Ten Years after the Internet became a popular medium for consumers and businesses, most Marketing Managers still don’t understand message creation and distribution on the Internet. What gives?
I’ve been teaching eMarketing to the business community for ten years, and you still don’t get it. Fully 80% of commercial websites we’ve reviewed have critical flaws, either in usability, capability or traffic. At first I thought, maybe I’d been ineffective in my teaching, but then I thought about who exactly has been attending my workshops. I’ve taught to underlings in marketing departments who are enthusiastic about what they’ve learned, but have no power to implement, IT people who understand the technical aspects, but are not marketers and a handful of small business owners who take the time and energy to understand and effectively implement eMarketing strategies.
Marketing Executives Are Not Taking the Time to Understand This Powerful Medium One marketing exec in his late fifties confessed to me that he hoped he’d retire before he’d have to “learn this stuff”. I’m glad that guy isn’t working for me! I hope he’s not working for you.
Without top management buy-in, eMarketing will not work!
Let’s say that in 1994 before the Internet became popular, you spent the majority of your marketing dollars on magazine advertising. Now, consumers spend billions of hours each year surfing the ‘Net. They’re also spending billions of dollars buying aftermarket products. Do you think maybe some of the hours that they used to spend reading magazines are now devoted to surfing the ‘Net? Uh…yeah! Do you think you should consider switching a reasonable percentage of your advertising focus to the ‘Net? Uh…yeah.
Here we are 12 years after the internet became popular, 12 years after people began turning their attention to the internet for information. Are you going to adjust your ad spending now? Only if you want sales, I guess. How many companies have told me that their magazine ads aren’t producing the same results they did 10 years ago? Umm, let me think. Every single one of them.
If you are a marketing executive and haven’t yet invested the time to gain a complete understanding of how this works, I’d say it’s high time you did. You can’t delegate this one.
Without top management buy-in, eMarketing will not work!
eMarketing is not included in most marketing plans. If it is, it is simply a line item. Marketers aren’t sure what to include and how much they should allow for eMarketing. They don’t understand the basics of online message creation, distribution and how their customers use the online world. Understandably, everyone feels a little behind in the ever-changing world of technology and we all assume that others know a lot more than we do about our iPods and Blackberries. In actuality, we aren’t all in the same boat when it comes to technology. We’re in different boats but the boats are probably very similar. You know more about cell phones and Tivo than I do, but I know more about MySpace and RSS feeds.
As with any new technology there are a lot of phonies out there pumping eMarketing solutions and plenty of companies have been burned, but eMarketing can’t be ignored or stuck on the bottom shelf. Top management needs to make a one-time investment in learning and they need to do it like yesterday. The investment is significant but the returns are excellent and almost immediate and…it is your job.
Without top management buy-in, eMarketing will not work!
Oh, did I say that already? We routinely turn down work that doesn’t have top management buy-in and at least a willingness to learn this medium.
You’re Not Funding Appropriately
Look, there are now billions of people using the Internet worldwide. Online advertising grew 25% percent each year for the last 3 years while traditional ad spending was flat. One large company in our marketplace is spending one tenth of one percent (.5%) of their marketing budget online, though online B2B and B2C sales have gone through the roof. I would venture to guess that they’re missing out on sales, wouldn’t you?
One company we’ve been working with saw an online sales increase of 27% last year (37% to date), simply by upgrading their online marketing efforts. That’s pretty significant, don’t you think? Through the course of the last 24 months, they occasionally had to ask me to stop bringing in more sales so that they could upgrade their shipping facility and train new people. Horrible problem to have, no?
You’re Not Planning Appropriately
eMarketing is Marketing and it’s the responsibility of the Marketing department. Formerly popular mediums for marketing expenditures are becoming less and less successful, while consumers turn to the Internet for information, products and services.
Look, You can have a basic, effective web presence for about ten to twenty thousand dollars. Any decent-sized company has spent several times that much building a website which, I will venture to guess, is mostly ineffective. Why would I say such a thing? These sites are either confusing and unusable, features and functions don’t work or they are not generating significant traffic.
In one recent example, an automotive after-market company contacted us to generate traffic to their website. We said no. The website was unusable. They had just spent tons of money on a flashy new upgrade and didn’t like my response. I went online to try to find a part for one of my vehicles. After entering my year, make, model and part type, I was presented with14 pages of results. I found my part in the middle of page 12, wrote down the part number and clicked on dealer lookup. The results showed a list of local auto parts stores. When I called a few of them, they told me that they didn’t carry that particular line of parts, a subset of the company’s offerings. The result? A ticked off consumer instead of a sale. Can you say negative marketing?
Who does get it? Guess what? It’s not the big internet companies like Yahoo and Amazon and it’s not the big industrial giants either. One group understands the internet and the other understands their industry, neither understands both. The companies who understand the internet completely AND understand their industry thoroughly are going to own this space.
How To Screw Up Your eMarketing
The four most common ways to mess up eMarketing are to:
1. Assign it to IT (eMarketing is NOT IT!)
2. Assign it to a powerless underling in marketing
3. Write a check to some eMarketing company called Cosmic Skydog that has no understanding of your products or services.
4. As management, don’t spend significant time to understand eMarketing or to track the results.
We see these four mistakes over and over.
On A Positive Note…
OK, I’ll quit beating you up and try to do something positive about this situation. First, let’s briefly revisit Dan J’s fundamental rules of marketing:
1. Who are your customers and potential customers?
2. What do they want?
3. Give it to them.
Let’s add one more rule when it comes to eMarketing
4. How does your target market use the Internet in relation to your products and services? Where do they go? What is it that they want?
Follow along with me as I tell you how best to deal with the basics of eMarketing. We’ll just hit the highlights. You’ll have to pick up the rest in future issues. I’ll assume you know who your customers are and what they want. If not, you’ll first need to do some research, please invest resources in this-It should be mandatory. Aim first, then fire, remember? Marketing dollars are tight and will get tighter; they should be spent as effectively as possible.
1. Your Website: Your website is the main tool used to distribute your marketing message to Internet users. Earlier I made the statement that 80% of commercial websites that I visit are less than optimal (and that’s being kind). Specifically I find that the designers have not done a good job of determining the overall purpose of the website. If they have, they have missed the identified target or the site isn’t functionally usable. If the site is functional in these regards then the Marketing department (yeah, it’s your responsibility) hasn’t done the work necessary to acquire an appropriate quantity of targeted traffic. Also, build your website so that anybody with a sixth grade education and attention deficit disorder can quickly find what they are looking for, OK? Nuff said.
Let me run one other thing by you in case you haven’t figured it out. Website construction requires the input of a number of different disciplines.
1. Content Designer: You need someone who understands how people use the Internet and who understands who your customers are and what they want. This person creates the information on the pages and the message flow from one webpage within your site to another. This person designs the content of each page and creates a flowchart to show how the pages and the concepts connect to one another.
2. Graphic Designer: Once that process is complete, you should employ the skills of a graphic designer who may or may not know how to code the pages for the web, but can create the eye candy portion of the design.
3. Web Designer: Then you need to get the cool looking pages turned into something that a web browser can display. This next person codes the pages using HTML, Java, Flash, and/or XML which are the languages used by browsers to display the pages.
4. Programmer: You will probably also need the skills of a database programmer to create whatever interactive features you might need. These are things like dealer lookups, online contests, forms or online shopping.
5. eMarketer: Once the website is constructed and launched you need to employ someone who
