Cutting through the Noise: The "CFI " Approach to Powerful Digital Marketing

Unfortunately, the digital world is a very loud, noisy, disruptive place. You can barely hear yourself think, much less make sense of the information overload out there. Sadly it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to get any digital marketing message across in a sustainable, meaningful way.

According to Marketing Land Magazine:

“In today’s world, digital media is so pervasive that it’s no longer considered unique; it’s a way of life. Virtually everyone has a smartphone, and most individuals and households have multiple smart devices, including tablets, phones, and computers. This prevalence, coupled with the rise of Big Data, digital marketing tools, and social media, has given marketers the power to pinpoint specific audiences with advertising messages.

But while advertisers continue to pour money into digital media, consumers are so saturated that they’ve begun ignoring ads or actively avoiding them. The rise of ad fraud, where clicks are falsified to drive up cost per click (CPC) and bid rates, has resulted in billions of wasted advertising dollars, with real people only viewing about 40 percent of digital ads.1 To connect with consumers today, marketers need to re-think their strategy and focus on creating quality brand experiences, rather than on high-volume ad exposure. It’s time to take a second look at your approach and put people first.”

Ultimately, there is just too much noise in the marketplace and the challenge isn’t getting your message out there – that’s easy. The real challenge is being heard, embraced (trusted), and adopted by your target audience with real staying power.

And that just can’t happen with a single-pronged strategy, no matter how big the budget.

Impactful digital marketing begins with understanding that there are three pillars to digital media – CONTENT/FREQUENCY/INFLUENCE. These pillars all need to work together for your message to really gain hold. Here is how they break down separately:

1. Content – Everything you post, share and make available to your audience including:

• Websites
• Videos
• Blogs
• Social Media
• Product materials
• Reference tools
• Training

Frequency – How often you share your content across all digital platforms

Influencers – Who is leveraging your content and sharing it with others. Influencers are super users of your content and/or people that have a powerful network to accelerate the growth, impact, and awareness of your content.

The CFI approach requires that you build a digital strategy that takes CONTENT, FREQUENCY, and INFLUENCERS into account before going to market with any message.

When it comes to CONTENT, you need to determine the content your target audience finds valuable and create impactful stories that will engage your audience in a meaningful way. Powerful content marketing isn’t advertising. It’s entertaining, educational, and compelling to your target audience!

As far as FREQUENCY goes, you need to ensure the consistent release of quality content (you’ll need more than you think!) Also, how you tag, index and configure your content is critical for optimizing social search engines (algorithms) and robots. The goal with frequency is to increase your “digital footprint” in a meaningful way without spamming or saturation bombing your audience. Remember, it’s all about QUALITY and QUANTITY, creating a steady stream of high-value content for your audience.

Last, but not least, you need to have INFLUENCERS. It’s important to note that everyone has a sphere of influence, but all spheres are not equal. There are Macro and Micro-Influencers. Micro-influencers have a greater impact on specific target markets and regions, while Macro influencers have a broader reach. You need to know who’s who in these digital media circles and make sure that your content and frequency are dialed into their networks appropriately.

Also note that it in the world of digital influence, it’s not cool to toot your own horn. However, it is cool to toot someone else’s horn and have them reciprocate the favor – that’s a great way to expand reach, impact, and awareness for whatever your message is.

The key to CFI is that you have to use all three pillars to make it work. Great content is meaningless if no one sees it. Frequency means nothing if you’re publishing junk all over the place, and influencers will dry up if you don’t give them something meaningful to share on a consistent, regular basis.

Ultimately, it’s not who shouts the loudest that wins, it’s who chants a meaningful mantra that gets picked up, embraced, and shared over time that becomes the ultimate voice that’s heard and respected.