Digital Marketing is about Building Human Relationships!
Where to start in developing a Digital Marketing plan!
You are a firm believer in the Digital Marketing concept! You want to spread the word of your dynamic SME.
You also know that any new marketing initiative will rest on your shoulders! But your business is too small to justify additional marketing resource. And right now, your shoulders have no extra space to take on anything new!
You know your business has enormous potential but how do you start the communication that will allow you to share that vision?
To make things more complicated, the professional and technophilic language used in the world of Digital Marketing frustrates your understanding. Acronyms such as CTR, CTA, SEO and SEM abound. Other phrases such as owned media, earned media, paid for media, algorithms, metrics, analytics and re-targeting are used in abundance. And when you are trying to research Digital Marketing you read about content marketing, Influencer marketing, SMS marketing, Email Marketing and Permission Marketing. You need spend enormous time with a dictionary to make any sense of it.
The perspective this series takes is that digital marketing is not about technology but about human behaviour. And human behaviour are a reality you inherently understand extremely well. You need no development of those skills, just time to think about and manage that. You start from a good place.
The prospect is travelling along a buyer’s journey
Your prospect is travelling along a journey. What is that?
You will read about a buyer’s journey, a sales funnel, a consumer purchase funnel, a customer sales or engagement cycle. All refer to the same process.
At its simplest a consumer is unaware of your product, service, brand or solution that you offer to his problem. He/she may not even yet be aware of the problem he/she has? At some point, he/she comes across your product and decides to test it. So, he/she buys your product. Has that conversion (from prospect to customer) completed the journey? No, because he/she will buy again and you must ensure he /she buys your product the next time they need that same solution.
In fact, you need to make sure that every time he/she is asked about the problem they have solved, that person recommends you. And that person becomes the brand ambassador.
That journey mimics everyday human behaviour?
In his book Intimate Behaviour: A Zoologist’s Classic Study of Human Intimacy, Zoologist and human socio-biologist Desmond Morris reveals there are twelve distinctive stages of intimacy. (Morris, 1997). Such relationship-building takes many forms and for illustrative purposes can be simplified as
- Two people meet. They hold a conversation!
- If that conversation is promising they exchange WhatApp addresses and/or telephone numbers.
- A message leads to a telephone call.
- A telephone call leads to coffee.
- Coffee leads to a non-threatening and friendly dinner.
- That dinner leads to a special dinner at a restaurant overlooking the harbour on a stormy winter’s day.
- The storm continues and that dinner is followed up with a dinner with the prospects friends.
Simultaneously, your prospect is conducting their own research
In parallel, your new friend is conducting research.
That might include looking for you online, it might be through family or your friends or it may just be questions you are being asked in polite conversation. The research and testing is being done. Do not ever think that the first invite to a meal with friends implies success. It is a test you still must pass.
Now we all know where this is going, we have all been in these positions before.
Each step of the growing path involves conversation, that conversation might attract you two. In a changing environment you must manage that the right conversation occurs.
Saying the right things will deepen the friendship.
And knowing the right thing to say is more difficult because every point on the journey requires a different word. A comment made in jest after knowing each other for 12 months, might be prefect. But made in the first 5 minutes might be considered obscene.
Saying the wrong thing will end it immediately
And we know that saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can end the human relationship journey instantly, even if you do not think it was wrong. If your partner thought it was wrong, it might be the end. We all know and understand that.
Your digital marketing must make the right information available
Digital marketing is the same as human connecting behaviour. You must say (or make available) the right thing at the right time and in the right place to the right prospects.
Achieving that will convert your prospect into a customer and even to being that raving fan or brand ambassador we spoke of earlier.
That is the objective of digital marketing.
So, what is that prospect looking for?
Depending on where the prospect is on that customer journey, he/she may be looking for
- A white paper,
- An audio-visual support for a presentation,
- Product supply points,
- A Customer Service product demonstration,
- A comparative review,
- A promotional offer, or
- Any of the multitude of communications the digital world allows.
Ye, it is enormously challenging to present this information to the prospect. But it is also likely that the information already exists. Your own people have used it in presenting your business to past clients.
Put that prospect first
Here the emphasis is on putting the client first, putting that information in a place where that customer can find it when he needs it and when he wants to find it.
This blog is written on the assumption you are starting out. You should not expect to get everything correct before you start.
Rather start with one small step in the right direction. And improve operationally, with validation from customer feedback.
If necessary, improve and repeat until you do get a positive response to that first step.
Only then take another step, continuously learning and growing as you go along.
This series of posts will outline that process.
The customer journey
The customer journey is a well-studied concept, and experts describe it rather well.
A number are presented in Digital Marketing Excellence (Chaffey & Smith, 2017). These include variations on high involvement to low involvement purchases. In a simpler post, in an online location, Chaffey describes the customer journey map (Chaffey, 2020)
And in Marketing 4.0 (Kotler, et al., 2017) the 5A’s model is used to map the customer buying path.
If you wish to study the academic versions, both Chaffey and Kotler are a great place to start.
For our purposes I have turned to a more popular source and use the DigitalMarketer.com an organisation founded by Ryan Deiss. The reason for this selection is that Ryan himself presents the model in various online presentations and many who have enjoyed success do so as well. It is a practical, well used model that will grow with you.
For those who enjoy reading, the model (Customer Value Journey or the 8-step path) can be found amongst the Digital Marketer blogs (DigitalMarketer, 2019) or for those who enjoy watching you can find presenting the short version model here (3.33 minutes) (Deiss, 2017) and a slightly more in depth version here (15:55 minutes) (Deiss, 2019).
Start with one small step in this customer journey
This series of blogs will continue to be inspired by Indira Gandhi who is quoted saying “Have a bias towards action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.” (Chaudhary, 2020)
The next blog will talk about that model in more depth, always with an eye on the action step but growing at the same time. And that blog will describe a first step you can make.
References
Chaffey, D., 2020. Customer journey map. [Online] Available at: https://www.davechaffey.com/digital-marketing-glossary/customer-journey-map/ [Accessed 2 February 2021].
Chaffey, D. & Smith, P., 2017. Digital Marketing Excellence. 5 ed. London: Routledge.
Chaudhary, S., 2020. Why Having A Bias For Action Is Important In Leaders?. [Online] Available at: https://focusu.com/blog/why-having-a-bias-for-action-is-important-in-leaders/ [Accessed 25 January 25 2021].
Deiss, R., 2017. 8 Stages of the Customer Journey. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDFHe9BbuWo&feature=emb_logo [Accessed 28 January 2021].
Deiss, R., 2019. The 8 Steps To Creating A Customer Journey Map. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlcmM6w5cPc&t=22s [Accessed 28 January 2021].
DigitalMarketer, 2019. The Customer Value Journey Explained in 800 Words or Less. [Online] Available at: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/customer-value-journey/ [Accessed 2 February 2021].
Kotler, P., Kartajaya, H. & Setiawan, T., 2017. Marketing 4.0 Moving from Traditional to Digital. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Morris, D., 1997. Intimate Behavior: A Zoologist's Classic Study of Human Intimacy. New York: Kodansha Globe.