Digital or die

Well passed the time to analyze consequences, it′s now or never to "walk the talk" and take actions to survive in this jungle. Your decision is now easier than ever before, it's: go digital or die...

By Jaime Teulon. International Marketing and Business Development executive. Madrid, April 2020

And it came the day when you were finally forced to pay attention to all your peers who were advising you to grow the digital dimension of your company. And now it′s a big decision, as for some time it might be your only chance of having some market presence. Furthermore, it could be the key for the future of sales in your market. This is not new, it was already unstoppable , but it has been catalyzed and it went exponential.

These are my recommendations on a starter pack of how to initially start your digital engine, specially for those who start from an existing (possibly SME) offline business.

As I would do in any vital situation , I would commence by going three steps backwards, out of the day-by-day noises, and conceive a killer strategy. Perhaps this shouldn’t be the most difficult step, but sometimes even clear minds fail to see that their strategy conception process wasn’t solid or long enough. As a consequence, that brought some hiccups along the way that could have easily been avoided.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. We should avoid not seeing the forest for the trees. Our goal is not to have a digital presence for the sake of it!!! Our goal is to survive in a new paradigm. And in order to survive we need to monetize our activity, we need sales. We are growing digitally to generate additional business. As simple and as complex as that.

THE USUAL SUSPECT. But that is a long and winding road and business implies a market, which implies consumers. And we need to define who that is. We might have different segments, but in this case and for each strategy and set of measures we need to understand which “Buyer Persona” (BP) or “Marketing Persona” we are aiming at. Creating those profiles allows you to personalize your marketing on a large scale by humanizing core target groups of your customer base.

For example in our industry, we build the brand customer base around different segments and in different speeds, and that implies that we have different actions and buyer personas to attend during different moments. What normally begins as an interaction with the hospitality industry, is later adapted to reach final consumers, and the interests, values and channels in both cases are totally different, which implies different buyer personas.

Two simple but important recommendations in the creation of this buyer personas, first, be precise, don′t open your scope to a too generic description. The second would be, don′t follow your instincts and feelings about your BP. There are lots of tools within reach that can help you determine it. Most of the times the results obtained won’t match your initial beliefs.

PHASES AND SOLUTIONS It′s also important to know in what phase we are as a brand, this is , what kind of nutrition we need in order to grow our tree. These phases are frequently described thru the Funnel of Sales, the pipeline that converts an impact into a repeating customer. And this is done through 3 phases: TOFU (Top of the funnel), MOFU (Middle of the funnel), BOFU (Bottom) and then additionally we should add the post purchase stage.

The first phase is all about creating awareness around your product, which is the base for a successful base of customers. The second one is about working on the interaction with those individuals who have responded, the ones who have at least interacted with your proposal, generating leads as a positive result. And the third one is about how to convert those leads into actual customers. The fourth phase is about the upselling, how to make current or past customers return for more.

Different phase implies a different target, and this implies a different metric and different KPI’s to achieve it. And of course it also implies different tools. These are some examples of tools that can be used as content in the different phases:

In our case, as we work with a portfolio of Brands at different status and phases, we tilt more to the branding construction on the newer Brands or those who are more directed to clusters (as massive action is out of reach, the effort is all about reaching the disseminated members of your potential fan club). However , for more consolidated Brands we work on the performance side, trying to analyze our customers behaviour and working on the Brand fans.

CHOOSE YOUR BULLETS WISELY. There are massive budgets in every market that play with that as a certain headstart. However , most of the brands are limited to restricted budgets, which impose a good selection of Media.

You are all probably aware by now that digital channels are classified around three different branches: Owned ( the brand’s own territory, such as the webpage , blogs, etc..), Earned (where your reputation or interet has provided you with followers or fans, such as the Social Media channels) and Paid ( obviously in Exchange for a payment, for example the Display , the SEM or the influencers).

Your buyers and strategy can also potentially point you on the right direction of what channels to use. Furthermore, your buyers and strategy should mark what channels to choose.

For premium Brands that are being introduced to the Digital channels, I find Owned media to be crucial. Most of these Brands are intensive in their product process, they have a differentiation to defend and are strong on their story telling. A good environment to showcase all these contents is most recommended.

The good side of this is that a good strategical preparation and the credentials of the brand will quickly generate a support thru Social Media, which is also important for a good exposition to content marketing ( I will talk about my suggestions for Social Media on a future post). It’s is even possible that this will grant you access to some influencers, not thru a commission payment, but out of interest for your product. In my experience for the premium , and more important for the F&B and Gourmet universe, with influencers is all about the qualitative impact. I suggest to focus on highly credible very specialized micro influencers. If there is a chance to add some paid media to the mix, a similar strategy is recommended. Strong design and message thru very specialized media. Superbly selected around the target marked by our buying persona.

And of course remember our first idea. It′s all about the sales. Our digital presence and tools will never be enough by themselves without a good performance analysis and a good attribution model that helps us modulate and rechannel thru the best performing tools.

Strategic objectives at the short term might not only revolver around sales, growing awareness, securing customers in a particular segment or area, supporting the launch of a new platform or project, are examples of potential objectives. All of this should be dimensioned around measurable results, and projected with a complete set of tactics, with their corresponden KPIs ,etc…

As a wise philosopher once said:

“The Unexamined life is not worth living”

Socrates , as described in Plato's Apology (38a5–6)

And I should add, if I may, that without a proper feedback, analysis and adjustments, is impossible to optimize our performance and therefore invest in the right tools.

Three questions on today′s subject:

• When expanding onto your digital marketing, are you just projecting your analogical capabilities or have you thought beyond?
• Have you defined your buyer persona based on your personal assumptions?
• And a classic, but more relevant as digital is becoming the reddest ocean, what is your competition doing on this field and what can make you unique?. A clear idea about your selling arguments and USP can help with that one.

Think fast and act before it′s too late: Go Digital or die!

Keep yourselves safe and sound.

From the bunkers,

Jaime Teulón