Be contagious or camouflaged
How can direct marketing strategies further interact with audiences?
The key to understanding how direct marketing strategies can further interact with audiences is to fully understand the new consumer decision journey through ZMOT.
A lot has changed for Marketers when looking at how to present a product or brand in the eyes of the consumer.
Multiplication of possibilities to advertise online as there are in all of offline.
Measurability in real-time in different ways and forms
Interaction and dialogue with the consumer experience and interactive brand experience
Consumers today are researching more before buying the product. Through digital marketing channels customers are telling marketers that they are in the market and are actively looking to engage with brands for more information to help them decide on a product. They have more control and expect transparency, it is also important to note that consumers today have short attention span. Microsoft Crop stated in 2015 that the average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according to a new study from Microsoft Corp, people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, emphasizing the affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain (read full article TIME here).
So the question resides here is:
HOW DO WE GET THE CONSUMERS ATTENTION THROUGH DIRECT MARKETING?
To best serve the consumer we would need to understand how the rise of programmatic advertising and how it has a whole host of new companies on both the demand and sell side, vying for advertiser, here is a brief video by IAB that I believe explains it best.
Even though programmatic means software is making the purchases, it is still a “people” heavy process.
Understanding what the campaign is truly trying to achieve in the eyes of the consumer is crucial today, as it will guide the site recommendations, tracking/tagging methods and optimization, Depending on the objective; sales vs. engagement vs. DR vs. branding etc. When we are talking about direct Marketing we tend to want direct response and possible success metrics to that is:
-Conversions
-Cost per conversion
-Conversion value
-New customer acquisition vs. consumers retained
-Revenue
John Berger states its not enough for you to love the idea/campaign others have to love it too.
He makes a point with STTEPS, which basically is to understand what consumers see and act upon what is going on in the environment around us. I came up with something that may have potential to spread a brand name through something that is happening now on the internet with the video of the woman taking a poop in Tim Horton.
I STRONGLY BELIEVE that this is a great opportunity for a cleaning brand to take part of, lets take CLOROX for example, it would be a great idea to add a reply to these posts and make anything that can be related to this video, like a tweet or reply that can be: No worries Canada we got you COVERED. #CloroxSave. Direct Mail can be sent out with this headline with cleaning instruction in-case of this kind of emergency. What is you #ColoroxSave can be continued to interact with consumers and showcase where Clorox saved their day!