Share this post

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Topic: Sales and Marketing Management

Reference: Edelman, David. “Four ways to get more value from digital marketing.” McKinsey Quarterly, March 2010.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Topic: Sales and Marketing Management

Reference: Edelman, David. “Four ways to get more value from digital marketing.” McKinsey Quarterly, March 2010.

I am currently heavily involved in digital marketing and running an e-mail marketing campaign. Digital marketing makes perfect sense. It is targeted, cost effective, and ideal for establishing a two-way communication path with potential customers. The real question is can digital marketing be effectively implemented? As it turns out the answer depends on your view of the customer, the time horizon applied, and the leverage that is applied to the digital campaign. Leverage here is derived from deploying content over multiple channels and using the tools available to improve the customer conversation and experience. Accordingly, the better your benchmarks are related to time, customers, and the intensity of the effort, the more effectively digital marketing performs. I am glad to hear this, as the results from digital marketing are not immediate and the perceived impact is greater when leveraged with other coordinated activities such as field events or video posts. The commentator makes this and other points in the referenced article. Specifically, he mentions four areas where activities have to be concentrated to help create the most effective results. These include orchestrating an integrated customer experience, getting customers to help stretch marketing budgets, using discipline to curb costs, and using intelligence wisely to drive performance. These all make sense but the last point may have the most impact. “Marketers need the ability to analyze and utilize intelligence in real time to drive performance by using it.” The commentator indicates that the problem is that many don’t use the tools to build value or implement improvements that will drive sales results. Clear objectives to act on observations and follow up are often missing. I have seen this at work in many campaigns and typically there is a weak implementation loop for adjusting for market observations. Improving market-based adjustments is one area that can add significant value even if the other three observations are not managed well. Accordingly, that is an area that probably deserves immediate follow up. If it is an area that you have not paid attention to recently, then it is worth adding it to your next marketing meeting agenda.