Month: May 2019

Allow Extra Time for Downstream Marketing Channels

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Setting a realistic calendar for digital marketing promotion is always a concern.  Most digital marketers have a handle on the necessary time frames for the marketing channels they own directly. However, it’s fairly common that digital marketers need to interface with partners, affiliates, or advertisers for specific campaigns but accounting for these external marketing channels’ own timeframes is often overlooked.

Wider or more intensive promotion with partners means that a more complex digital marketing plan that integrates downstream partner calendars is required.

Building a digital marketing calendar is naturally self-centric as marketers have direct control over the communication channels.  Working with partners requires a shift in attitude to be less self-centered and work within the confines of other’s promotion calendars.  There’s one simple solution for doing that, allow for additional time and give advance notice on how you hope to partner on the digital marketing initiative.

I saw a recent example with a company that wanted to launch a research survey.  The plan was to announce the survey on their digital marketing channels, make it live for a month, and then compile the results into an industry report.  People that responded to the survey got a customized report based on their self-identified demographics.

As a standalone promotion plan that makes a lot of sense.  However, the company had an extensive partner network that they also wanted to promote the survey.  The problem was that they failed to alert the partners to the initiative or provide relevant resources until the day the initiative launched.  So the partners were left with three options:

  1. Scramble to integrate the offer into their pre-existing digital marketing calendars for the immediate 30 days.
  2. Do some simple promotions as an add-on to pre-planned communications.
  3. Skip the promotion entirely.

Almost none chose the first option as there was insufficient time or because thoroughly adding the offer would disrupt their pre-planned calendar. So, at best, the offer was included in partner communications as a haphazard add-on to an email or hastily crafted social media post.

Engaging partners in your digital marketing promotion is a powerful tool that can exponentially improve your reach.  But digital marketers need to allow additional time to inform partners that will be promoting it further downstream.  Failing to do so appears as procrastination to the downstream partners.  Those digital marketers are unlikely to make procrastinator’s initiatives a priority when they weren’t consulted or forewarned about the plan.

Image courtesy of  SurasakiStock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Social Media

Don’t Overbuild a Digital Marketing Application

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Scoping out a new digital marketing application can be one of the most fun parts of crafting a marketing campaign.  Imagining all the leads and/or sales can lead you to a perfectly optimized call to action.  But it’s more likely to lead you to an overbuilt application that gets little use. When launching a new digital marketing application focus on achieving the basic requirements so that you can roll it out.  Then decide if further enhancements are warranted based on usage and feedback.

Let’s think through this on a simple example, a website form.  A simple option would be to use a form processor that emails the content to you.  That can be quickly launched but formatting, organization, and security might all be a concern in that method.  So are any of those truly a problem?  If so then something more robust is required.

The next step up would be a form processor that populates a database.  A report feature from the database could solve formatting concerns.  The data would be uniformly organized in a database. And sensitive data would not be delivered via unsecured email communications.  But maybe you need the data to populate into your CMS or maybe the form collects payment details and needs full encryption?

Then you might move to a more complex solution that integrates with your CMS and provides true ecommerce security.

Working from the simplest option to the most complex is often a valuable exercise because it lets you question your true requirements.  Many times trainers, consultants, or professional coaches will default to a complex option even if the features aren’t really needed.

This obviously increases time and cost to launch. Perhaps even more detrimental is it can hinder user adoption. There’s nothing worse than building what seemed to be the perfect digital marketing application only to find that users:

  • Don’t see the value in it
  • Think it’s too complex
  • Request significant modifications outside the scope of what’s been developed

Launching the simplest version of your application solves all those problems.

  • If they don’t see value in it, at least you can cut your losses and move on to something more useful without wasting significant time, money, and effort.
  • The simplest version is rarely more complex than users can handle.
  • Requests for modification are easier to undertake as time and budget have not been exhausted and the development cycle is not as mature so it can agilely shift in new directions to accommodate enhancement requests.

The best digital marketing applications tend to be an iterative process of improvement.  Rather than assuming you can develop the best version of the application on your own, develop a simple version on your own and then go through a process of evolution based on usage and feedback to craft a better version of the application than you could have initially imagined.

Internet Marketing