The Golden Rule of Online Marketing
Natalie Prout | Critical Mass London
Having the ability to identify your target market and market to them responsibly is an increasingly forgotten rule of thumb within online marketing. Far too often brands want to jump on the proverbial bandwagon and embrace the hottest, coolest techniques/technologies to gain praise by demonstrating how hip and happening they are. What they don’t realise however, is that most of the time in doing this, they end up damaging the opinion their existing fans have of them, or are missing them entirely.
The biggest hurdle you face in targeting your online efforts is honestly answering the following questions:
1. Who are our consumers?
2. Why do they love our brand?
3. Where do they congregate?
4. How can we communicate with them without irritating them?
The last thing most people want is to be constantly bombarded by irrelevant and overly enthusiastic brands bothering them in their online communities and safe havens. And I’m not just talking about social networks.
Picture this: you’re having a romantic meal for two in a dimly lit romantic restaurant with your significant other when all of a sudden a 10 piece brass band parades over to your table to loudly serenade you. Inappropriate? Yes. Intrusive? Absolutely. Kind of makes you hate 10 piece brass bands? Definitely.
Now, how is that any less annoying then flooding someone’s Twitter dashboard with 15-20 tweets all in quick succession of each other? It’s not really. It’s just as annoying. And on Twitter, you can simply ‘unfollow’ the perpetrator, which is a lot easier then chasing people away from your table in a restaurant.
You should already know the answers to Points 1 and 2 (as you should know your brand if you intent to market it). So skipping straight to the more misunderstood questions of 3 and 4 – let’s talk about the importance of understanding where our fans congregate and how we should communicate with them?
You should always begin your strategy the same way: research.
Global product launch? Niche guerrilla viral hopes? Look at the demographic stats available online (make sure they’re credible) and really investigate where your fans lie. A recent study by netimperative.com found that young British men still value email much more than social networks – 94% use email at least once per day, compared with 60% that go on to a social network. Does that change your opinion on how to reach them most effectively? It should. Email marketing may not be as sexy as social media marketing, but it’s more effective for that particular demographic at this moment in time.
Equally, in 2009 one of the top searched-for themes on Google UK was ‘cheap flights’. Yet after doing a simple Google search, I’ve found that one of the UK’s top cheap flight providers Ryanair doesn’t list on the first page SEM or SEO results – yet they have a Facebook page. Ryanair was also involved in one of last year’s biggest PR controversies when they labelled a blogger as ‘lunatic’ on Twitter. If they would have focused on search engines more and less on engaging in online arguments they undoubtedly would have fared better.
Once you’ve identified the where, you’ll need to think about the how. How do we communicate with our fans without irritating them? The answer to this is a lot simpler then you think:
Focus your communication.
One of the biggest complaints and reason for disengaging with brands is the over bombardment of advertising and marketing. Do you really need to flood their Twitter dashboard with 20 messages a day? Will 5 messages not get your point across in a more efficient way? Do you really need to link every blog post/press release you make through all of your online channels? Or will sharing it on one or two reach your minority of brand ambassadors, who will in turn seed things through their own channels (due to the exclusivity factor of breaking the news first)?
Really think about how you speak to your fans, as the Golden Rule taught us all as children… treat them how you would like to be treated (in an offline as well as online space) and focus and edit your communications. The best way to be part of them is to be one of them.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mike Lane, Jeanette Pham, Anthony Hughes, 10kamonth, leif and others. leif said: Great article on communication strategy. RT @criticalmass: The Golden Rule of Online Marketing http://bit.ly/buwTsQ [...]
great i think if anyone follow this rule so he or she will get quick and good result.
[...] I started with a quick refresher in the most basic elements (but things we often forget) such as who are you customers and where do they live? Before I was even finished sipping my coffee, I’d moved onto an awesome article on business [...]
Properly targeting your customers is crucial to any marketing campaign. This is a great overview of the proper line of thinking to correctly niche market any group of people.
Trying to market to everyone won’t work unless you’re Walmart and even then they usually pick a particular group and then market to them specially. You don’t see their commercials saying, “We have everything!” – they mention the breadth of selection but it’s focused on low cost and / or a product line. At least they’re connecting with someone.
Your website is the same – you need to figure out who your customers are and market to them.
Great article! Thanks!
I totally agree with Barbara’s comment. Thanks for discussing such an informative article with all of us. I’ve bookmarked your blog will come back for a re-read again. Keep up the excellent work.