Web 101: What is interactive marketing? (II)

A few weeks ago, I wrote "Web 101: What is interactive marketing?"  The article focused on the tactical elements of internet marketing--the online tools that today's technology adds to our marketing mix.  This time, I'd like get more conceptual, and focus on what it is that interactive marketing hopes to achieve.

To start with, I should not have gone straight into interchanging "interactive" with "internet" without acknowledging that I was doing so. 

Interactive marketing seeks to build a conversation with the market, rather than simply sending out messages--it's a conversation instead of a monologue.  Today, the internet is one of the primary means of doing this, and many regard the terms as synonymous.  It is a habit I have gotten into, and should have noted at the outset.  In the context of my blog, I will often interchange the two. However, they are not exactly the same.

So what are the goals of internet marketing?

In some regards, they are very similar to traditional marketing channels, and in others they are unique to the internet. 

Traditional Goals

• Branding. Many dollars are spent in traditional marketing to build the company or product brand.  This is what most television ads, for example, are meant to do--to create a series of associations that lead consumers to prefer one brand over another, and to create recognition for that brand in the crowded marketplace.  This is the case online as well.  The same firms that pour billions of dollars into television ads are making big investments online, creating what I call "rich advertising"--flashy product-focused microsites, video games starring brand mascots, video advertisements, and corporate sites extolling missions and detailing operations, product lines, and company values. For smaller firms, this may mean text or banner ads, or contributing articles, video, podcasts, or other content to external sites to help reinforce their brand. "Eyeballs" are very important here.
• Sales. Traditionally, increases in sales have been taken as an indicator that a marketing effort is successful.  Businesses have used marketing sciences--eg, consumer behavior--and store design to facilitate and increase sales.  Online, web-based storefronts provide another means of generating sales.  Where traditional stores might use focus groups or observational studies to decide what products should be arranged in what ways, web-based sales platforms might use automated recommendation engines, site search, and intuitive categories to achieve the same thing.
• Customer service. Always an important component of marketing, customer service can get a big boost, or take a big hit, from the use of interactive technologies.  Click-to-call, click-to-chat, email, and interactive self-service systems present opportunities for more efficient, and at times more effective, customer service.  However, marketers beware: poor or excessive use of these technologies can make relationships with customers feel cold and impersonal. Additionally, over-reliance on technology can result in service and communication gaffes that would be comical if they were not so costly.  Finally, when service is delivered over email and chat, it is critical that representatives have excellent written communication skills, including the ability to spell.

Special Goals

The "interactive" in interactive marketing opens up new opportunities for marketers and customers.  It is easier than ever to take marketing beyond telling a story or making a transaction, to building a more personal relationship with more benefits to both the marketer (or company being marketed) and the customer.

• Creating and monitoring "buzz."  The internet facilitates conversations between individuals who may never encounter each other in real life.  Venues like blogs, user reviews, and messageboards allow other people to witness these conversations, join them, and introduce them to still more people.  Deliberately creating buzz is an elusive trick few marketers have mastered.  Users have become much more savvy, and much better at detecting contrived conversations.  Buzz can cut both ways--when it's good, it's very, very good.  Bad buzz, however, can decimate a carefully constructed brand, undoing months or years of work and millions of dollars in investment.  Today's marketers need to be aware of the buzz around their products and services, and be proactive in participating in the conversation.  Handled well, bad buzz can become an opportunity to improve on problems, and even present the solutions to problems in the same, public forum in which they are exposed.  At the least, marketers should know whether their buzz is positive or negative, and consider this information in their ongoing efforts.
• Co-creation. In the same vein, the internet makes it easier than ever to understand what your market is thinking.  People love to tell you what they think. They blog about you, comment on your blog, and write reviews about you.  For the devoted researcher, the internet is like a never-ending focus group, providing more chances for understanding the outside view of your efforts.  But there's more to it than just talk.  Converse starts with a deconstructed shoe, letting consumers build their own perfect pair of Chuck Taylors.  Mini professes that less than "two in 100,000" of their cars are alike.  The internet presents new opportunities for fully individualized customization, moving away beyond clustered segmentation and closer to the segment of one.
• Community development. From its earliest days, the internet proved to be a facilitator of community development.  Out of the various interest groups of Usenet sprung a tradition of like-minded individuals gathering and interacting with each other online.  Today, there are numerous places for people to do this, and they do.  For marketers, community-building sites and tools present great opportunities to invite customers and, especially, enthusiasts to join together around their brands, products, and expertise.  Putting out a high-quality blog can create community among readers and commenters.  Hosting a gaming platform can create a community of players.  Staging a conference in Second Life can help develop a community around your area of expertise.  Forums can bring together customers to talk about their common interests.  Community building efforts have to truly speak to customer interests--no point putting a conference in Second Life if your customer base is not especially internet-savvy, or hosting a branded Tetris tournament if your customers are hardcore gamers.  Done well, they can help you to build the social bonds that are known to increase customer loyalty and improve their willingness to communicate with you when you need to know what they think.

Traditional marketing goals have not gone away...not by a long shot.  But today's interactive technologies have opened up vast new opportunities for achieving traditional and new goals.  On the flip side, the technologies present new risks, as well.  Service and product problems can spread faster than ever, and the lure of automation can lead to poor customer service and weak relationships.  Marketers need to be in this space, but they need to do so intelligently, considering the risks and benefits, foreseeing potential problems, and having a plan in place for dealing with them when they occur.

So that's my take...I've undoubtedly missed something.  What do you think?  What are some of the goals you're pursuing, and what are the other risks and benefits of interactive marketing?

Comments

[Dan]

Hi Amy:

I work for a click to call and chat provider, eStara, and you're absolutely right that companies need to be careful with how they roll out interactive marketing solutions like click to call and chat. Doing it the wrong way can be very jarring for the business and consumer alike.

However, the benefits of doing it right can be tremendous.

As you mentioned relying on canned responses for every chat inquiry can lead to some funny (or not so funny depending on what side you're on) results that can have a negative impact on your brand. This is why it's not as effective as the phone when it comes to complex, high-value transactions.

However, leading click to call solutions deliver immediate phone contact between buyers and sellers (without requiring additional hardware or software for either party), plus the added data and collaboration capabilities that make chat so appealing.

In case your readers are interested in learning some best practices, we'll be hosting a webinar next week with Forrester Research on how businesses can turn online conversations into sales conversions.

https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/682039748

[Mike @ PartnerUp]

Very interesting post. I work for PartnerUp.com, which is a community of entrepreneurs (our primary goal is to help people find business partners), so I've spent the last two years building an online community. During that time, I've become really fascinated with the concept of online communities and thinking about the efficiencies achieved by bringing offline communities online.

I think that perhaps the most interesting observation I've made is how the internet has made the concept of a community a lot more synchronous.

For example, brands like Jeep have always tried to build a sense of community amount their members (they had these things called the Jeep Jamboree where Jeep users could get together to socialize and drive their Jeeps through obstacle courses). Events like that could only happen once or twice a year, were expensive to put on, and I don't think that they had a long lasting every-day effect on customers. Nowdays, Jeep could (and very well may, I don't follow them closely) have an online community whereas they can accomplish the same objective of building a sense of community in Jeep customers, at a lot less of a price.

So, I think that a huge component of interactive marketing is building online communities.

[Amy Cham]

@Dan- I agree. I think that click-to-chat is a great use of the technology. It makes the person-to-person connection easier, rather than trying to replace it. Incredibly simple to do in its most basic form, and very powerful in its more sophisticated iterations. Thanks for the webinar link.

@Mike- Excellent point. The concept of community is not a new one. Land Rover did (does?) something similar, I think. I suspect that today's communities have the potential to be much stronger, as they can be an everyday part of their members' lives.

[Church of Integrity]

That was a great post Amy. Personally I'm really interested in the Buzz phenomenon. It's strange how some things explode (in a good sense) on the internet while others just go past without anyone noticing. For example the iPhone is pretty cool but Samsung and LG are doing a great job of making similar if not better phones. Why don't they get as much buzz as Apple? Is it somehow about brand loyalty? What does Apple do that LG doesn't do?

[Amy Cham]

@Church of Integrity- Thanks! I hope you found it useful.

Apple is in a rare and enviable position of being a 'cult brand.' They've gone beyond creating a positive image and have managed to create a community of fans who are emotionally invested in the brand...most of the Mac users I've known consider it part of their identity. They are passionate about the brand, and avidly create buzz when there is a new product or other development.

The first thing that comes to mind as a common area for cult brands is in cars and motorcycles. The symbolism goes beyond "status" and is really more a matter of "membership." Membership implies emotional bonds, which is reflected in the buzz of cult brand devotees.

I suspect that along with its early pack-leadning PC innovations, Apple may have benefited from the 1990's anti-establishment angst and underdog preference common among the Gen-X webbies and designers of the initial internet boom. When it re-emerged as the style-maven of digital lifestyle products, that just added more fuel and cemented the 'identity' componenet of the brand.

JM2C. Cult brands are a very interesting marketing phenomenon.

[Michael Brito]

Amy - excellent article.

"Interactive marketing seeks to build a conversation with the market, rather than simply sending out messages--it's a conversation instead of a monologue"

Love this quote; I think I am going to write something about this (and of course give you some link love)...but do you think that the way you are defining interactive marketing is synonymous to that of social media marketing and/or community marketing?

[Amy Cham]

@Mike - hmmm...I had to think about that one...

I think there is a subtle difference. Interactive marketing in general is about creating and facilitating that conversation, which strives to build relationships. Social media and community marketing (components of interactive marketing) *leverage* these relationships to expand the conversation--which hopefully results in new relationships. A new participant is connected to an existing participant; by virtue of that connection, the new participant is brought into the conversation, which hopefully results in creation of a new relationship...which may result in another new participant. And so on.

That's my best shot at making the distinction. I will be interested to read what you come up with!