Remember the time when the only form of communication was a paper and a pen? Remember the time when we had to wait days even weeks or months to receive a letter from a loved one? Remember the time when we shopped everything in physical stores and carry the bags home? Well most of you don’t remember or didn’t live those days because we are digital natives. According to Marc Prensky (author of the term “digital native”) a digital native is any person who was born after the 1980 (the year that the web concept was proposed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee) and has grown up with digital devices such as cell phones and computers[2]. Digital natives are in a constant contact with technology and digital media. According to Mr. Prensky a digital born individual has “digital wisdom”. Digital natives are proactive with technology; they know the ways and hows digital media can improve their standard of living. Reaching this new segmentation of consumer could be at first sight very straight forward. Logic will tell that an online campaign in mainstream media such as televisions, internet and cell phones will reach digital natives. For example display ads (banners and advertisements), pay per click (e.g sponsored links in Google), search engine optimisation (e.g better positions in google listings) affiliate marketing (commission sales) and e-mail marketing (send message to existing consumer)[3] will indeed reach a broad pool of digital natives. Nevertheless, in order to have an effective digital marketing strategy, each digital media channel must be tailored for a specific audience.
Digital natives have different need, want and desires due to their changing personality, demography, geography, age and education between others. To create an effective communications strategy and planning an online marketing campaign it is recommended to divide the various marketing channels into six main groups. These groups are the following[4]:
1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Involves in getting part of the major search engines such us Google and Yahoo. SEM is used to find HIGLY TARGETED costumers. Most digital natives use search engines to seek for specific goods and services, as well for a precise brand. There are three different ways to get involved with search engines: search engine optimisation (achieve the highest position or ranking), pay per click (relevant text advertisement with the link to the company) and paid search (paid listing).
2. Online public relations (E-PR): Online PR is used to create AWARENESS, PERCEPTION AND DIFFERENTIATION of the brand. It does so by leveraging other networks. The objective of E-PR is to increase favourable mentions of the company and brand in third-party digital media which are likely to be visited by your target audience.[5]
3. Online partnerships: As any partnership it seeks any long-term arrangement with third-parties in order to PROMOTE your online services. Different online partnerships include link building, affiliate marketing, and “price comparison” sites such as Moneysupermarket.com.
4. Viral Marketing: It uses the internet in order to REACH large number of people rapidly and with a simple-catchy message. The two main forms of viral marketing are pass long-emails and discussions within social networks. The viral marketing could be amplified by offline marketing such as advertising, TV, radio and print. Viral marketing demonstrates that not only online channels are effective to reach digital natives but an appropriate combination of digital and traditional marketing is needed.
5. Interactive display advertising: “Display ads are paid advertisement placement using graphical or rich media ad units within a web page to achieve goals of delivering brand awareness, familiarity, favourability and purchase intent”[6]. These ads have the characteristic of interacting with the costumer by encouraging further actions such us purchase and loyalty program. This channel is colloquially known as banner advertising.
6. Opt-in-email marketing and mobile text messaging: Opt-in-email marketing comprises two sub-groups: The first is called the out-bound e-mail marketing which e-mails campaigns are used as a form of direct marketing to encourage trial and purchases. Outbound e-mail marketing activities are customer retention, sales promotion, gathering customer data, lead generation, brand awareness and customer acquisition. Second is inbound marketing which is defined as management of emails from customers by an organization[7]. This includes service enquiries.
For more in-depth information about digital channels please visit: http://www.smartfocus.com/LinkClick.aspxfileticket=KmZyLjIHwt0%3D&tabid=103&language=en-GB.
The above article is written by Dr. Drave Chaffrey author of the six marketing channel groups that we have just analysed.
In conclusion when considering your marketing strategies (see my last post) try to use the appropriate digital channels tailored to a specific consumer. As well is essential to combine traditional communication with digital communication in order to deliver your message more effectively. I leave you with a funny video that contrasts the differences between a digital native vs a digital immigrant.
See you next week!
[1] http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/
[2] http://www.marcprensky.com/default.asp
[3] Internet Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice pg. 27
[4] nternet Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pg 29
[5] Internet Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pg 523
[6] Internet Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pg 539
[7] Internet Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pg 547
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