WebSite Design

In the systems design projects I work on, user-centred design is important. When we design applications, we need to think about how the user will use the system. We put ourselves in our users' shoes and work on making the system as easy to use as possible. We try to look at everything we do from the user's point of view.

It is very easy for IT professionals to forget about the user and use technology for technology's sake. A lot of web designers think that jazzy Flash websites will blow the socks of visitors but these type of sites may not meet users' needs or get the same level of traffic that non-Flash sites get.

Like any other marketing activity designing a website needs to begin with the customer. A website won't deliver a valuable online experience if customer needs, wants and behaviours have not been considered. Site design is a key part of Internet strategy execution. On the Internet, you website is your brand. The interactive nature of the web means that people don't just see your brand, they experience it. When you are designing a website, you are designing a brand experience.

Web design requires more than just technical skills. It involves design, branding and strategic thinking. The website is the interface to the brand. In digital marketing, branding has to be more integrated. It is about the whole online experience, from the ease with which visitors find information to the speed of pages loading. The fundamental difference between online brands and mass media brands is interactivity. Online brands and websites are about immersing the user in an experience.

Communication, personalisation, interaction, animation and sound are just some of the ways websites can do this. Websites are an experiential communication of brand values. With social media we are seeing this being extended across platforms.

Web design needs to begin with marketing fundamentals. Research your market, discover their needs and wants and develop an online value proposition. An Internet marketing strategy needs to begin with these marketing truths. You need to design your website to deliver an online experience and you need to communicate what this experience is to your users. You cannot properly design or market a website if you have not done the marketing 101.

The Race for Social Search

On Brian Solis' blog today, I found a piece (http://bit.ly/qfKNpR) where he asks whether people will switch to Google +. I found one of the comments interesting. It describes the introduction of Google + as a defensive move. Facebook is pushing to become the new way the Internet is used. It is trying to become a gateway to content and the place for companies to advertise on the web. Google is taking the threat seriously.

Effectively Facebook is trying to build a web within the web. People are even starting to shop there. The Facebook strategy of integrating activities such as shopping, communication, photos, games into their own service is aimed to increase the number of people and the time they spend on the social network. The payback is increased ad revenues - still Google's largest source of income.

Search is becoming more social. I think that what we are seeing with the introduction of Google + is the race for social search really taking off. Effectively with Plus, Google will be able to build social graphs for users, which it can build into it's search algorithms. This is something that has been happening already. With it's huge volume of search Facebook could be in a position to start adding better search functionality. The race for social search is starting to heat up.

Story-Centric Marketing

The Power of Storytelling

        Brands can be powerful. In today's society brands carry status associations. Very often people will follow a particular brand because of the values associated with that brand. People often feel emotive connections to brands they purchase. Brands are what distinguish one product from another.

         This is where the power of brand storytelling comes in. The most important function of branding is the creation and communication of a three-dimensional brand character. This has been a recurring subject in my reading. Brand storytelling is about revealing brand truths to the customer and letting them draw their own conclusions. It is about getting customers to understand and connect with your brand.

        I attended a webinar by Brian Seth Hurst on Facebook last week (http://on.fb.me/qM5S5I), who many people consider to be the "father of cross-platform, having coined the term back in 1998. According to Hurst, great brand stories have great plot, great characters, great development and something emotionally at stake for the audience. The most successful brands are those that make the customer feel they have a stake in the brand and they do this by listening, paying attention and responding.

        Social media tools are providing marketers with powerful tools to tell brand stories. A key reason for this is the interactivity of new media that allows the customer to take part. Another is the possibilities for different levels of engagement.

Cross-Platform or Transmedia Storytelling:

        Brian Solis posted an interesting infographic on his blog this week called the Brandsphere (http://bit.ly/qzpMHc) in which he highlights the importance of social media in creating brand stories. He says that with a cross-platform approach, there are different possibilities for engagement and bringing the customer deeper into the story. It is vital then that an integrated approach is taken to going cross-platform. 

        Hurst said that with multi-platform you must begin in the centre. This is something unique about multi-platform, something he calls "story-centric." You need to begin with the story because this is the most important thing, rather than the platforms. This becomes very important as your story spreads across platforms and your fans become co-creators and help you to tell the story. 

        Solis takes a similar approach to Hurst. He starts at the beginning with the story. This is where you define what the brand represents and how it comes alive in social networks. You are shaping how the brand characters in your story will behave and most importantly how they will behave with an interactive audience. A social media style guide will help to ensure consistency of communications and define your brand persona.

        Each of these channels connects differently with people according to Solis and thus requires a dedicated approach. Hurst highlights the importance of beginning where your customers live - whether that is on tablet mobile, PC or TV. If you try to launch on all platforms at once it won't work. You'll divide your audience and they won't know where to go. When you engage your audience, you can watch them, listen to them and see what other platforms they are on. Then you use this information to drive your next platform and allow the customer to go further into the story.

Story-Centric

        I think that old marketing communications theories still apply. The importance of integrated marketing communications is even higher where you are tell a story across diverse channel. With the proliferation of social media, still relatively recent, this must be a body of literature that has not been significantly developed. I think that a possible research topic of interest would be to examine integrated marketing communications in brand storytelling on social media. Hurst and Solis' ideas on story-centric highlight the role of the story as the integrating element. This is the theory anyway. It would be interesting to research how this is happening in reality (or how it is not happening).

Taking One Step Back to Take Two Forward

I started this project looking very specifically at digital marketing. As I've gone on, the scope has broadened and I've widened my focus. I want to see where digital marketing and social fit in the overall picture and take a more strategic view. The media and the channels will change. I think what is more important is what you are trying to achieve with the media and how this fits into your long-term plans.

My reading initially focused on digital marketing but from this I have widened my focus. The Chaffey book on e-marketing highlighted the importance of offline communications complementing your online communications. According to Chaffey these can and should be used to complement your digital marketing efforts. So from an approach that was getting into specifics, I am taking a step backward to see the bigger picture.

I am trying to identify the relevant bodies of literature that underlie effective integration of online and offline communications. Some of the areas my reading has highlighted so far are Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), which has in turn been shaped by relationship marketing, direct marketing and various areas of corporate communications such as management and branding, customers and stakeholder relationships and global branding/localised communications.

My approach is going to be to map out as many of the relevant bodies of literature as possible and try to visualise the various relationships between them. I think that this approach is going to give me a much better understanding of why integrated marketing communications are being done and more importantly why they are not being done right. In this way I feel that I can add greater layers and depth to my knowledge of the subject. The tools are just a means to an end. So for the time being I'm taking one step back to take two forward!

Is a Seperate Internet Marketing Plan Needed?

This is a question that I've been thinking about for the last few days. When I started to research, my focus was solely on internet marketing. However on Saturday, I realised that internet marketing does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place in the context of the overall communications plan. The Internet extends the traditional communications mix. However when we look at the way that the Internet offers new opportunities for innovation and requires dedicated skill sets, the question arises of whether a seperate Internet marketing plan is required.

As I read some of the Integrated Marketing Communications literature (Jenkinson, & Sain, Pickton & Broderick), the thought crossed my mind that the Internet is another medium for implementing marketing communications mix activities. In developing your integrated marketing communications strategy, shouldn't you match the best media with your marketing goals - whether that best medium is online or offline? Look at what you want to achieve, the relative merits of the media available to you and develop a plan accordingly.

I was reading Chaffey et al's (2009) book Internet Marketing this evening and a part of the text considered this very question. Their position is that if digital communications are to be effectively harnessed, then a distinct digital marketing plan is initially essential. At this stage a seperate e-marketing plan should be used to define strategies to increase the contribution of digital to the business. Their rationale for this is that online channels "...have had and will have dramatic effects on how customers select and use products."

Chaffey et al suggest that in the longer term, once the company has defined it's approaches to Internet marketing, then it is likely that they will not need a separate digital marketing plan as the Internet can then be considered as any other communications medium.

My own view is that the potential for digital integration coupled with the rapid changes we are witnessing in this mean that companies definitely need a plan to stay on top on developments. Has anybody stopped running to catch up with digital yet? I think that there is potential for linkages and cross-channel communications in digital in ways that never really existed in traditional media.This networked effect is what is unique about the Internet as a medium. I am of the opinion that some sort of separate strategy is required for digital, primarily for this reason.

Perhaps the need for a seperate digital strategy with the overall communications strategy merits further research...

 

Above and Below the Line

While researching, I came across the idea of above and below the line advertising. For a non-marketing guy still trying to fully grasp the complexity of integrated marketing communications, my head was starting to spin. Somebody had moved the goalposts.

However after reading on I discovered where above and below the line came from. They did in fact grow out of different accountancy terms for agency payments. Advertising agencies were paid on commission, while other agencies were not - hence the distinction. Accountants used to draw the "line" between payments made to advertising agencies and payments made to other agencies. 

It is not logical for marketers to define marketing communications by the way the agency gets paid. This distinction has no value as it does not consider the purpose or objective of the communication. A better definition of marcoms would be based on what they are trying to achieve.The CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) MNP (Media-Neutral Planning) research group concluded that these terms were derogatory and meaningless.

In the age of social media and the Internet, these terms are especially redundant. There are many more vehicles now for reaching customers making it increasingly important to pick the right one to reach your target audience. In order to do this, you need to know how each of these vehicles will serve your purpose.

These distinctions may have been okay in the past, but a worthless distinction based on financial conventions adds no value for marketing practitioners and only seeks to blur the boundaries between the marketing communications disciplines in ways that limit creativity. I think it's time to draw the line!

XMOS - Cross Media Optimisation Studies

I came across an interesting topic tonight - XMOS (Cross Media Optimisation Studies). This effectively seeks to identify the optimal mix of media across different channels in terms of objectives and budget. XMOS studies measure both offline and online activities in order to determine the influence and optimum combinations of both. There is an established methodology for carrying out these studies.

XMOS studies seek to answer the question of where online marketing fits in the marketing mix. There are a number of examples of XMOS studies on the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Board) website. I decided to look at McDonalds. Using the case of the McDonald's Grilled Chicken Flatbread Sandwich, this study found that adding online advertising to the marketing mix allowed them to increase awareness within a hard-to-reach target audience.

McDonalds objective for the campaign was to increase brand awareness and purchase intent among the 18-24 age group and they wanted to do this in the most cost-effective way. The company wanted to communicate emotively with this group, something which Web 3.0 is opening up. The company added interactive advertising to it's marketing mix.

The study found that online advertising can make a significant contribution in multi-channel campaigns by complementing messages that are delivered in other channels. It also helped McDonalds to reach customers that are not heavy television watchers. In fact this is a growing trend as different media compete for customers' time. People are spending more time on the Internet and the growth of the smartphone is increasing this trend.

A key aspect of XMOS is integrating online measurement in the overall campaign measurement to see how effective it can be. One thing about marketing on the Internet is that it is inherently measurable. However it is critical that online and offline are integrated and that they support each other.

The IAB's web site also discusses the Ford study. Online the respondents were surveyed using the experimental design method which is described as a classic research construct. The Web Centre for Social Research Methods http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/desexper.php describes experimental design as possibly the most rigorous of research methods. Implemented well they say, experimental design can have the strongest internal validity. Basically this means that the results will stand up to much greater scrutiny.

With experimental design you are aiming to identify that when the variable is there the outcome occurs and at the same time when it is not there, the variable doesn't occur. In terms of measuring digital marketing in it's simplest form, experimental design would make use of two groups. This was what the Ford study did. A sample of the survey respondents were shown an ad for the American Red Cross instead of the Ford ads.

As someone who is about to embark on a digital marketing research project, I found this quite interesting. This is quite possibly an approach that could be used within the area of digital marketing itself. As the number of digital channels increases, digital marketers are going to have to allocate their marketing budgets to various digital channels, that engage different audiences. A possible research project might be to analyse the effect of different digital channels within the online marketing mix.

Unfortunately the Ford case study didn't offer any analysis or elaboration of the experimental design aspect of the survey. According to the Web Centre for Research Methods, these types of research can be the hardest to get right. Maybe Marketing Evolution got it wrong...