Synopsis: This article focuses on the impact
of digital media dynamics for brand marketing. Specifically, this article
focuses on the interplay between digital media’s proven, short term
effectiveness with targeted brand marketing to targeted audiences relative to the
potential long-term effectiveness if utilized effectively in brand marketing to
mass markets/audiences. This is based on an article with the same post-title written by Charlotte Rogers.
The question then seems to be; how do we effectively
undertake brand marketing to reach people at scale with digital media while
still keeping (not losing) the advantages of targeted advertising? Since
I have only taken one, 3-hour digital marketing class at a world-class,
Ivy-league business school, my initial reaction to that self-posed question is “......ummm
I dunno?!”
So, I start reading this article with a bit more
fascination. After all, if I am ever going to get rich with my own brand-focused
business, I better pay attention and know how to build a market and if digital
is the new color television, I better know how to use it effectively while still
attracting television addicts like my parent and me!
My thoughts on the article, you ask (here goes my extremely
deep and impactful summary):
1 – The article is too damn long for a fellow like me with
zero attention span! (I will never get those 15 minutes of my life back –
thanks, Charlotte Rogers).
2 – Understanding the difference between brand experience
and brand marketing is probably a first step to any successful brand marketer
trying to maximize the utility of digital media. (Sounds so deep and smart, I
actually patted myself on the knob of my head for that one).
3 – Adopting a segmentation strategy that your entire business
can use that is not too broad (a one-size-fits-all) or micro-targeted (too
narrowly focused). In English – where is the sweet spot in the segmentation
strategy that can be used to find the niche market and is usable across the
entire business/organization (good luck finding that one. To solve for this, I
say hire a Columbia EMBA, put them in a top-floor corner office with an amazing
view and watch them hire 5 HBS alums to get you the answer).
4 - The IPA Director of Marketing Strategy “done lost her
darn mind!” Why do I say that? I am paraphrasing a bit here, but, for starters,
she believes that the insights (read “data”) from personalized/individual (read
“targeted”) marketing can be expanded, since it provides more nuanced insights that
can be creatively expanded to improve the advertising quality both online and offline.
Okay….thanks, I think. While I get the niceties of targeted advertising, I also
get the creep-factor even more so and it turns me OFF! Besides, drawing
creative conclusions based on some data point about my supposed individual-level
habits over a short period of time cannot possibly create a full picture of the
person in the highly complex and socially uniform (read “copycat”) world we
live in today. The fact that I go through a phase of loving the idea of fancy
food at fancy restaurants, for example, does not mean that I will want to be
targeted along those lines in three months when I go broke (thank you,
expensive restaurants in NYC – I clearly refuse to take responsibility for my
spending) or decide that I am over it!
Secondly, well, her title is just too fancy. Although, in
fairness, I think every business should have a marketing strategy boss,
otherwise you become like GoDaddy.com (I still don’t get how any of their ad’s
correlated or made sense).
Where was I? yes, personalization can drive conversion for
only so long before….well, before we all get bored or creeped out and want more
and then it loses its allure, so it needs to be balanced with the en-mass
marketing too.
5 – The “always-on” approach, as demonstrated by The
Economist (haven’t read one since 2011) with its successful ‘Raising Eyebrows
and Subscriptions’ approach of “targeting” a wide audience of already
similarly-inclined, potential customers in a measurable manner, with defined
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is a proven approach.
6 – Facebook lied! And maybe Google too!! How did I miss
this one (I was watching TV and I guess my news anchor forgot to tell me). In
reality, the issue of accurately capturing the effectiveness of ad spending is
an evolving art, sorry, science that will continue to be refined as we, the
people, continue to evolve in our adoption of technology that in itself, is
also evolving at an even faster pace.
Impressions, pay-per-click (PPC), click-through rates,
conversion rates and other such measurement tools are effective in themselves,
but to really maximize the social and digital media platform, the inclusion of
an “attentive reach” factor that accounts for how much of an audience is
captivated by the marketing and for how long and with what effect (sales
result) should be considered. Here, the idea of ‘WAVE’ is introduced – measuring
Watch time, Audibility, Viewability
and Engagement.
7 – Defining success is personal, at least to the business
(the company shelling out the dough on marketing). Here, the idea is that each
organization spending on marketing should define the effectiveness of their
marketing plan/campaign and ad-spend in a manner that uniquely captures their
pre-stated objective(s)/marketing plan /strategy. This allows the measurement
of results to be more significant in determining the success or failure of the
approach. It also ensures that the business is able to better understand
how/when to stay the course and believe in a marketing plan through the
long-run, or abandon a marketing plan as the results are tracked and translated
in terms of sales or revenue versus the cost and impact on the business.
I’m
tired! My ramblings here might be longer than the actual article, so enough of
this. Bye for now!
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