subject: Your ten Biggest Digital Marketing Strategy Issues [print this page] Your ten Biggest Digital Marketing Strategy Issues
Is digital marketing really at the heart of your business, driving it's growth? Take a look at what I see as the ten big questions that businesses large and small should ask to take advantage of digital media. If you answer all these questions and have a story for how you will approach each issue then you're well along on your way to developing a winning digital marketing strategy.
Issue 1. The E-marketing planning process
What is it?
The integration of e-marketing-specific objectives, strategies and activities into the traditional annual marketing planning process.
Key questions:
Do we have a separate e-marketing plan?
What should the e-marketing plan contain?
Which objectives do we set to drive the contribution of e-marketing to the organization?
How do we use align e-marketing activities with business strategies of market and product development?
How do we integrate e-marketing communications with traditional communications?
Which Internet-specific strategies should we review?
New channel structures - How do we partner / form alliances with online intermediaries, develop new intermediaries and manage channel conflicts?
Issue 2. Organising and resourcing for e-marketing
What is it?
As the importance of online channels increase, the structure of the marketing organization and responsibilities may need to change to maximize the opportunities available through new media.
Key questions:
Do we change the structure of the marketing organization?
Which new responsibilities do we identify for e-marketing?
How do we develop e-marketing specific skills within the marketing team?
Does the organization have the database marketing and analytical skills to support e-CRM and e-mail marketing?
Which e-marketing activities do we outsource?
Issue 3. Defining the Internet value proposition (IVP)
What is it?
To achieve increased customer usage of online channels (web, e-mail, wireless), a distinct, detailed proposition must be developed for these online channels and it must be clearly communicated online and offline.
Key questions:
How can we vary the elements of the marketing mix online?
How do we research the proposition?
How is the combination of e-mail (issue 6) and web-based personalization (issue 9) used to extend the proposition?
How powerful is the IVP (research)?
What are competitors offering as IVPs?
Are there cannibalization issues?
Issue 4. E-brand value
What is it?
How does the Internet contribute to and influence brands?
Key questions:
How do we extend our brand online?
Should we use brand variants?
How effective is the emotional connection of an online brand?
How is the online brand experience perceived by customers?
How is online service delivery perceived by customers?
Reputation management (or PR) how do we manage how third-party sites present the brand through proactive promotion of the brand and reactive limitation of negative PR.
Viral marketing how do we use the efficiency of online networks to create involvement with a brand?
Issue 5. Setting the e-communications mix
What is it?
Defining the proportion of online spend on different elements of the communications mix
Key issues:
Percent of communications budget allocated to e-communications
Online spend % on advertising, direct mail and PR
Demonstrating return on investment for e-marketing tools
Continuous vs campaign spend
Relative spend on different online tools, i.e. search, affiliates, online ads, rented e-mail lists, online sponsorship, etc
How do we partner / form alliances with online intermediaries or should we develop new intermediaries?
Issue 6. E-mail marketing integration (Touch or contact strategy)
What is it?
Integrating different forms of marketing e-mail, i.e. rented list, house list e-blasts, service e-mails and e-newsletters with traditional communications, i.e. direct mail, advertising, etc to achieve maximum response
Key issues:
What is our touch or contact strategy defining minimum and maximum number of touches per customer in a period?
What communications preferences do we offer customers for media type, format, frequency and content?
How are e-mail newsletters used as strategic communications tools?
How do we maintain responsiveness of e-mail marketing given the increasing volume of e-mail reaching recipients in-boxes including SPAM (60% of global e-mail) and blocking/filtering of legitimate permission-based opt-in e-mail marketing ?
Issue 7. E-CRM
What is it?
Using online channels (web, e-mail, wireless messaging linked to customer databases) to build and deepen relationships with customers.
Key issues:
How do we use online channels to create dialogue and build relationships with web site visitors using a permission-based dialogue?
How can we selectively target customer segments with different characteristics and value?
What are the characteristics of customers who preferentially use the online channels?
How do we manage customer data (See Issue 8)
How well does the web site/e-mail support cross-selling/upselling?
What methods do we use to target and personalize messages for online customers?
How do we manage change associated with CRM
Which technologies do select to support CRM?
What level of customer service do we provide online and how do we control the level of online versus offline enquiries?
Issue 8. Building and exploiting customer knowledge
What is it?
Customer knowledge is profiling information and research characterising customers including their characteristics, communications preferences, behaviours and perception of service.
Key questions:
How do we acquire and update customer details as part of e-permission marketing (http://www.wnim.com/archive/issue2504/emarketing.htm).
Who is responsible for customer knowledge?
How do we assess and control the quality of customer knowledge?
Integrating separate databases to achieve a 360 degreee view of the customer.
How do we segment online audiences using customer information?
Which models do we use to assess customer value?
How do we motivate staff to improve knowledge quality?
How is this data exploited using targeted marketing communications?
What are the legal liabilities and constraints of managing customer data such as, in Europe, the Data Protection Act, and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Act and in the US, CAN-SPAM laws?
Issue 9. E-marketing automation
What is it?
Developing personalized marketing messages delivered by web and e-mail in response to customer events and behaviours.
Key questions:
How can we support the sales process and relationship-building through automated e-mail dialogue based on web-based triggers?
How do we build related-products personalization into the web site?
How do we integrate personalization technology into our existing infrastructure?
Issue 10. E-channel optimization
What is it?
Developing a continuous improvement process to monitor the effectiveness of web and e-mail marketing.
Key issues:
Which web analytics tools do we use?
What metrics/dashboards to we use to review e-marketing effectiveness?
What testing programmes do we use to improve e-marketing?
How do we optimize different e-marketing activities traffic building, web site design, e-mail marketing
What is the internal process for review and improvement?
