings for hotels in the inventory.

4. Promotion

The Internet, as an information and entertainment medium, naturally lends itself to promoting products. The online promotional mix is an extension of the offline, but with some significant differences. For one, online promotion can be tracked, measured and targeted in a far more sophisticated way.

But promotion doesn’t just mean advertising and talking at customers – on the Internet, it’s crucial to engage, collaborate and join conversations, too. Interacting with customers helps build relationships, and the web makes this sort of communication easy. That’s why a good portion of this book is devoted to engagement tactics and tools.

The building blocks of marketing strategy

The following building-block techniques will help you structure a marketing strategy – both online and offline – that addresses your core business challenges. These strategy models are just starting points and ways to help you think through problems; as you grow in experience and insight, you could find yourself relying on them less or adapting them.

Porter’s Five Forces analysis

Porter’s Five Forces analysis is a business tool that helps determine the competitive intensity and attractiveness of a market. The Internet’s low barrier to entry means that many new businesses are appearing online, providing near-infinite choices for customers. This makes it important to consider new factors when devising a marketing strategy.

The Four Ps

The Four Ps of marketing help you structure the components that make up a brand’s offering, differentiators and marketing. They have been fundamentally changed by the Internet and need to be looked at in the context offered by digitally connected media and from the perspective of the consumer. How your brand is positioned in the mind of your consumer will ultimately determine your success.

Digital marketing strategy

Once you have a clear sense of what the business challenge or objective is, and you have defined how your marketing strategy will work towards fulfilling it, you can start thinking about your digital marketing strategy.

Digital marketing strategy builds on and adapts the principles of traditional marketing, using the opportunities and challenges offered by the digital medium. A digital marketing strategy should be constantly iterating and evolving. Since the Internet allows for near-instantaneous feedback and data gathering, digital marketers should constantly be optimising and improving their online marketing
efforts.

User-centric thinking, which involves placing the user at the core of all decisions, is vital when looking at building a successful digital marketing strategy. The digital marketing strategist of today is offered not only a plethora of new tactical possibilities, but also unprecedented ways of measuring the effectiveness of chosen strategies and tactics. Digital also allows greater opportunities for interaction and consumer engagement than were possible in the past, so it is important to consider the ways in which the brand can create interactive experiences for consumers, not just broadcast messages.

The fact that digital marketing is highly empirical is one of its key strengths. Almost everything can be measured: from behaviours, to actions and action paths, to results. This means that the digital marketing strategist should start thinking with return on investment (ROI) in mind. Built into any strategy should be a testing framework and the ability to remain flexible and dynamic in a medium that shifts and changes as user behaviours do.

If we defined strategy as ‘a plan of action designed to achieve a particular outcome’, the desired outcome of a digital marketing strategy would be aligned with your organisation’s overall business and brand-building objectives or challenges. For example, if one of the overall objectives were acquisition of new clients, a possible digital marketing objective might be building brand awareness online.

Consider that in the early days of TV, when the new medium was not as yet entirely understood, there were separate ‘TV planners’ who created a ‘TV strategy’ for the brand. Over time, this was incorporated into the overall marketing strategy (as it should be).

The same is going to happen with digital. Increasingly, digital thinking is being incorporated into marketing strategy from day one. This section considers digital strategy separately in order to highlight some differences in approach, but this should change in practice over time.

Understanding competitors

Finally, it’s important to know who else is marketing to your potential customers, what they offer, and how you can challenge or learn from them.

On the Internet, your competitors are not just those who are aiming to earn your customers’ money; they are also those who are capturing your customers’ attention. With more digital content being created in a day than most people could consume in a year – for example, over 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute (YouTube, 2013) – the scarcest resources these days are time, focus and attention.

When considering competition, it’s also worthwhile looking at potential replacements for your product. The Internet is disrupting and accelerating the pace of disintermediation in a number of industries, meaning that people can now go directly to the business instead of transacting through a middleman (look at the travel industry as an example). To stay ahead, you should be looking at potential disruptors of your industry as well as the existing players.

Understanding customers

In order truly to understand your customers, you need to conduct market research. Try not to make assumptions about why people like and transact with your brand – you may find their values and motives are quite different from what you thought. Ongoing research will help you build a picture of what particular benefit or feature your business provides to your customers, allowing you to capitalise on this in your marketing content.

One important area on which to focus here is the consumer journey – the series of steps and decisions a customer takes before buying from your business (or not). Luckily, online data analytics allow you to get a good picture of how people behave on your website before converting to customers; other forms of market research will also help you establish this for your offline channels.

On the Internet, a consumer journey is not linear. Instead, consumers may engage with your brand in a variety of ways – for example, across devices or marketing channels – before making a purchase.

The goal is to reach customers with the right marketing message at the right stage of their journey. For example, you may want to use aspirational messages for someone in the exploration phase, but focus on more direct features and benefits (such as a lower price) when they’re almost ready to buy.

Understanding the business

There are several marketing models that can be used to understand the business and brand you are working with. Since it’s essential for all marketing messages to encapsulate the brand’s identity and objectives, this is a very important step.

 A crucial consideration is the brand itself. What does it stand for? What does it mean? What associations, ideas, emotions and benefits do people associate with it? What makes it unique?

There are several levels of branding to investigate:

Out of this, you can determine what the brand or product’s unique selling point (USP) is. A USP is the one characteristic that makes your product or service better than the competition’s – what unique value does it have? Does it solve a problem that no other product does?

Understanding the environment

The environment is the overall context or ‘outside world’ in which the business functions. It can involve anything from global economics (how well is the local currency performing these days?) to developments in your industry. Every brand will have a specific environment that it needs to consider, based on the type of product or service it produces.

An analysis of the business and brand environment will typically consider political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE) influences to identify a clear set of considerations or issues pertinent to the marketing strategy

Understanding marketing strategy

1 Business and brand strategy

Before you can delve into marketing strategy, take a step back and consider the business and brand with which you are working.

The end-goal of any business is to make money, in one way or another. Business strategy asks the questions: ‘What is the business challenge we are facing that prevents us from making more revenue?’ or, ‘What business objective should we strive for in order to increase the money in the bank?’

The brand is the vessel of value in this equation. The brand justifies why the business matters, and what value its adds to people’s lives. The value of the brand is measured in terms of its equity – how aware are people of the brand? Does it hold positive associations and perceived value? How loyal are people to the brand?

When you have the answer to this question, you can formulate a marketing strategy to address the challenge or objective you’ve discovered.

2 Marketing strategy

The purpose of a marketing strategy is to address a business or brand challenge or objective that has been revealed. An effective strategy involves making a series of well-informed decisions about how the brand, product or service should be promoted; the brand that attempts to be all things to all people risks becoming unfocused or losing the clarity of its value proposition.
For example, a new airline would need to consider how it is going to add value to the category and differentiate itself from competitors; whether their product is a domestic or international service; whether its target market would be budget travellers or international and business travellers; and whether the channel would be through primary airports or smaller, more cost-effective airports. Each of these choices will result in a vastly different strategic direction.

To make these decisions, a strategist must understand the context in which the brand operates: what are the factors that affect the business? This means conducting a situational analysis that looks at four pillars:

1. The environment
2. The business
3. The customers
4. The competitors

The TCEO model

There are many models for approaching digital marketing but we have found it most effective to group it into four interrelated disciplines: Think, Create, Engage and Optimise. This grouping creates a process that will result in the optimal use of digital tactics.

The diagram below illustrates the interrelation between the disciplines and highlights how the Optimise function should be present at each stage:
THINK is the starting point in our approach. It is tasked with developing strategic plans for the digital world. Like traditional communications planning, it includes topics such as consumer insights, research, concept development, budget allocation and channel planning.

CREATE brings concepts to life by executing campaigns and shaping platforms. It covers all aspects of creating web assets, from web design and development to conceptual copywriting, the creation of social media assets, mobile development, engineering business systems and social media integration.

ENGAGE is responsible for driving traffic and building relationships. Media buying and planning, search engine optimisation, email marketing, social media and campaign management are some of the key activities here.

OPTIMISE is about continuous improvement. It delivers insight and lessons through analytics, data mining, conversion optimisation and testing. Optimise is relevant at each stage of the process.

Measurability

The second factor that distinguishes digital is its measurability. Because of the technology on which it is built, almost every action on the web can be tracked, captured, measured and analysed.

The benefit for marketers should be clear. While traditional media are undoubtedly effective, it’s sometimes hard to know exactly what is working, how well it’s working, and why. Digital can help you pinpoint the success of campaigns down to the channel, audience segment, and even time of day.

Web analytics – the discipline of tracking, analyzing and drawing insight from online data – can also go a step further to helping a marketer understand the audience’s intent. While the data merely answers what people are doing, looking at this in conjunction with other insights can help you understand why they are doing it as well.

Measurability in digital is not just about understanding the technology, although that is a necessary first step. It’s about understanding how people and technology intersect – with the ultimate goal of using this information to craft the most effective and relevant marketing messages. As Kotler would say, it circles back to the notion of “creating and satisfying customers at a profit” (Kotler, 1991).

Segmenting and customising messages

All of these ideas about niche communities, influential media personalities and fragmented attention spans tie in to the ability to segment online audiences and customise messages.

Segmentation is the process of taking a single, general audience and dividing it up according to specific groupings or characteristics. Once this is done, each group can be targeted differently depending on their needs from the brand. For example, a bank may serve a wide range of customers, but the messages it sends to segments such as young high-income earners, small-business owners and retirees will be very different – necessarily so.

Digital offers a wealth of user information, the ability to target users based on these factors, and the availability of technology for creating and managing large databases. In digital marketing segmentation, customers can be reached across a wide range of communication channels depending on their preferences and needs. The focus should not be on separate channels, but on how digital channels can enable and work with the strengths of what may be considered ‘traditional’ media such as TV or billboards. Today, digital often plays the role of a bridge for customers between different marketing media, allowing them to respond to a broadcast message on TV through a social media property for instance, where they can obtain a deeper, richer and more interactive brand experience.

Once an audience segment has been created, the message sent to it can also be customised (often automatically) thanks to the availability of the necessary information and digital tools. This can be as small as adding the customer’s name to an email greeting, or as significant as tailoring an entire page of content to their buying history, connections and brand interactions. For example, Amazon provides product recommendations to users based on the items that they have bought as well as similar products purchased by others.

   

Digital audiences

Both the media landscape and people’s media habits have changed. There are many fragmented and highly specific niche communities at play across multiple digital media channels.

At the same time, people’s attention is fragmented by the many new media channels and tools available – on top of traditional media, we now have social networks, emails, web tools, mobile devices and more splitting our attention.

With so many choices and too little time, audiences have become very skilled at ignoring marketing messages.


The key to succeeding is two-fold: ideas must be remarkable, and you must find a niche group who are obsessed with your product and willing to devote their scant attention to it. These fans may tell their friends and, in doing so, spread the word over their interconnected digital networks. If most consumers are likely to ignore your marketing message then the goal is to speak to those who are actually listening.

This leads to another key digital consideration. These days, people themselves are media channels. After all, most of us create, share, comment on and link to content that we find interesting – or that we think will interest our friends and followers.

These personalised digital broadcasts are intercepted by people who are interested in what we are saying and have chosen to listen to us. Through this, individuals have become conduits for information, ideas and news in a powerful way.


This exchange of ideas comes down to creating communities and nurturing relationships. Digital helps us to understand these relationships better.

What is Crowd-sourcing ?

Crowd-sourcing is a powerful example of the way digital tools have enabled certain ways of thinking. In simple terms, crowd-sourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model that relies on an active community to find solutions to problems. Crowd-sourcing relies heavily on the tools and communication forms made possible by the Internet.

Given that the Internet connects people all over the world through different publishing tools and technologies, the information and ideas on these channels have become commodities in themselves. In the past, we had to gather physically to create crowds. Now, with technology, crowds can be closely connected while being geographically distant.

By listening to the crowd and asking for their contributions, organisations can gain first-hand insight into their customers’ needs and desires, and build products and services that meet those needs and desires. With an earned sense of ownership, communities may feel a brand-building kinship with the community through collaboration and contribution.

Using the Internet, a savvy organisation can tap a wider range of talent and knowledge than is contained in its own resources. Tapping into this resource can be done in one of three ways:

1.  Crowd-sourcing,which involves asking and enabling people to share their ideas or creations in exchange for an emotional or monetary reward. This is the most common type used for marketing and idea generation. Websites such as Thread-less (www.threadless.com), Idea Bounty (www.ideabounty.com) and Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) are prime examples of crowd-sourcing.

2.  Crowdfunding,which involves asking many people in a large crowd each to donate a small amount of money in order to gather a large sum to fund a specific project or venture. Kick-starter (www.kickstarter.com) is a well-known platform where people who want to start projects can ask for backers to fund them. The higher the contribution, the more the backer will receive 

once the project is complete.

3.  Micro-tasking,which involves breaking a big task or project down into tiny components and asking many people to each complete a few of these components, usually for payment. One company that uses micro-tasking is BrandsEye (www.brandseye.com), which pays members of its crowd to 

evaluate the sentiment behind mentions in social media.

Communities that use crowd-sourcing platforms exist for different reasons. Some exist because there are people who have a keen interest in and affinity for those brands. They participate in the community because they want to improve the products and services they receive. Others want to gain a monetary reward or the prestige of devising the winning solution.

Whatever the case, crowd-sourcing demonstrates the power of the Internet – it connects people, builds communities, spreads messages, and taps into a global source of ideas and inspiration.

Understanding digital marketing

What is digital? Bud Caddell defines ‘digital’ as “a participatory layer of all media that allows users to self-select their own experiences, and affords marketers the ability to bridge media, gain feedback, iterate their message, and collect relationships” (Caddell, 2013). In other words, digital is a new way of exploring content (for users) and connecting with customers (for marketers).

How does digital marketing fit into this definition? There is, in fact, no basic difference between ‘traditional’ marketing and digital marketing. They are one and the same.

Ultimately, the aim of any type of marketing is to keep customers and stimulate sales in the future. Digital communication tools make it possible to connect and build long-term relationships with customers.

Digital marketing helps to create consumer demand by using the power of the interconnected, interactive web. It enables the exchange of currency but, more than that, it enables the exchange of attention for value. This is referred to as the attention economy.

Digital marketing is powerful in two fundamental ways. First, the audience can be segmented very precisely – even down to factors like current location and recent brand interactions – which means that messages can (and must) be personalised and tailored specially for them.


Second, the digital sphere is almost completely measurable – every minute and every click by a customer can be accounted for. In digital you can see exactly how various campaigns are performing, which channels bring the most benefit, and where your efforts are best focused.

Understanding marketing

Before we can delve into digital marketing, it’s important to understand the fundamentals that underpin marketing itself. After all, digital marketing has the same purpose, intentions and objectives. 

Dr Philip Kotler defines marketing as follows, “Marketing is that function of the organisation that can keep in constant touch with the organisation’s consumers, read their needs, develop products that meet these needs, and build a programme of communications to express the organisation’s purposes”. (Kotler and Levy, 1969: p 15).

Introduction to digital marketing

Today, no marketing strategy is complete if it does not incorporate digital strategy and expression. Understanding digital requires thinking beyond any one tool or channel, and towards an exchange of value: an economic system trading with attention as currency.

Digital is not just a set of marketing channels – it’s a different way of thinking about  how people engage with media, each other and the world around them. Digital  enables you to segment your audience and customize messages in a valuable and  measurable way. The availability of information, our inherent desire to contribute, and user-friendly technology have rewritten the rules of engagement. People  are not passive consumers; they are empowered as publishers, editors and commentators. The conversation is multi-directional and usually not started or controlled by brands.