01 The foundations of digital marketing
Business and marketing models
• The 4 Ps of marketing – The established marketing model
• Porter's 5 forces – A view of competitive positioning
• Brand positioning map – Analysing your perceptual positioning
• Customer lifetime value – Understanding true customer value
• Segmentation – Understanding the customer
• Boston Consulting Group matrix – Production categorisation
Understand them and learn how you can integrate them into your strategy.
Digital marketing should be part of every business decision from product development and pricing to public relations and event recruitment.
It is not to be confused with online marketing. Most businesses have a web presence, email, CRM systems to manage databases, website banners for advertising, and SEO.
Social media revolution has changed the internet and consumer behaviour. Analytics has grown so we can understand consumers behaviour in real time, but also their demographics and interests. Mobiles and tablets have brought along apps. Touchscreen is more common. Bluetooth opens up opportunities. See digital marketing channels charter 8 to 14.
Digital marketing is an integral part of any organisation. This involves PR, creative direction, brand, CRM, retention, product development, pricing, proposition, communications.
In order to succeed at digital marketing, you have to understand the strategic benefits of integrating your marketing from day one.
The 4 Ps of marketing
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
Product
This can be a physical product or a service proposition. It has to be something developed that people want to buy.
Some businesses try to develop a product and force that on to an audience, but if no one is interested then you will not be able to create demand.
The key considerations here from a digital perspective are whether your product can/ will sell online.
Question
What channels are open for your product/ proposition?
Can it be flexible for the online/ mobile audiences?
Does it provide real value for the consumer?
Is it differentiated from your competitor?
Is it being updated, serviced, maintained effectively to keep it strong?
Can features be added?
What are consumer motivations and usage habits?
Price
Consider understanding price elasticity and competitive positioning to ask for a price that people are willing to pay.
The 'willing to pay' element of that does of course have many factors behind it such as your brand value, online reviews, product quality and others, but there are also numerous tactics that can be employed here.
In digital marketing discounts and offers have changed consumer behaviours with fast price comparison and the introduction of cashback and voucher sites
Businesses take advantage of this through affiliate marketing programmes. Affiliate marketing is where you promote your products through a third-party website in exchange for paying a commission or fee to the website when an action is taken. This is very common and easy to directly track sales and therefore attribute value to the relationship.
Commissions are often paid on sales but can be paid on click-throughs or other actions.
There is also an expectation in some sectors that prices should be lower
online as there are no overheads. It is considered by many that selling online
should be cheaper than selling from a retail outlet. One counter to this of
course is that there is no need to post products from your retail outlet.