DIGITAL MARKETING AN INTEGRATED APPROACH OCTOBER 2015 Theme Group 2015 themegroup.co.uk
WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING? The key objective of digital marketing is to promote brands, build preferences and increase sales through various digital marketing techniques. It is an umbrella term for the targeted, measurable and interactive marketing of products or services using digital technologies to reach and convert leads into customers. Why it matters In order to be effective, the many different facets of digital marketing need to work in harmony. The days of SEO, pay per click, blogs, social media and email marketing all operating independently with little to no consistency or strategy are long gone. Conversely, the days of throwing every conceivable tactic into the digital marketing mix leaving you with no idea as to what worked and what didn t are also consigned to the past. In their place are integrated marketing and the process of lean analytics that is, highlighting one underperforming area of your marketing mix at a time and improving that before moving on to anything else, giving you a much more accurate insight into the successful aspects of your marketing efforts. In this whitepaper, we ll look at the growing importance of embracing integrated marketing and lean analytics, the changing face of digital marketing, and how to implement these changes in your business. BUZZ WORDS Content marketing: the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action. (Content Marketing Institute) Inbound marketing: creating and sharing content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more. (Hubspot) SEO: the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine s unpaid results often referred to as natural, organic, or earned results. Integrated: with various aspects or parts linked or coordinated. Pay-per-click (PPC): a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. (wordstreamcom) 2
THE GROWTH OF INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING The last few years have seen many digital marketing staples fall by the wayside, while others have increased in importance, appeared out of nowhere or found new life as the landscape shifted. Here are the areas you need to be looking into: SEARCH TRADE SHOWS DIRECT MAIL BUYERS THEN MAGAZINES BLOGGING DIRECT MAIL WEBINARS BUSINESS NETWORKS ONLINE VIDEO SEO BUYE NO EMAIL WEBSITE TRADE SHOWS EMAIL MARKETING DIRECT MAIL ERS EN WEBSITE MAGAZINES BLOGGING DIRECT MAIL WEBINARS BUSINESS NETWORKS ONLINE VIDEO SEO SEM BUYERS NOW TRADE SHOWS SOCIAL MEDIA MAGAZINES WEBSITE CONTENT MARKETING WHITE PAPERS SEARCH EMAIL MARKETING MOBILE MARKETING 3
MOBILE Worldwide, there are 3.65 billion mobile phone users and 7 billion subscriptions (mobile contracts, whether for smartphones, mobile devices like tablets or connected products like in-built satnavs). Although many of those mobile phone owners do not own a smartphone, it is predicted that the number of smartphone users will hit 2 billion by 2016, and that half of phone owners will be on smartphones by 2018. Mobile ad spend has already doubled since 2013 And of course, this proliferation of smartphones is driving an increase in mobile ad spend, which has already doubled since 2013, is expected to top 66 billion by 2016, and will continue to rise exponentially through to 2019. By comparison, desktop ad spend is slowly falling, and this trend is expected to continue for the rest of the decade (emarketer.com, March 2015). When it comes to the UK specifically, 44.8% of ad impressions, 50% of ad clicks, 46% of spend and 43% of conversions come via mobile rather than desktop advertising. When you add tablets to the mix, mobile devices showed an 8.9% increase in conversion rate in 2014 while desktop conversions dropped by 8.3% (econsultancy.com). And how are social media sites performing for mobile device ad spend? Facebook currently has an advertising income of 9.2 billion, and 73% of that ( 6.7 billion) comes from mobile advertising and it hasn t even fully exploited its 1 billion users on WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, so this figure is set to increase. STATISTICS 1 IN 5 CONSUMERS USE SMARTPHONES TO SHOP 38% 38% OF CONSUMERS ARE IMPRESSED WHEN A BUSINESS HAS A MOBILE-OPTIMISED SITE (BrightLocal) 50% 50% OF MOBILE USERS PREFER A MOBILE-FRIENDLY SITE VS 10% FOR MOBILE APPS (BrightLocal) 4
SOCIAL ADVERTISING All too often, the success of social media campaigns is measured on Likes, Comments, Shares, Retweets and so on. Paid campaigns geared towards increasing engagement abounded, but companies swiftly found that buying a thousand Likes didn t necessarily translate into a thousand new customers. Facebook boasts 845 million monthly active users and 1 trillion page views STATISTICS 72% OF SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED BUSINESSES (SMBs) ARE USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROMOTE THEIR BUSINESSES (BrightLocal) With the ability to create very targeted adverts hitting highly customised audiences who fit your demographic or have already shown an interest in similar products/services social advertising has taken on a fresh importance in the marketing mix. Although Facebook reaches 51% of internet users compared to Google s 90%, it does boast 845 million monthly active users and 1 trillion page views. Compared to Google s 180 billion ad impressions each month, it is clear that the social giant can now be a worthwhile recipient of your ad spend (wordstream.com). 7/10 CONSUMERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO USE A LOCAL BUSINESS IF IT HAS INFO ON A SOCIAL SITE (BrightLocal) 5
INBOUND MARKETING STATISTIC ATTRACT STRANGERS VISITORS Blogs Keywords Social Publishing 67% B2B COMPANIES WITH BLOGS GENERATE 67% MORE PER MONTH ON AVERAGE THAN NON-BLOGGING FIRMS CONVERT Forms Call-to-Action Landing Pages LEADS CLOSE CRM Email Workflows CUSTOMERS DELIGHT PROMOTERS Surveys Smart Content Social Monitoring Traditionally, marketing has been outbound or interruptive it comes at you, uninvited, while you re watching your favourite TV programme, reading the paper or your favourite magazine, or browsing a website. The main issue with it? It often doesn t work you go to make a cup of tea, flick past the page or close the pop-up ad without absorbing it. For big companies looking for brand awareness, this method arguably serves a purpose. For those looking for a hard and fast ROI, not so much. 6
Inbound marketing usually means creating content whether a blog post, FAQs page, image, video etc that aims to answer a user query. What makes this inbound marketing (rather than interruptive or outbound) is that users discover sites while attempting to solve a problem. This helps marketers capture them earlier in the buying cycle they may not even be comparing companies at that point, because they don t even know if a solution to their issue exists. Inbound marketing helps companies present that solution and subtly highlight why they re the best choice to solve it. Inbound marketing was voted the most commercially important digital trend in 2015 STATISTICS 95 AVG COST TO GENERATE A LEAD THROUGH INBOUND MARKETING 246 AVG COST TO GENERATE A LEAD THROUGH OUTBOUND MARKETING And it works. Inbound tactics generate 54% more leads than traditional paid marketing. It is also around half the cost to generate a lead via inbound marketing ( 95 vs 246), and for that reason was voted the most commercially important digital trend for 2015 by readers of marketing blog Smart Insight (with 29.6% of the votes, more than double the nearest rival). 7
LOCAL SEO Appearing at the top of the search results has long been the aim for businesses, and it s easy to see why 98% of potential cutsomers choose a business that s listed on page one of the search results. Even prospects who have heard about you are crying out for you to have a functioning local presence. The number one reason for doing an online search is to find a known company, and by taking control of your local SEO, you re taking control of the company information that a searcher will see when looking you up online especially important in an era of social media, review sites and a plethora of other third party sites that could potentially pose risks to your reputation if not managed correctly. Local SEO & the rise of mobile But if local SEO has always been a huge component of a company s inbound strategy, the rise of mobile search has elevated it from important to vital. The search volumes involved are already massive remember the 3.65 billion smartphone users we said were out there? Ninety-five per cent of them have used their smartphone to look for local information (which very often translates to local business information), and 77% of those searchers will go on to contact a business they find during that search. Google research has also shown that 59% of consumers making a local search on their smartphones visited that business the same day, while 18% made a purchase within one day meaning their buyer intent is very real, and very immediate. THE LOCAL JOURNEY (BrightLocal) 3.6 BILLION PHONE USERS WORLDWIDE 95% OF WHOM HAVE USED THEIR SMARTPHONE TO LOOK FOR LOCAL INFORMATION 98% OF POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS CHOOSE A BUSINESS THAT S LISTED ON PAGE ONE OF THE SEARCH 88% OF CONSUMERS CONSULT ONLINE REVIEWS BEFORE THEY MAKING A PURCHASE 59% OF CONSUMERS MAKING A LOCAL SEARCH ON THEIR SMARTPHONES VISITED THAT BUSINESS THE SAME DAY 18% MADE A PURCHASE WITHIN ONE DAY 8
EMAIL MARKETING Email marketing, when done right, can deliver an exceptional ROI as much as 4300% according to Hubspot. A recent survey by Econsultancy ranked it marketers second-favourite marketing method when it comes to delivering success 22% rated its ROI excellent compared to 27% for SEO and 18% for PPC. On top of that, 76% of marketers say they use email marketing more now than they did three years ago (Hubspot). STATISTIC 84% OF MARKETERS SEE EMAIL BEING FULLY INTEGRATED WITH OTHER CHANNELS WITHIN 5 YEARS Seventy-six percent of marketers say they use email marketing more now than they did three years ago But despite the obvious benefits, it seems marketers aren t getting the levels of success that they should be from email marketing. While a lack of strategy (46%), integration (43%) and relevant content (36%) are all given as reasons for failure, the biggest culprit according to marketers is a combination of their database s quality (54%) and the lack of segmentation (42%). 9
The importance of knowing where your audience is in the buying cycle can t be overstated. The power of email marketing lies in its ability to provide relevant, timely information that turns prospects into buyers, so it is vital to properly segment your database and reach the right people at the right time with the right message. Sending out the wrong message at the wrong time will at best see your marketing efforts ignored, and at worst will result in prospects unsubscribing from future alerts. Despite this, only 21% of marketers are using any sort of advanced segmentation, with less than half looking to implement segmentation in the future. Ninety-one per cent of consumers check their emails at least once a day STATISTIC 76% OF MARKETERS BELIEVE ALL EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS WILL BE COMPLETELY PERSONALISED WITHIN 5 YEARS (Marketing Week) It s vital to get it right when it comes to mobile-friendly eshots, too. Ninety-one per cent of consumers check their emails at least once a day, making it the most-used functionality. And with an average of nine minutes a day spent checking our emails on our phones, and almost half of all email opens taking place on a mobile device, it s clear that this is an area that cannot be ignored. Despite the vast numbers of consumers opening emails on smartphones, however, they only account for 25% of conversions compared to 39% for desktop. This indicates that brands are not concentrating enough on ensuring their email campaigns are better optimised for mobile devices while keeping consistent with other marketing initiatives from the same brand something an integrated campaign would help deliver. 10
WHAT NEXT AND HOW DO WE WORK? If you want to embrace integrated digital marketing and boost your business, we can help. Our digital marketing & content strategist will arrange a Discovery Meeting, where we ll cover everything from your target audience and your goals through to your current marketing efforts and past successes and failures. This helps us create a bespoke but flexible and constantly evolving campaign designed to appeal to your audience and meet your goals. Here s where the lean analytics process comes in we ll set one goal at the start of each month improving site conversions, increasing email responses, enhancing ad spend ROI and so on and create an experiment to improve that metric. If this is successful, we ll look at another area to improve. If it isn t (let s face it, not everything will work first time), or if the improvement isn t large enough, we ll target the same metric until we get the desired results. This method means we can identify what works and what doesn t, and you can identify how your marketing efforts are improving over time giving you faster results and a more transparent ROI. To arrange your FREE 1 HOUR Discovery Meeting, call Nick Capehorn on 0118 921 5464 or email nick.capehorn@themegroup.co.uk The meeting will ascertain how your business can achieve: Clearer direction to help you earn new customers and enhance current relationships. Greater market share, whether you re a start-up or current business. A powerful online value proposition More actionable feedback through both data and user sentiment Constant improvement Sign up to our monthly newsletter to stay ahead of the competition, email nick.capehorn@themegroup.co.uk to be added to the list. 11