By Fred Brown,
partner at Last Exit.
In an industry that started not so long ago — and one that changes radically in the time it takes my iPhone contract to expire — best practices are a hard donkey on which to pin the tail. But there are certain levers in front of us that we are not pulling nearly as commandingly as we should be. Here are my top 10 tips for digital marketers looking to get back on track.
1. Take risks.
We should take more risks — like we used to when it all began. When the right opportunity beckons, go for something exceptional over something that will tick all the boxes. Be bold. We don’t all admire Apple because it is mediocre.
2. Invest a portion of the marketing budget in marketing R&D.
If I had a dollar for every middle-ranking marketer who wants to try new things but has a boss who “doesn’t get interactive,” I would be on a private jet right now. Authorizing an R&D budget over which someone who understands interactive has purse-string control will enable the experimentation that can surprise everyone.
3. Think about people.
Sadly, people are often forgotten all round — it’s far easier to call them “users.” We spend all day thinking about what people can do online, and far too little time thinking about how the experience makes them feel. Traditional advertising never made this mistake. Thus:
4. Take lessons from best practices in more-established communication disciplines.
Traditional advertising has always pursued the big idea. Big ideas are memorable long after an endless stream of web pages is forgotten.
Perhaps writing the technical specification and functional specification is taking us all so long we don’t have the time for emotion. And when it comes to the build, would any other profession put up with having to comply with eight different standards, as we are required to with IE6, 7, 8, Firefox 2, 3, Safari 3, 4, and Chrome? That leads me to my fifth neglected best practice.
5. Get on the same page.
As an industry, we have not put in place the foundations of a profession, with standards that we work to. This is costing us all a fortune, and that’s not the kind of job creation we need. Not to mention, history is set to repeat itself with mobile phone browsers and applications. .Net magazine is running a campaign to end IE6. It is a start, and I salute you.
6. Equip yourself with a range of tactical responses to what the interactive future might hold.
We need to equip ourselves with a range of tactical responses to what the interactive future might hold. One very good source of information about what people want is our customers. The internet is awash with opinions on almost anything by almost everyone, and yet far too few companies tap in to that in order to inform their marketing approaches. Which leads us to my next point:
7. Engage with your customers at all stages of the relationship — before, during, and after the sale.
If we listen, they will speak.
Speaking is something we don’t seem to be doing too well to each other in the marketing industry. In such a rapidly evolving landscape, you would think we would all club together and share knowledge like crazy. But I am not sure that we really do in the one area that matters most. In every new client meeting, the question that is asked with the most interest is “How much does what I want cost?”
In this sense, we need to:
8. Have a clear understanding of what can be achieved with the resources available.
The thing that would help most marketers (and agencies) is an established sense of what can be achieved at what price. So often, marketers do not have a clear understanding of what can be achieved with the resources available. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was a cross-browser perfected website that integrates with XYZ in 10 languages.
9. Know your real goals.
All too often, marketers set out with what they want to do, rather than what they want to achieve. We want a website. We want to be in social media. We want to be in mobile. No doubt you do, but what do you want your business to achieve and how can interactive marketing help achieve it? Make the business case, show the ROI criteria, evaluate, and improve. The tools are readily available to help you.
10. Pay attention to the digital contribution to your brand’s heritage.
How many marketers consider what happens to their interactive communications when they are (inevitably) replaced? We are throwing everything away. It is sad. In 20 years it will be fascinating to see a brand’s digital journey, but all that will be left are some servers with a long history of deleted files, and whatever the Wayback Machine managed to preserve. We were the kids who could program the video recorder. We should leave a legacy that shows the evolution of the digital revolution.
View the extended version of this article at iMedia Connection.