Going Digital

GOING DIGITAL

Tools for the New Age Marketer

For years, marketing has been done traditionally through direct selling and advertising on trimedia – print, TV and radio.  When out-of-home (OOH) advertising was introduced, marketers reformulated their marketing mix to include billboards, transit ads and street signs to be visible to more customers in less time and less cost.  As I recall, during my days working for an Ad agency, OOH was still in its infancy. Advertising was mainly done on mainstream TV, Radio and Print and those that are seen in Light Boxes, Bus Waiting Stations and Public Transportation were considered rogue or guerilla style marketing. However, those are days gone old.

Since technology keeps on growing and evolving, creating more digital distribution channels that can reach more consumers in a more timely, relevant and personal fashion, advertising through mobile phones and the Internet have received much preference from majority of marketers today – this is called DIGITAL MARKETING. For most of us, we actively use our emails to correspond and send information. A huge majority of society has forgotten to use traditional or “snail mail” since the internet came about.

I truly believe that any innovation brought about by creativity and out of the box ideas are born due to demand, and this has been the life blood of marketers in general as we see today. As St. Peterian Marketers, the following are suggestions of how to utilize current technology that could easily translate into sales going above and beyond one’s quota.

For this month, I would like focus in on maximizing the usage of these modern instruments in terms of Sales and Marketing. For introductions, let me capture your attention on a few glaring facts that would surprise and excite you about the web in general.

Pinoy Facts

We Pinoy’s do know that TXTing is our favorite past time. We use it 24/7 for work and play. If you are like me, my cellphone is next to bedside table like an invisible umbilical cord that is attached wherever I go, even in my sleep. Aside from the mobile communication, a growing number of Filipinos do actively participate on web activities either for emails, information, gaming and networking.

Many of us have our own nook in the web either in Friendster or Facebook where we interact and socialize with our friends, families and associates. This is called Social Networking.

According to Media in Mind TM 2006…

1. There are about 20 million Filipinos who access the web everyday
2. 75% percent log on to an internet café, while 19% access them in schools
3. As our population is relatively young, a huge portion is dedicated to internet gaming (as seen in most internet café’s)
4. Drop in print media such as newspapers and glossy magazines contribute circulation loss and ad reduction to free news on the web wherein Ad spending is allocated elsewhere

Where Internet is often used (Nielsen Media Index 2008)

Here are some additional facts from Nielsen Media Index of 2006-2008 that may shed light on the increase demands for below the line activities.

1. Radio, DVD’s, Billboards, Cinema and Internet have even or growth indicators that Filipinos often participate and listen to.
2. Steady decline on TV and Print in the past 2 years of the survey
3. There are indicators that the market seeks other alternatives than the norm. Innovation and creativity play a vital role

Pinoy Activities on the Web

Aside from email usage “gaming” is another popular web past time at 45% (Nielsens Media Index of 2008) perhaps mainly due to the youth populous of the nation supplemented by numerous internet café’s where internet is cheap and accessible.

For marketers, advertising on known traditional media is no longer the norm. We have to explore other below the line platforms to get our message across. In recent years, television, radio and print have been dropping steadily as measured by Nielsen Media index of 2006 (see graph below)

Ad Agencies, Marketers and companies seek newer and more innovative ways in bridging the communication gap with the audience. Relatively, internet and mobile usage seems to be the growing segments that provide some opportunity among various media platforms available.

Some Digital Marketing Examples…

1. Email Marketing/Email Blasting

Email Marketing uses this opportunity to send an advertising or promotional message to a targeted audience using a mailing list or database.  Email Blasting can reach a large number of people in just a click of the ‘Send’ button and compared with direct mail or printed newsletters, email is less expensive.    A great example is when you access your yahoo email account (I am pretty sure, you have one) located at the right hand side of your screen are Ads that push their content and message in an email. But beware…

Push emails can lead to Email Blasting (don’t we hate those, personally I do!) Make sure that your mailing list has consented to receiving your promotional emails otherwise you are guilty of spamming.  According to Wikipedia, spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately). Spamming in Marketing has an adverse effect rather than sending a good connection with your target, spams result to annoyance leaving a bad taste in one’s mouth offsetting the real motivation and objective one’s program. Ergo, use with prudence and discretion.

2. SMS

A few years ago, when part of my job was to use SMS as a medium for advertising, we have utilized SMS as one of the below the line activities for companies and individuals to market their service and product cheaply. Hence, the Philippines being known as the TXTing Capital of the World, usage of this medium is but obvious to most advertisers. On the average, Filipinos send 400 million text messages a day.  Like Email Blasting, SMS is direct, immediate, time saving and cost effective. It makes customers and business available to each other 24/7.  SMS ads can also be personalized (i.e. using images in MMS) to suit and appeal more to your target market segment.

Telecommunication companies are highly regulated and have set guidelines for the entire telecommunications industry.  SMS ads must always have the consent and permission of the recipient and contain instructions for opting out of the marketing communication otherwise can be considered as spam. SMS ads should be within these regulations otherwise the company/individual might be sued for committing such violations.

Furthermore, mobile ads are normally limited to 160 characters of text and 3MB of images or audio/video files. Nowadays, SMS ads, push and pull messages are done by content providers or aggregators licensed by the big mobile operators. (source from HAS Communications)

3. Blogs and Forums

Most of us are familiar with websites that are a wealth of information of almost any topic known to man. However, a sub-category of websites are known as blogs and forums that have interactive tools creating dialogue between consumers and audience.  Most modern companies use blogs to relay information and explain about their products and services to their user community and sometimes become information resources. They are also an excellent way of getting feedback if one’s products and services meet the demands of consumers. It is also one way of widening your social network as blogs and forums cut across various interests, professions and hobbies from all walks of life. Usually, blogs create engagement with the reader or audience in a participative manner enabling them to give feedback immediately. Many trends and news information begin on blogs nowadays and snowball from there. Blogs and forums should be taken with caution. As they are public information, hence a bad comment could be easily translated to bad publicity snowballing into a media disaster.

4. Social Media

Social media refers to websites that publish user-generated content.  Two of the top four websites on the Internet today are social media sites namely Youtube and Facebook.   With FB alone you can create buzz   (viral marketing) and it building relationships with customers and potential clients.  You can also link your social web pages to your corporate/personal web site to generate more traffic. Last year alone, the Marketing Department of St. Peter ventured into the usage of Facebook with the Pink Casket as the primary focal point. We used our own photos and others inside the Pink Casket during St. Peter DeathCare Week. This social experiment proved to be a huge success with over a hundred of Pink Casket photos across Facebook transcending to Television news clips, and foreign news headlines.

Conclusion

With society and the environment moving at a frenzied pace, the ways of communicating to everyone get more varied and deeper. No can say what’s the next best thing in terms of utilizing technology for communication and marketing means. As we speak, Apple just released, the iPAD the next breakthrough in the line of MAC products addressing the need for ebooks, internet access, presentations and applications. Would I buy it? Perhaps. In the same manner when I switched to using an iPhone. I may be a hardcore book reader but reading on a digital pad may take sometime getting used to.

Technology as exemplified wit mobile phones, computers, the iPAD and others. The trick is to adopt to the situation and evolve with it. As a Marketer, let us use these tools than conform with social and environmental changes to our advantage-representative of the New Age Marketer for the 21st century.

Sources:

Media in Mind TM 2006

Nielsens Media Index 2006, 2008

Wikipedia (definition SPAMMING)

HAS Communication – SMS Messaging

M Ads 2008

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