Detailing the Growth and Success of Digital Marketing

As shown in the 2008 Australian Digital Marketing Trends Survey facilitated by Next Digital, Australia’s largest full service digital marketing company, digital media is considered a significant opportunity instead of a threat for marketing strategists. More than 200 senior marketers from a wide range of industries, the majority of them from Government or Government agency environments with 100-499 employees, responded to the survey since it was published online in May 2008. Based on that survey, it is foreseen that the number of organizations spending between 25 to 50 percent of their marketing funds on digital promotion will increase by more than 40 percent in the next five years.

Digital marketing is the method of promoting products and services by means of digital distribution channels in a timely, relevant, personal, and cost-effective manner. While the internet is included in the scope of digital marketing, there are also other means like mobile phones, SMS/MMS, display/banner ads, and digital outdoor. Digital marketing covers most, if not all, traditional marketing areas like direct marketing, although executed in a more digital fashion like e-mail. Digital marketing makes a difference because of various reasons:

· Low Starting Point – You don’t have to put in an extensive budget for the initial promotion. There is a good relationship between spend and return, which is possible even without production costs involved. In order to better follow your budget, you can choose the option wherein you only pay when there are results.

· Pay-for-Performance Pricing – You only pay when a user takes on a desired action. This makes it easier for you to figure out what consumer actions you want to prioritize in terms of budget.

· Produces Relevant User Data – Marketing is about interaction between you and the consumer. Your strategy would prove to be more effective if you will be able to keep track of the most relevant consumer data including and not limited to their opinions, views, and feedback.

· Easy and Flexible Channel Use – You are not just limited to the internet. You can also advertise via mobile phones and other digital devices. You also get to coordinate and combine various channels.

· Keeps You Ahead in Competition – Many digital marketing techniques are relatively new and your competitors are possibly oblivious to them, giving you a head start in the marketing race.

Because of the fact that digital marketing makes numerous different channels available to you, there are many tactics that are low-cost, reliable, and uncomplicated:

· Electronic Direct Mail – A straightforward and cheap method of promoting, it becomes more effective if you include the click-to-call and click-to-register functionality. To save time, you don’t need to e-mail to a long list of potentials. You can handpick users who are most likely to be converted into customers. When you resort to the direct e-mail campaign, it would be advisable to design a user-friendly and attractive layout.

· Restructure your search keywords – Less common words are cheaper. Just make sure that there’s a healthy ratio of SEM and SEO; and that the search terms you bought are not already available to you.

· Drive-to-Sales Promotion – E-mail is not the only way to spread drive-to-sales offers. Digital coupons and such could also be sent via mobile phones.

· Take Advantage of Video Distribution Sites – YouTube, Google Video, and Yahoo Video are among the top video distribution sites and millions of people visit these sites everyday so posting videos there would be good exposure at minimum cost.

· Internet Microstars – The number of influential and well-known bloggers is steadily increasing. Establishing a good relationship with them will contribute greatly to the promotion of your products and services.

· Affiliate Marketing – Ask another advertiser to promote your company on their website and pay them an agreed amount per lead.

· Cooperate with Brand-relevant Partners – Combining your resources for promotion activities will provide you a more sizeable budget and most likely more potential customers.

· The Rage of Widgets – Designing a good widget would not require much time and effort. At the same time, it would add strength to the connection between you and the consumer. While the rest of your competitors just use attractive banners to steal attention, you could use a widget that would encourage the consumer to view it regularly for its various functions related to your brand.

· Promote in social networking sites – Many companies advertise their products and services on the more well-known social networking sites like Multiply, Facebook, etc. Many music artists also create accounts in MySpace to update their fans about their latest activities and share their sample music.

After familiarizing yourself with the various methods of digital marketing, it is time to take the next step and that is to ensure the effectiveness of your methods:

· Assess your website – It is important for your site to rate high on usability. Others might consider this a simple and negligible step but it’s actually crucial.

· Optimize media content – The media content must be the most suitable and intense reflection of your brand.

· Pre-test your website according to your target users’ preferences – Now that you have the generated relevant consumer data, you can utilize it by determining their usage patterns to make your website more effective.

· Size up your competition – In order to remain ahead, you must know the tactics of your rivals and beat them at their own game when the opportunity presents itself.

The times have changed. One must keep up with the ever-changing trends of information production, distribution, and consumption. While many traditional marketing methods still qualify in effectiveness, it would be a grave mistake to discount digital marketing. Choosing digital marketing does not mean you have to completely set aside the most effective traditional marketing methods. It is possible to combine both if your budget, schedule, and resources cooperate with you. The point is never to cease finding new and better ways to reach your customers.

Somni Creative, Inc., rich media marketing professionals from Los Angeles, California, specialize in providing digital marketing services. Call us at (310) 6973199 or visit www.somnicreative.com.

References:

Wikipedia - Digital Marketing

Marketing Mag - New Survey Confirms the Importance of Digital to Marketers

Digital in a Downturn: Smart Strategies for Tough Times

Top 10 Video Distribution Sites for Producers

Online Marketing Blog - Should Marketers Shift Offline Budgets to Digital Marketing?

Online Marketing Blog - Direct Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing

Detailing the Importance of Web Imagery and Presentation

In 2006, Dr. Gitte Lindgaard and his research team from Carlton University in Ontario concluded that website designers only have as little as 50 milliseconds (1/20^th of a second) to grab the attention of potential customers. In designing a website, functionality only comes into play after the user’s first impression of the design takes over the center stage. A user only needs a few seconds to assess your website design and if he is not impressed, he is most likely to leave for a better looking rival company website. On the other hand, if your website was able to catch his attention, then the countdown to acquiring a new customer just started.

Visual appeal is considered an indispensable factor in the process of web design. According to Dr. Lindgaard, a viewer’s first emotional impression on a website leads to a string of judgments that would involve the website’s usability and credibility, a concept also referred to as the “halo effect”:

“…the strong impact of the visual appeal of the site seemed to draw attention away from usability problems. This suggests that aesthetics, or visual appeal, may be detected first and that these could influence how users judge subsequent experience…. Hence, even if a website is highly usable and provides very useful information presented in a logical arrangement, this may fail to impress a user whose first impression of the site was negative.”

The laws of evolution apply even – especially - in the internet. It is the survival of the fittest. Websites that the users do not find appealing could get easily lost in the shuffle. Considering the overwhelming amount of rivals you have, you cannot afford to have a cluttered and unpleasant looking website that would not inspire confidence to your company. With so many design strategies emerging year after year, web designers should make it a point to keep abreast and know what would work best on target users. You should be able to identify with your target viewer and visualize his expectations for you to meet them. For instance, if you are selling extreme sports equipment, stay away from pastel colors and feminine fonts. A website could be attractive but if the design does not suit the nature of the business and correspond with the preferences of the target demographic, the design won’t be effective.

Keep a balance of the design elements in your website. The contents should go together, and images should complement with text aspects. If you doubt whether a particular element should be there, be prepared to take it out of the equation unless you find good reason for it to remain. You might have spent too much time and effort on flash animation for your homepage but once it proves to be incompatible with the website theme and other elements, it simply has to go and not compromise the overall quality of your design.

Aesthetics should go hand in hand with usability. Remember, the “halo effect” eventually fades. You cannot focus too much on aesthetics and sacrifice usability in the process. Aesthetics is the key player in grabbing the viewer’s attention but later on, usability will play the crucial role in holding the viewer’s interest. No matter how impressed the user is by the website design, he wouldn’t remain there if he cannot understand the way it works. Plan and align your web design and content carefully to make the relationship between aesthetics and usability effective.

Keep in mind the three main principles of effective visual communication – organize, economize, communicate.

• Organize – Provide the user with a distinct and reliable conceptual structure. A good grid structure makes it easier for one to recognize menus, dialogue boxes, and control panels, and also makes the screen layout look less cluttered. Establish the relationships between the elements of your website and group the similar ones together. Do not make it difficult for the user to navigate or move around your website.
• Economize – There are four major points to be considered: simplicity, clarity, distinctiveness, and emphasis. Do not overwhelm the users with excessive graphic and textual content and find a way to draw attention to the most important points. The users should also be able to recognize all the components and their individual properties.
• Communicate – Consider the user’s capabilities. The text must look refined and readable. Demonstrate consistency by making sure a group of similar elements have the same general appearance. Skilled manipulation of color will aid you in emphasizing important areas and enhancing the desired ambiance of your website.

A viewer reacts to a website in two different ways – emotionally and analytically. The website design, more likely to appeal to the user’s emotions, should be impressive enough for the viewer to be willing to go to the next stage of response, which would be more focused on cognitive thought. Do not take for granted the viewer’s emotional reaction to a website - it must be favorable or the rest of his judgments, even analytical, will be influenced negatively. Impressing the viewer with your website design might be the first step but it is still crucial especially if converting a viewer into a customer is your priority.

Somni Creative, Inc., rich media marketing professionals from Los Angeles, California, specialize in providing online customer conversion services. We value our customers, both old and new. We welcome the challenge of getting you ahead in the corporate race. Call us at (310) 6973199 or visit www.somnicreative.com.

References:

Smashing Magazine - Web Design Trends For 2009

Smashing Magazine - More Web Design Trends For 2009

Webcredible - Website Aesthetics

Importance of Visual Images in Lectures: Case Study on Tourism Management Students

WebSiteOptimization.Com - First Impressions Count in Web Design

Effective Visual Communication for Graphical User Interfaces