The bottom line however is that the CUSTOMER controls the relationship by the click of a mouse. This is a vital factor to take into account when planning an eMarketing strategy. What is in it for the user to respond?
My view is that marketers are currently not taking advantage of the response capabilities of the medium, or the profiling and segmentation that can take place. Digital marketing (whether online advertising, eMail marketing, viral marketing, etc) should be used for what it is good at - response and one-to-one communication.
The response has to happen on the user's terms.
Customers can be profiled very easily and cost effectively online, and by building these profiles, marketers are able to build up data bases with true segmentation taking place. If you look at Pick & Pay's online strategy for example, they are focussing on building these profiles to predict customer buying behaviour. With this information, they can start targeting customer segments with promotions, specials, offers, discounts and the like. The conversion rate will probably be high, due to the highly targeted approach they are using to these segments and more importantly, the context they are giving to their online marketing offers. Contextual marketing is hugely important in the online environment. Just because a user matches a profile, if the message or offer is not in context, the response will not be there.
There is also a debate about using the Net for branding purposes. In my opinion, branding is only 1 part and there are other mediums where branding campaigns will be far more effective. The interactivity and response capabilities of this medium holds much appeal for marketers - the days of running an online campaign to drive traffic to a web site are outdated. Very often, traffic will arrive on a web site through a mix of a mediums, but once there, there is nothing that compels the user to stay on the site.
I think that web site design / offerings have to be far more integrated to the actual marketing strategy. Very often an advertiser has a brilliant marketing strategy but nothing of substance on their site - no promotion, offer, specials, or compelling content. An example of this is the current Palmolive Soap campaign. There are TV and print ads which feature a web site address. Once you get to the site however, apart from taking a long time to download (with percentages listed of how fast the site is downloading, e.g. 10% downloaded, 20% downloaded, etc. which is an incredibly dated form of web development) there is a page telling you about the competition, but you cannot enter online!
What a huge opportunity that they have missed. Imagine how many profiles they could have collected from the user online. The user, because there is a tangible benefit for them (entering the competition) could have given them a wealth of demographic / psychographic information while entering. A great opportunity lost.
A huge gap in the marketplace, in my opinion, is education of advertisers and marketers. Very often, web development companies are advising clients with regards to online marketing strategy, as they are the ones building the site. Very often advertisers and marketers are sold on hype and their campaigns can fail, or not achieve actual objectives. A bugbear of mine is that the ad agencies are generally completely disinterested in online marketing, due to a lack of understanding or wanting to investigate this medium further, and clients are often the ones driving the agencies to consider the medium, as opposed to agencies looking at this as another form of communicating with a client's customers. I have set up my business to deal primarily with education of marketers with regards to considering eMarketing when putting together a marketing strategy and communications plan. 100% of my clients are clients direct - no agencies have ever come on a course, even though a number have been approached. In my view,once a marketer is educated in what can be done online and what the Net should be used for, the industry as a whole will grow. I am not saying that the Net is right every time as part of the mix, but if response is needed and a CRM strategy is built in, the Net cannot be ignored.
