Download Digital Marketing: Strategic Thinking

Digital Marketing:
New Strategic Thinking
CSULB
MKTG 437
Scott W. Flexo, Ph.D.
Strategy and Tactics
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A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a
specific goal. Strategy is all about gaining (or being
prepared to gain) a position of advantage over
adversaries or best exploiting emerging possibilities.
 A Digital Marketing Plan describes the strategy
including the objectives of the plan.
A tactic is a conceptual action implemented as one or
more specific tasks to actualize the strategy.
 Actions taken to implement the digital marketing
plan.
What Goes Into a Digital
Marketing Strategy?
1.
2.
3.
A thorough understanding of the market,
Clear understanding of who to target and
how target uses digital marketing,
Grasp of how your business can best use
the new technologies to build
relationships with consumers.
Three Phases of Strategic Planning:
#1: Trial Phase
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Trial Phase: Firms are testing social
media platforms; learning how to use
them; Focus is on learning about the
media platform not incorporating it into
a marketing strategy.
Thousands of brands have Facebook
pages that have been abandoned. This
is evidence of a trial phase.
Three Phases of Strategic Planning:
#2: Transition Phases

Transition Phase: Digital media
marketing activities begin to become
strategic; Media content and integration
appears somewhat haphazard, but
there is also evidence of some
systematic thought in the development
of the materials and the outlines of an
integrated and systematic approach.
Three Phases of Strategic Planning:
#3: Strategic Phases

Strategic Phase: Formal process is
developed; digital media appears
planned and consistent across
platforms; objectives are clearly
understood and measurement metrics
are established; digital media is
integrated into offline marketing and
into the firm’s overall marketing plan.
To Be Strategic
What You Need to Know
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Know Your Business: Are products and services suited to
go online – Nearly all are, but some in unique ways.
Know Your Competition: What are your competitors doing
online – what's right/what's wrong.
Know Your Customers: Who is your target for the online
campaign and what do they want from the experience.
Know What You Want to Achieve: Where are you going
with the digital strategy and can it be measured?
Know How You Doing: Develop ways to continually
measure and improve upon the strategy and campaign.
Important Advice When
Constructing Your Plan
Digital Marketing: Page 23
"The process of formally defining your
digital marketing strategy forces you to
sit down and analyze the market in which
you're operating with a critical eye, and
to really think about the different
components of the business and how
digital marketing can help."

More Good Advice
"Don't get bogged down in technical
details at first – digital marketing is
about people communicating with other
people; the technology is just the stuff
in the middle that helps it happen."
The Digital Consumer:
Demographics

Very different from the general
population:
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Younger (90% 18-29yr vs. 46% 65+yr)

Richer (96% $75k+ vs. 63% <$30k)
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More Educated (93% College+ vs. 40% No College)

Urban/Suburban (80% vs. 68% Rural)
The Digital Consumer:
Characteristics
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Comfortable and proficient with medium
Accustomed to getting information on
demand, quickly, with little effort.
In control, used to user centric content,
elective and permission based.
Vocal about experiences, talking a lot
online with each other about their
experiences
Digital Marketing and the 4Ps
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Place: It's the Internet, but also the page, address, web
location that matter. Is it consistent with consumer
demands/benefits/desires?
Price: Pricing is transparent on the Internet, so to compete
must offer the best value proposition – the best balance
between product quality and options, and pricing.
Product: Consumers seek to develop product offerings
online and to control the product development process.
Failure to meet expectations may lead to online backlash
and possible product /brand death.
Digital Marketing and Promotions
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Promotion is everything done online (and
offline) to get products in front of consumers,
to acquire new customers and retain existing
ones.
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The marketing plan and tactics that you employ in your
projects will focus almost exclusively on Promotion.
What are the unique elements of promotion in the digital
marketing sphere?
Digital Marketing Promotion
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The Website – Hub of digital world
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Part of
the website, the process of aligning content on
the website to maximize favorable search results.
Pay-Per-Click-Advertising (PPC) – Using ad
dollars to buy search engine results for certain
key words or phrases.

Search is (still) the #1 way consumers will find your
website and most digital marketing $ today are (still)
spent on search.
Digital Marketing Promotion
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Online PR: Using online channels (free media)
like press releases, articles, blogs, to create a
positive impression of the brand or product.
Social Networking: Uses social media sites such
as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., to build
brands and promote products.
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Most plans today involve a large social media presence.
Mobile Marketing: The new, up and coming
digital marketing platform, where consumers have
access to content anytime and anywhere!
Offline Promotions
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Don't forget the importance of offline
advertising and promotions to help
support your online activities.
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Telling people about your presence on
Facebook, LivingSocial, etc., using traditional
media is still important to "get the word out"
about your social media campaign.
Digital Marketing:
Ultimate Goal

Building mutually rewarding, enduring
connections and relationships with
prospects and customers.

Please keep this in mind whenever
creating a digital marketing plan
(strategy) and associated tactics (i.e.
Facebook, Youtube, etc.)
Web 2.0
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Building relationships through digital
marketing broadly defines the current
era dubbed Web 2.0.
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Web 1.0: Applying traditional one-way
communication onto the web space.
Web 2.0: Recognizing a "culture of
participation" spurred by online technology
allowing for interactive capabilities, user
control, freedom and dialogue.
Defining Social Media Marketing
Forms of Media Marketing
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Traditional Marketing
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TV Broadcast, Print, Radio Outdoor, Flyers
Push Orientation, Interruption, Mass Media
Defining Social Media Marketing
Forms of Media Marketing
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Tradigital Marketing (Web 1.0)
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Banner Ads, E-Mail Mktg, Search Mktg
Targeted , Personalized, Push, Interruption
Defining Social Media Marketing
Forms of Media Marketing
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Social Media Marketing (Web 2.0)
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Networks, Communities, Blogs, Microblogs
Niche, Pull (Content Attracts), Interactivity, Sharing,
Participatory, Dialogue
Companies and consumers discuss, contribute, collaborate
and share.
Focus is on niche or micro-targets
Pull consumers to sites and keep them there with
interesting and relevant content and ways to socialize and
interact with other consumers

Entirely new marketing model over the "push" model which was
one-way, interruption model of marketing/communication.
Social Media Marketing
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Social Media Marketing is at the core
of Web 2.0.
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The use of social media to facilitate exchanges
between consumers and organizations.
For marketers it provides inexpensive access to
consumers and a variety of ways to interact
and engage them at different points in the
purchase cycle.
Four Zones of Social Media
1.
2.
3.
4.
Social Community: Sharing, socializing
and conversing.
Social Publishing: Editorial, user content,
commercial content
Social Entertainment: Games, music,
art.
Social Commerce: Services, retailing,
sales
Social Communities
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Channels of social media focused on common
activities people participate in with others who
share the same interest.
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All social media to this, but this is the primary reasons
for the existence of a social community
Features: Multi-way communications,
conversations and collaboration, and the sharing
of experiences and resources.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Wikis
Social Publishing
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Dissemination of content to an online
audience.
Features: Blogs, mircoblogs, media
(video, photo, audio, documents)
sharing, news sites.
Blogger, Blogspot, YouTube, Flicker,
Shutterfly, HuffingtonPost
Social Entertainment
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Opportunities to play games with others.
Most advanced channel, including social
gaming with interaction among players,
online gaming profiles, and virtual worlds.
Come2Play, Second Life, Zynga, MySpace
Social Commerce
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Use of social media to facilitate online buying
and selling of products and services.
Features: Social shopping behaviors, online
shoppers interact and collaborate with reviews,
ratings, deal sites, deal aggregators, social
shopping markets, social storefronts (operating
inside social sites), and online malls.
LivingSocial, Groupon, TripAdvisor, Kayak
Learning Activities
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Open Computers – Go to the following link:
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/online-social-media-principles
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Write done answers to the following:
1.
Read the 5 Coca Cola commitments to social media.
1.
2.
Read the personal use of social media expectations for employees and
associates.
1.
3.
Write down the 5 words used to describe Coco Cola’s commitments to the public and its
expectations for its employees and associates. Can you add any? Would you subtract any?
Do you agree or disagree with these policies? Would you add or subtract anything? If you worked
at Coca Cola would you follow these directives or do you feel freedom of speech is paramount?
Click the link: Five Tips For Using Social Media to Advance Your Career – Read
these Tips Provided by Coca Cola
1.
Do you agree or disagree with these recommendations? Would you add or subtract any? Would
you adhere or not adhere to these recommendations? Please explain why.
Learning Activities
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Go online and find example web sites
that you feel satisfy each of the
strategy phases in digital marketing:
Trial Phases – Example
Transition Phases – Example
Strategy Phases – Example
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For each write down the site address and
provide a brief explanation as to why you
place this into one of the three phases.
Digital Market Planning