Marketing in a Downturn

Over the last few months,  I've been studying for the IDM's Digital Marketing Diploma, driven by a couple of things:

1. A desire to keep learning about the ever changing digital marketing space, to reinforce my own knowledge and fill in gaps.

2. To assess how good the course really is and whether it's appropriate for us (RBI) to sponsor members of our marketing team

Well, on the second point, I have to say that I have been impressed with the course overall, particularly the models and frameworks that help turn the theory into practice.  My first assignment (there are two in total), a study of a young ecommerce company called www.whatafind.com was due in last Friday and delivered on time! To say that it was more work than I'd anticipated, is an understatement, but writing these assignments is a great way to reinforce learning and actually play with the many tools available..and there are so many. Tools such as: Hitwise, Google's Ad Planner, Website Optimiser, BrandWatch, Hubspot, Google Insight..and many more.

One set of (Free) resources that I must highlight as you may not have come across it yet, is Dave Chaffey's site.  There,  you'll find so much that can help you plan your marketing programmes effectively. Of particular value is Chaffey's suite of spreadsheet templates which will help you forecast costs and returns, plan 'what if' scenarios and much more.

References

Dave's suite of spreadsheets

The IDM's Digital Marketing courses  

One of the positives of a recession is that lack of resources and money forces people to be creative. If you're hungry and desperate, you have to do things differently or face extinction.

As previous recessions have shown, a recession changes the rules - market leaders fall from grace, and mr nobody from nowhere has the opportunity to become a global brand! That's life.

B2B Marketing Magazine asked whether the spirit of innovation is likely to change now that things (hopefully) continue to improve. You can read Chris Wilson, Chair of ABBA and Mai Honan, Director of Positive Thinking, views here.

Here's another very useful and practical guide from Google on ways to make your website work.

As is often the case these days, they have boiled it all down to 10 things which improve the customer experience and boost conversions. They include things such as:

1. Bring me to the right page

2. Display groups of products clearly

... so not rocket science, but often neglected.

Download Making Your Website Work

Download Making Your Website Work

The RBI Digital Marketing Conference took place 1st July - it was a really good event and a great opportunity to share lessons on topics including: web analytics, persuasion architecture, online lead nurturing and social media. There was also a really useful presentation from Aziz Musa, RBI's Head of Global Product Management (link: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/azizmusa) who passed on some useful lessons to marketers who need to brief web projects into an IS department:

      1.       Know what you want

2.       Start big and then narrow down your ambitions

3.       Do it in pieces (rather than all at once)

4.       Measure your success

The overall theme of the day was that the world is changing rapidly and I thought I'd share a few, thought-provoking videos from the event:

Shift Happens

Lead Generation

Social Media
 

Finally, for amusement, take a look at these cartoons and see if they ring true with you...

I spent the bulk of Tuesday judging 8 categories in the B2B Marketing Awards campaigns. It was interesting to see what B2B companies have been doing during the downturn. I can't give anything away, but there were some impressive entries in the categories which included lead generation, new product launch, social media and integrated marketing. You'll have to wait until November 25th to see who has won.

B2B Marketing Awards Night

If you've had a similar 18 months to me, you'll appreciate why I like the thought of having a 'flexible' cost base. It's so reassuring to be able to tap into world-class services when you need them, but pull back when there's less demand or at low seasonal times. We took to the decision to outsource all of our creative services at the end of last year. Though a very challenging episode, it is proving to be the right decision as the team now have access to a much wider pool of creative and design talent.

However, though the requirement to outsource may be there, you often can't move forward simply because you just don't know who to outsource to. Certainly selecting, inducting and managing a supplier is a skill that should not be underestimated. Poor briefing, changing your mind frequently, shouting at suppliers, not paying on time are examples of how not to do it.

However, rather than give you a list of do's and don'ts of managing suppliers, I wanted to make you aware of what you can outsource to give you more time in your day and achieve more overall:
1. Virtual assistants - a fabulous resource to assist you with specific organisational and digital marketing tasks. Lots of examples of companies that offer this service eg www.getfriday.com

2. Data cleaning and acquisition - eg http://www.cheersin.com/

3. Copywriting
4. Design

So what's left to do in-house? The overall responsibility to the customer, the strategy and the development - in other words, everything.

With the growth in web-based marketing, success is very dependent on having an effective relationship with your IT team, whether they're in-house or not.  This can be a challenge for marketing people for a number of reasons and can lead to wasted effort, wasted money and huge delays to a project.

I was interested to see that Marketing Experiments have started to publish a series of 'back to basics'  articles on the different roles that exist in IT. This first one is on the role of web designer and there's another one on web developer. Watch out for more over the summer.