With the world becoming more and more digitally dependent we have seen the way in which we market our brands change and evolve. The digital era allows companies to interact with existing and potential customers in exciting creative ways via multiple channels.
You may think that this development of technology and knowledge would mean traditional marketing theories and frameworks would be forgotten and left behind. When you look a little deeper you will actually see that businesses still operate around traditional marketing theories. Behind the face of a company social media page or glitzy digital ad campaigns, the basics of marketing are still being upheld.
The foundations of marketing are taught to GCSE business studies students but many with little work experience may not understand the importance of the marketing mix, SWOT analysis or Ansoff’s matrix. These marketing fundamentals ensure marketing consistency. With the marketing world becoming ever more complicated this can be the difference between brand success and failure. Marketing teams can create imaginative digital focused marketing campaigns and by remembering their relatively simple GCSE marketing theories will not only reduce the risk of failure but also propel themselves ahead of competitors.
The digital era has meant we are able to do these traditional marketing principles more efficiently and arguably with greater effect. It is easy to forget exactly what you are trying to achieve when starting a marketing project. Creating a multi-channel marketing campaign is a very daunting task. If companies take the time to plan their marketing strategy (around these marketing basics) they will be able to be consistent over multiple platforms and reap the benefits this digital marketing era has to offer.
Pete’s top social media tip: Make sure your social media campaign fits the overall marketing strategy. Think carefully about what you want to achieve and use marketing basics as a solid platform to build from.
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It’s good to know that future marketers are being taught the fundamentals. Digital marketing in all of its forms is very sexy at the moment and, as you say, provides us with superb tools to carry out marketing basics resulting in benefits such as quicker results analysis, improved customer profiling and instant response mechanisms. But it’s just a component of marketing
It would be nice to think that all elements of the marketing mix and all routes to market will always be considered when planning strategy and campaigns, rather than just defaulting to ‘digital mode’.
Thanks for your comment Phil, Pete here:
Companies are investing huge amounts of money into digital marketing at the moment but with no structure or strategy the chance of getting a decent return on this investment is significantly reduced. Knowing the fundamentals of marketing helps me understand exactly what I am trying to achieve when working on social media projects. Phil- out of interest do you feel digital marketing focuses too much on promotion? Some digital strategies focus too much on promoting their brand with fancy campaigns and sometimes do not consider other parts of the marketing mix- place, price and product.
This inflexibility — “…businesses still operate around traditional marketing theories…” may also be a negative. Brian Solis argues that a new cohort of consumers has appeared and the traditional marketing funnel, for instance, doesn’t work so well anymore as a conceptual tool for planning campaigns and allocating budgets. A new group of digitally connected consumers is rising, united by a common behavior of being hyper-connected through social media and mobile devices. These consumers research products and brands differently and that reaching these prospects requires a shift in marketing strategy.
Read more at http://www.tnooz.com/2013/07/16/news/the-travel-marketing-funnel-is-broke/#214ddUgDulpXbHvi.99
Absolutely agree, a shift is needed as consumers are constantly connected through social nowadays – the funnel has evolved and is more like a loop. It’s something we explored in our #LiveBrandSocial research: “… trigger activity in all areas of the funnel driving short term purchases and long term relationships that benefit the brand long after the event marketing has finished.” You might like to read the full piece here: http://blog.immediatefuture.co.uk/fill-the-funnel-by-planning-for-it/
I think the key is to digital marketing is the ability to quantify it’s impact through analytics. All digital marketing strategies should aim to have a set of tangible goals of which to strive to. Otherwise the strategy can feel loose and un structured. This article might interest on taking traditional marketing principles online might be interesting to you: http://goo.gl/ZowjPA