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ZMOT Marketer`s Playbook
A FAQ guide to the emerging world of Digital
Marketing
ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
The aim of marketing is to make selling
superfluous.” ~ Peter Drucker
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
As a Business Marketer in the digital ecology (ZMOT
MARKETER), what are your objectives?
You would want any of the 3 (or maybe all 3)
things:
1) More traffic on the site (Lowest Hanging fruit)
To do this you need to improve your presence on
the web. More visible you are, more shoppers will
visit your site. So you need a way to stop being
invisible.
ZMOT (ZERO MOMENT
OZMOT (ZERO MOMENT
OF TRUTH) is a
marketers window to
positively influence his
potential customer's
buying decision, during
the entire cycle of her
product research.
2) More Engagement with your prospects (High Perch Fruit)
Prospects acquainted with you (from step 1), does not mean they like you. As
humans we tend to transect only with people who we like. So the next step is to
engage prospects and make yourself likeable. More you showcase the real you (
as a business) better are the chances of engagement.
3) More Sales and Revenues (Cherry on Top)
Once the prospects have found you and have engaged with you, they should
convert. They should buy from you today, become a fan (step 2) and then buy
again and then again.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
What are your typical challenges in achieving these objectives?
1) Lack of clear understanding of the emerging
landscape.
Risk is not knowing
what
you are doing….
With digital media fragmentation it is getting
Warren Buffet
increasingly difficult to run campaigns which are
on course.
2) Lack of time and other resources.
Marketing budgets are typically limited and are chasing various conflicting
objectives. Also the campaigns have shorter life cycle and need quick
turnarounds.
3) Lack of a clear differentiation strategy.
Even if the prospect finds you and engages with you why should he buy from
you. What is your compelling argument for his purchase from your business.
4) Lack of a clear line of sight to ROI.
What is the way to measure ROI of the marketing money Is it traffic,
likes/followers/retweets/friends or sales. Also which dollar produces which
sales.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
How does a ZMOT Marketer properly define his challenges?
The way to organize and frame, all of these
conflicts and complexity is to treat them as three
In matters of grave
importance, asking the
stand alone and interlocking parts of the central
right questions is often
marketing problem (CMP). This is the classical
more important than
deductive approach to problem solving in which a
finding for right answers.
big problem is broken into its constituent parts to
be analyzed independently. Later these constituent
parts can be juxtaposed and conjoined to be viewed as an integrated problem.
These three constituent parts of the Central Marketing Problem (CMP)
correspond to the three objectives that you as a ZMOT marketer have, namely:
Traffic, Engagement and Sales.
So these three interlocking problems, that any ZMOT Marketer, worth his
acumen, has to solve are:
1) Business Awareness Problem (BAP)
2) Prospect Engagement Problem (PEP)
3) Product Differentiation Problem.( PDP).
So BAP is how to popularize your existential presence, PEP is how to influence
your interlocutor and PDP is how to get them to transect with you.
Another way to look at these interlocking, moving parts is in the classical sales
funnel format where at the top of the funnel (with its wide opening) you have
awareness. The sloping middle portion is engagement and the last narrow
mouth is sales.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
How does ZMOT marketer Solve the Central Marketing
Problem(CMP)?
Each ZMOT marketer has to solve the CMP
uniquely. No two solutions of CMP are alike.
An analogy to solving CMP uniquely, can be seen
in how nature solves its life problem.
“Marketing takes a day
to learn. Unfortunately it
takes a lifetime to
master.” ~
Phil Kolter
It starts life in a small single celled unit and then keeps innovating by multi
cellular differentiation to create complex forms. It uses the basic genetic thrift to
build many unique evolved life forms. To sift through those competing life
forms and choose the survivors, it uses selective differentiation ( evolution by
natural selection as this strategy is called). So nature innovates first and then
selects based on successful differentiation.
Likewise there are common elements of marketing available, universally. Each
ZMOT marketer has to integrate them in a unique way to create a suitable
ZMOT campaign. Apart from specific combination of elements, for the
campaign to be successful, it should be clearly differentiated from other
campaigns.
So any ZMOT marketer can solve his CMP uniquely, by innovative integration
and creative differentiation.
Or to solve his CMP a marketer has to run a WIN@ZMOT campaign.
We have discussed two strategies for a WIN@ZMOT campaign to be successful
namely,
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
1) Innovative Integration
2) Successful Differentiation.
However there is a third element involved in creating a winning ZMOT
campaign. That third dimension is design of the campaign.
A WIN@ZMOT marketing campaign must have a clear roadmap of how it is
trying to solve each of the three sub problems of the CMP.
The two options available to all marketers are Sequential Solution or Global
Solution.
Depending on the constraints and circumstances, in a sequential solution, a
ZMOT marketer can either focus on surmounting the awareness challenge first
( or engagement dilemma first) and then proceed to solve other parts or he
may do a full global solution where he designs the campaign to solve all three
problems simultaneously. The reason while design is important to specify is
because it impacts how will you measure the campaign.
A Sequential WIN@ZMOT campaign should be measured by its awareness
metrics while a Global WIN@ZMOT campaign should be measured by
immediate sales as well as improving conversion rates.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
What is a WIN@ZMOT campaign?
Your ZMOT is your shoppers digital pathway to
his purchase.
“Don't find customers
for your products, find
products for your
customers.” ~
Seth Godin
In traversing her Decision Lagrangian, a shopper
has three very specific requirements. First she
needs to have information about the thing that will
satisfy her need. Second she needs to have some way of evaluating if the given
product that she is now informed about, is actually good and will satisfy her
need. Lastly she needs to find out the right price to buy it on.
In traditional advertising models advertisement and below the line marketing
activities provided the information. A word of mouth or friend
recommendation (peer/friend/expert review) helped in its evaluation . Lastly
deal making and price negotiation was largely one to one.
Say you wanted to watch a movie, a trailer will advertise (or inform) and a
movie critic will help you evaluate and normally auditoriums do not give you
price deals. Likewise if you wanted to buy a car, advertiser will run a
commercial campaign and you can visit all showrooms to collect catalogs for
information gathering. Then based on your society, friends recommendations
you can evaluate and finally negotiating on the available showroom deals, the
final buy decision can be made.
In a digital landscape, all three parts of a buyers decision making process (her
ZMOT Lagrangian) are now online. How she receives and consumes the
information of the product, how she evaluates and then how she looks for final
deals are being done at various web places.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
In other words, a buyer depending on her position on the ZMOT pathway can
either be at the location where she is gathering information, or evaluating
information or is looking for the final deals.
Now imagine a universe of all your possible shoppers and a simplistic
assumption would be that on an average, one third of all your prospects would
be in their gathering phase, one third in evaluating phase and rest in their final
hunting stage.
Now given this prospect distribution landscape, you would want to solve your
awareness problem (BAP) to target the first set, your engagement problem
(PEP) to target the second set and finally differentiation problem (PDP) to
convert the final set.
Overall a buyer uses 4-5 resources to gather information, another 3-4 to
evaluate and another 3-4 to look for deals.
As a ZMOT marketer, you would ideally want to be present at all of those 12-13
ZMOT Touch Points ( ZTPs) to aid and influence your buyer lagrangian. To do
that you need to optimize your presence on these varied touch points. You
need to do a campaign, which informs, engages and converts your prospects at
all of their ZMOT lagrangian touch-points. You need a Global WIN@ZMOT
campaign.
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MEDIAMARKETER`S
MOSAIC S ZMOT
MARKETERS
ZMOT
PLAYBOOK
So any WIN@ZMOT campaign is a unique marketing campaign for solving
your business CMP where using the strategies of innovative integration ( of
these 12-13 ZTPs) and creative differentiation ( standing out from competing
marketers WIN@ZMOT effort at these ZTPs) you ensure that the current
buyers path finally rests at your cash counter as well as future buyers path
( prospects who are at start stage of their ZMOT lagrangian) leads them directly
to you without to many diversions.
A WIN@ZMOT campaign is actually a lock on the buyer's entire purchase
trajectory where, by integrating and differentiating at various ZTPs, it nudges
the buyer into your product optimized pathway.
For contrarians (all good marketers are contrarians), it means that unless you
can shape your buyer's ZMOT Lagrangian fully, you do not have a successful
Global WIN@ZMOT campaign.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
Which are these ZMOT TouchPoints ( ZTPs) that one needs to
optimize for?
Depending on the Buyer ZMOT Lagrangian phase some of the ZMOT TPs are:
“Markets are
conversations.” ~
Levine, Locke, Searls
and Weinberger in The
Cluetrain Manifesto
Information Phase ZTPs
Global Search
Mobile Search
Company Website
Corporate Listings
Evaluation Phase ZTP
Corporate Blog
Press coverage
Product Reviews ( Users/Experts)
Linked In
Facebook/Graph Search
Twitter
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
Google Plus
Youtube
Pintrest
Mobile Apps
Purchase Phase ZTPs
Comparison Shopping Portals/ Resellers
Coupons sites and other Deal Aggregators
Three important points about these ZTPs however are worth a mention.
1) This categorization is at best approximate, as many sources fall across
multiple categories. They have a major-minor dynamic across buyer pathway.
Facebook can be a minor source for Info Phase and major for Evaluation phase
or an expert Blog mention can again serve both in information( minor) and
evaluation phase ( major).
2) The typical buyer ZMOT Langrangian, across these ZTPs is not smooth. It is
zigzag across various ZTPs as the buyer keeps referencing and cross
referencing between sites.
3) Not all ZTPs are important to be optimized in all domains. A B2B
WIN@ZMOT campaign will have to integrate different ZTPs as compared to a
B2C WIN@ZMOT campaign.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
How should you decide a budget for WIN@ZMOT campaign?
Obviously there aren't any hard budgets in online
marketing, there are only start budgets.
As the sales pick up and ROI kicks in, you will want
to spend more to get even better results. Overall the
start budget is to seed the virtuous circle.
“If you have more money
than brains you should
focus on outbound
marketing. If you have
more brains than money,
you should focus on
inbound marketing.” ~
Guy Kawasaki
The way to decide about your start budget is to first
decide what your marketing objective is.
You can have a strategic marketing objectives for solving the CMP like:
1)
2)
3)
4)
Create a unique user experience on interaction with us.
Dominate the perceptual schema (of end user) about us.
Create a new, user need.
Corner 11% of the market share
Or a functional marketing objectives to address a sub problem of awareness,
engagement or branding like:
1) Dominate Search Rankings
2) Get 15,000 Facebook likes.
3) Create a Viral Branding Campaign.
If you have sustaining power, plan a long term objective ( 12-18 months)
however if you have limited budget, plan a short term marketing objective( 3-6
months).
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
One point to keep in mind is, more you plan for long term, better
aligned will be your short term objectives to the big picture of the
campaign and higher the chance of your success.
So overall decide your marketing objective clearly first. Your budget
will automatically suggest itself to you.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
How should you create your WIN@ZMOT Online Media Plan?
Now once you have decided the budget, how
should you allocate it.
“What really decides
consumers to buy or not
to buy is the content of
your advertising, not its
form.” ~
David Ogilvy
Overall, if you are working from a tight budget, the
vector for marketing spending should largely be,
C create wide awareness first (Solve BAP),
C start engagement programs next (Create PEP)
C and ultimately endeavor to create a brand (Frame PDP)
As the marketing dollars availability start to ease out you can make
incremental allocations to higher end problems of the CMP.
So as a ZMOT marketer you have to time the targeting of these three pieces
while planning a ZMOT marketing campaign:
1) Plan your media buying and search buying strategies.
2) Create and execute your engagement strategies.
3) Evolve your branding message and showcase that as your differentiator.
Say you are heading a 100+ people company and have around $10-20K/month
to invest, crate a 18 month plan, on how much should you spend on BAP, PEP
and PDP. You can look to solve the three problems together. Make good
allocations to framing PDP and doing creatives around it. You have to have a
clear and differentiated positioning strategy.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
Then make even larger allocation to creating your engagement strategy.
Finally for solving BAP have a tapered plan. Buy what you want to however
look to taper it off by trying to OWN as many digital channels (or ZTPs) as you
can.
Say you are in a 50-100 people zone with $5-10K/month spending power.
Create a 12 month plan around solving BAP and PEP. Look to execute your
engagement strategy and awareness plan with less focus on media buying but
more on generating and cultivating user curiosity. You have to have a clear and
differentiated content producing strategy.
Say you are a >50 people enterprise in its growth phase and you have sub 5K
/month to spend, try to solve one problem of BAP. Do not focus on media
buying but focus on a very wide digital footprint. Have as many listings,
keyword positioning, press coverage as you can get.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
How should you define your ROI in WIN@ZMOT campaigns?
Most of the marketers believe that measuring ROI
“ROI is more than
on ZMOT strategy is most difficult as compared to
'money in, money out'.
calculating ROI on other traditional marketing
It's about efficient
business success.”- Eric
strategies. In order to know your ZMOT success,
Swayne, Director of
ROI on ZMOT cannot be ignored. One very easy
Social Analytics and
step is to count your Facebook fans, likes, followers
Insights at March
Research
on Twitter which can help you in knowing your
favorability in market. However, in order to get in
depth of accurate ZMOT ROI we must focus on each
goal a ZMOT marketer wants to achieve and how ROI can be measured for
each goal:
1. More Visibility, More Traffic
WIN@ZMOT campaign helps you in driving more traffic to your website. But
what ZMOT marketer aims at is the conversion of these visitors into your
customers. This can be calculated by measuring traffic on your website bought
by WIN@ZMOT campaign against monthly sales. It is because of the fact that
not every visitor to your website will like your product and not every 'like' will
be induced to purchase your product. Thus, make sure your traffic is measured
in comparison to monthly sales growth.
1. Better Engagement, More 'Likes’
Once you have attracted enough traffic to your site, the next job is to keep
customers engaged using various activities. One way to measure ROI is to
observe behavior of the customers while they are engaged with your site.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
Monitor their role while they spend more time at your site. Make sure your
content is helping you to achieve better customer engagement. More the
customers engage on a website, better are the chances of conversion.
1. Measure Sales and Sales Cycle
It's all about conversion. Isn't it? Measure how much time is taken by a lead in
the ZMOT process to become part of the sales cycle.
2. Evaluating ZTPs
WIN@ZMOT campaign focuses on optimizing your ZTPs (ZMOT
Touchpoints). Each ZTP has its own measurement rule. It's important for a
marketer to evaluate each ZTP to see which ZTP is helping them to achieve
their ZMOT goals.
Also nature of business has an impact on the ROI calculation. ROI for B2C
businesses is different from ROI of B2B businesses.
So overall you can have two sets of ROI calculations. One is around the specific
ZTP and its desired objectives. Second is the overall ROI which can be
measured by the incremental sales. These two should be carefully measured
and separately accounted for as they are akin to solving the central marketing
problem overall or the solution of its component parts.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
What should you be your first step in embarking on a
Win@ZMOT campaign?
A full WIN@ZMOT campaign emphasizes on
“Brand Positioning” which is the central glue
around which all the other pieces of the campaign
(Search/Social/CRM…) should cohere.
“The urgent can drown
out the important.” ~
Marissa Mayer, CEO of
Yahoo
Doing the ZMOT strategy takes research and leads to defining in clear terms,
what your marketing messages should be conveying to the potential customers.
Furthermore, it then logically leads to your content strategy, campaign
structure and its execution timetable. It is a self reinforcing top down approach.
Now to develop this winning ZMOT strategy, research should be conducted
across four dimensions:
C
C
Market research (target market and the consumer behavior in them).
Competitive research (what others are doing and any specific strategies
they are adopting).
C
Online Research (Trends in online marketing and social media market for
the specified domain).
Analytics research (existing customers' interactions and how to launch loyalty
programs and encourage them to buy more and say more about you).
After the data has been gathered and analyzed, a creative is done around the
brand message and then depending on the budget, a roadmap is prepared for
taking the message to the campaign level. The document outlining the entire
winning game-plan of online marketing is called the ZMOT Strategy Primer
(ZSP).
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
ZSP is typically a detailed document which starts with defining the positioning
strategies (for brand building) and vertical sub-strategies and ends with an
activities list, their execution plan and an expected
“The urgent can drown
ROI.
ZSP also serves as a benchmark to measure the
unfolding of the entire online marketing campaign
over its lifecycle.
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out the important.” ~
Marissa Mayer, CEO of
Yahoo
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
So how should you decide whether to continue with your
marketing agency or pull it in-house?
Having learned that the online marketing is the only way to reach the growing
population of web-connected consumers, a very critical question that each
marketer needs to address is whether to continue ZMOTing using marketing
agency or should it be delivered in-house. The final decision has to be taken
considering the pros and cons of both alternatives. Here is a rough list of
arguments from both sides
In-house: Pros'
1. Span of control: Having someone in your own organization to execute
ZMOT strategy enables you to have full control over the strategies. The inhouse ZMOT expert can be reached in no time whenever there is any change in
the strategy or if you have any query.
2. Handle on costs: Having an in-house expert is not as costlier as outsourcing
digital marketing. A dedicated resource will be given fixed salary and other
important technology options like internet, special tools, workspace, etc.
3. Dedicated resource: Since the in-house expert is working only for his own
company, his attention will totally be on website. In-house expert understands
company's business better and can make online strategies effective by utilizing
key strengths of the business..
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
In-house: Cons'
1. Lack of all round knowledge and skill: An in-house expert may fail when it
comes to using marketing strategies in such a fragmented environment. He
may be well equipped with the marketing tools but the online world is
constantly changing and so are the marketing strategies. Thus, it becomes very
difficult for in-house experts to update their knowledge and skills.
2. Unique content production problem: With only handful of resources
deployed on executing marketing strategy, uniqueness is something which
lacks.
3. Strategy Lacunae's: Lack of strategic direction makes talented in-house
marketing teams lag behind. Most of the time strategy which has to come from
Management is not in place.
ZMOT Agency: Pros'
1. Campaign Strategy: Marketing agency works on developed and customized
strategic plan for every company.
2. ROI Focus: Marketing agency helps companies in not only optimizing their
ZTPs but also makes effort in directing their marketing strategies. Agency
ensures that the company receives the desired Return on investment (ROI).
3. Team with multiple skills set: Agency hires marketing specialists who work
on multiple projects at a time. Their experience and learning on different
projects helps a great deal in getting the best results. They are also updated
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
with latest technologies and current techniques which they implement in your
ZMOT strategy.
ZMOT Agency: Cons'
1. Costs: Sometimes you need to invest more when you outsource services to
marketing agency. The agency charges for the creatives and media buying
commissions.
2. Coordination: It takes time and effort to build an agency relation. So there is
a cost involved both in terms of time and resources.
Conclusion: Often the best solution is to have best of both the worlds. If you
have the budgets, have an agency to run your entire ZMOT campaign and have
managers in-house monitoring and aligning the campaign. If you do not have
the budgets do the strategy in-house and then you can outsource the relevant
parts to the agency wherever in the camapaign specialized skill sets are needed.
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ZMOT MARKETER`S PLAYBOOK
Media Mosaic
A ZMOT Agency
E-9-10 NSEZ Noida U.P. India
Call us@ +91-120-4626501-02
Email us@ [email protected]
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