The Game of Digital Marketing
For games like basketball, soccer, volleyball, tennis, the whole game revolves around the ball. In the game of digital marketing, the ball is the target market. They are the people we pass and move through the digital landscape. So that they may experience our brand through different platforms. They are the ones we tirelessly attempt to bring to the goal. And they are the object of our focus, as well as the focus of every single person in the court. Digital Marketing is a game. We’ll be teaching you the basics and the rules. So that you can make strategies that will lead you to victory.
The clutter
Every game is filled with clutter. There’s the pressure coming from the fans, or the pressure of coming face to face with more experienced players. Or maybe the energy of your other teammates affects you. There will be innumerable other nuances that distract you from the actual game. In the game of digital marketing, this clutter is heightened even more. Although advertising agencies don’t have any direct competitors, every idea shared online is an indirect competitor. Other than that, there will also be multiple claims of the right and wrong way of doing marketing. These could unconsciously pull you in and distract you from your game. Awareness in the digital landscape is a must. Focus on the ball and drop the clutter.
the skills
When a player comes into the court, they’re coming in with all of the hours they spent training. And all the skills developed and empowered because of that training. A basketball player’s shooting, ball-handling, court vision becomes their greatest weapons on the court. It’s similar to digital marketing. For one platform you’ll have numerous skills to hone and cultivate. For example, with Instagram, you’ll have to learn the skill of creating engaging captions. Maybe learn photography or graphic design skills, using the correct hashtags, and making entertaining stories. These are skills that you can practice repeatedly through many hours and it evolves to become a craft.
the players
In games like basketball though, there isn’t just one individual whose skill set you rely on (although it’s possible). You have a whole team of individuals with different skill sets and it’s important to utilize that in marketing as well. You don’t just have one platform doing all of the work (although you can). Businesses usually have multiple platforms that they use in order to have a greater reach. For example, you can have a Facebook account to cultivate brand awareness, Instagram to utilize UGC, and Snapchat to reach Generation Z. Then all of those could lead to an SEO optimized website that has your Shop. These multiple platforms are integrated with one another and they communicate in order to create the best customer journey experience.
the ball
Basketball has one objective: to shoot the ball into the hoop. At its core digital marketing is like that as well: to bring your target market to your goal. And you do this by using all the skills and players you have at your disposal. The main difference between the two is that the ball being focused on in digital marketing is a group of people. They have emotions, motivations, and drives. And all the possible strategies you can craft are all dependent on how that ball interacts with its world. In the next section, you’re going to see how to create effective game plans that lead you to winning the game.
the digital marketing strategy
You know the rules of the game, you know where your focus should be. So now what? What’s the next step? Remember our game plan: Focus on the Target Market. Now, we channel that focus into action and aim to get the ball of the game towards the goal. By means of engaging and interacting with your audience. All the while using digital marketing as the tool to bring your business to where your target market is.
Just as how a well-crafted strategy is a prerequisite before getting on to the field, in court, or on the ice, the same can be applied to any business game plan. In marketing, a winning strategy is all about managing the four “rights”. By getting (1) the right content (2) to the right people (3) at the right time (4) at the right place. Digital marketing in particular has made this much easier by eliminating the challenges in facilitating this network that poses a challenge to traditional marketing. Such as, the physical limitations of space that serves as a barrier to getting to the right people. It is now up to businesses to configure each of these “rights” as part of their strategy in coming up with the best possible way that would bring the best possible service and experience to their audience.
The Right Content
This can be in the form of a message, or the service/product offering of your business. This is crafted based on the purpose of each specific campaign. If your aim is to engage, then your content should encourage the audience to interact with the business. For example, by having a call to action spiel that would have them clicking on that “Send a Message” button. If your aim is to introduce, then your content should be able to grab and keep the attention of the audience even within a short span of time. Digital marketing is a powerful tool that allows us to go beyond just serving our business’ product/service on a silver platter. It goes to influence consumers’ actions and perception towards the business. Provided that the right content gets delivered in the appropriate form.
The Right People
It is not enough that we know the demographic segmentation that our audience belongs to. You should also know about their personality, values, interests, and lifestyles. You should understand how they behave as a consumer and what they think about your business’ product/service. In contrast to those of your competitors’ and other similar offerings. A detailed profile of the target market can act as a guidebook that can be used to craft a strategy that uniquely identifies and relates to a specific category of consumers that is tailor fit for the business. With digital marketing tools that allow businesses to direct their campaign to reach groups of people that match a specific profile, knowing exactly who your audience is will be crucial to making any marketing strategy work.
The Right Time
A business’ message will only be able to reach their audience if it gets to them when they are on the digital space at the same time that the message is made visible. In addition, the purpose of the message is made clearer and more effective when it gets to the time when consumers are most receptive. This highlights the importance of identifying the touchpoints on your audience’s customer journey and capitalizing on the use of proper channels and tools. For example, you want your campaign to be visible on Facebook when your target market is online, and when they are there browsing mostly for leisure. Unlike, in traditional marketing, the beauty of digital marketing lies in how we can use various analytical tools to pinpoint when exactly the right time would be and businesses can bank on this to configure their strategy without consuming as much resources.
The Right Place
First order of business in digital marketing is to establish one’s place in the vast digital landscape. And businesses have the power to decide where their online presence can be felt. In considering the right place, it is important to note that digital marketing operates on a two way street. Your audience should be able to reach your business just as easily as you can reach them—the challenge lies in analyzing how your audience interacts and behaves on the platforms that they frequent.
At the end of the day, the focus of digital marketing is still the same: bring your ball to your goal. The digital world offers innumerable ways to play the game and it can be tempting to lunge forth and try anything. But by focusing on your target audience and reflecting their needs, desires, and actions back to them, you will clearly see the best strategy amidst the clutter. You’ll get to provide the most effective content to the right people and be able to give it to them at the right time and place that they need it.
by Cassandra Dela Cruz and Leigh Auza
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