November 1st, 2007
How to Use Digital Media: Ten Tricks for Brick and Mortar Marketers in India
Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post!
In an earlier post I talked about why marketers should not approach digital media (online/ mobile/ DTH) with the ‘interruption’ marketing paradigm so prevalent in traditional media (TV/ print/ radio/ outdoors): because digital media is very good at engaging with a million customers one at a time, but very bad at reaching a million customers at one time. This is especially true for India, where mass media still hasn’t peaked in terms of either reach or credibility and digital media is still extremely niche and fragmented.
In another earlier post, I talked about how most marketers and agencies in India are still clueless about the basic principles of digital media. I’m sure that most Indian marketers are present on digital media on the basis of the 5% rule: during a campaign, 5% of the budget should be allocated to digital media. As a result, even when marketers flirt with the digital media, their digital media initiatives are almost always ad hoc, mostly ineffective and often quickly abandoned.
In my new ten-post series on how brick and mortar marketers in India should use digital media, I’ll describe ten small, but smart, tricks that you can rely on to fully leverage the potential of digital media -
- Trick #1: Your website is your most important tool. Before you spend a single rupee on online advertising, make sure that your website works both in terms of user interaction and search optimization.
- Trick #2: You can measure almost anything on digital media. Make sure you are measuring the right things and put in a plan to improve these metrics over time.
- Trick #3: Digital media allows you to flesh out your prospects into real people. Convert your visitors into registered users as early as possible and increase the richness of the user profile over time.
- Trick #4: All visitors are not the same. Build capability to allow your visitors to interact with you at various ‘permission levels’ and escalate them to higher ‘permission levels’ over time.
- Trick #5: Your website is only the first step. Build linkages between your website, your call center, your ERP/ transaction system and your CRM system to track your prospects/ customers on an end-to-end basis.
- Trick #6: A few relevant impressions are better than a lot of irrelevant impressions. Minimize wastage in ad spends by tightly targeting the right visitors using context-sensitive or social banner ads.
- Trick #7: Search keywords are a declaration of people’s intents. Use tightly targeted text-based search ads to allow your visitors to self-select themselves. What’s more, pay on the basis of actual clicks by using the CPC (cost-per-click) model.
- Trick #8: Digital media is great for developing a community and building buzz. Learn from and leverage social networking sites to turn your prospects/ customers into advocates for your brand.
- Trick #9: Mobile and DTH are both very small in India but will scale up quickly. Use the lessons you have learnt online (how to measure the right things, how to track users on an end-to-end basis, how to use tightly targeted ads, how to develop a community and build buzz) to build competencies on mobile and DTH.
- Trick #10: Your prospects/ customers are not limited by the medium. Build linkages between different digital and traditional media and your own internal systems to communicate seamlessly with your prospects/ customers.
In my next post in the series, I’ll focus on the starting point of your digital footprint: your website.
