How to define a digital strategy?
1. Specifics
Digital marketing differs from marketing in the physical world because it is mixed with new information and communication technologies.
First of all, according to the authors of Digital Marketing (François Scheid, Renaud Vaillant, Grégoire de Montaigu), the world of digital marketing is differentiated by “the multiplicity and additivity of actions”. What they mean by that is that on the internet, there are a multitude of media and formats. We can also go through a website with a specific design, a referencing technique, a video published on a dedicated sharing platform, emails, etc. unlike communication
on traditional channels. To illustrate this, the same authors use the following example: "The marketer who says" We are going to communicate on TV "immediately defines his medium, unlike the one who announces" We are going to communicate on the Web "who has said nothing yet. said! ". Regarding the additivity of actions, you should know that on the Internet, actions do not replace each other, on the contrary they are added. For example "natural referencing'' is one of the practices of marketing digital media, and still today, it is an essential action for an emarketer that has not been replaced by actions on social networks. "
Beyond the multiplicity and additivity of actions, digital marketing is also characterized by constant evolution. Indeed, due to the change in uses in the digital world, new marketing practices are appearing. " It is above all the increasing speed of technological developments in the "Internet" ecosystem that influences digital uses, and thus allows the implementation of new marketing practices ". In the profession of E-marketer, it is therefore necessary to remain
informed of the latest technologies, practices or tools in vogue in order to adapt its own strategy and stay in the era of time.
Finally, the digital channel is a “hyper measurable” channel. This characteristic is an opportunity because unlike usual marketing, it allows us to measure the impact of each action taken. “On the internet the model is more efficient.
By purchasing a banner advertisement from an online magazine, it is possible to immediately know how many times the banner has been displayed, how many people: have clicked on it; immediately made a purchase on the site, […] etc. And all this for a reduced cost! »(François Scheid, Renaud Vaillant, Grégoire de Montaigu)
Thus the role of an e-marketer is different from that of a traditional marketer due to the fact that now access to new data requires him to be versatile, that is to say to succeed in processing and coping. to data that has never been seen before with a new way of approaching them.
These differences lead us to a specific marketing reflection: how to adapt the marketing strategy of a company to face these new situations.
2. Locate yourself on the web in order to adapt your strategy. In order to know which specific digital marketing techniques to use, we must first analyze what type of internet brand we belong to. Loic Moisand de Synthesio made a reflection on the subject, which allows us to analyze the thing well.
According to him there are 4 types of brands on the internet, which react in a different way to the buzz. (Cf. appendix 1) We find this work in La Communication Digitale Explonnée A Mon Boss (Yann GOUVERNEC, Hervé KABLA) in which we distinguish:
- Sensitive brands: “These are the brands which fear for their reputation but also which are closely monitored. For example the following sectors; health, children, security, banking, etc. In these sectors, the marketing strategy is based on building trust, explanations, and the management of scandals. media. "
- Loved brands: “This segment is ideal, but few brands manage to fit into it. It corresponds to the fantasy of consumers, with almost unreal enthusiasm. The brands that are part of it and that manage to stay there, have a Very special marketing strategy, we must not make the slightest misstep, they do not intervene very much on social media except to control what is said about them. "
- Functional brands: “This category includes brands that do not generate passion. Consumers demand, as the name suggests, functional products, otherwise the brand image will be in jeopardy. The strategy of this category is primarily based on the relationship between customer, digital or direct. The objective is therefore to reassure the customer, who knows that in the event of difficulty in use or otherwise, the brand is ready to support them.
However, you also have to deal with frustration, dissatisfaction and various attacks on social media. "
- Brands under the radar: “These are the ones we don't talk about, or not much about. What characterizes them is the fact that they take initiatives on social media, in vain, because they are not well known enough. These are brands that don't mean much to the general public. There are small market players; start-ups, VSEs, SMEs and almost all B2B brands. Their advantage is that they escape the bad buzz, because we do not talk, even badly, about a brand that we do not know. "
This classification is very useful because it prevents companies from starting with a preconceived strategy based on received ideas, incompatible with their brand, their notoriety and their picture. Once they fall into one of the four categories, they can take a step back and know what decisions and directions need to be made for their brands.
3. The levers of digital marketing
By now companies have understood it, it is necessary to invest in digital marketing to recruit and retain customers. To begin with, the most important thing to know are these three steps of a good web marketing strategy:
- First of all, to have a website, to be present;
- Put it forward, be visible;
- Establish a real relationship with Internet users, establish a climate of trust;
And for these three steps to be successful, we need to put in place a number of techniques, which will help us achieve a good digital marketing strategy. We are therefore going to see which digital marketing levers we must activate in priority.
A. The e-mailing
E-mailing is undoubtedly the most used lever in web marketing campaigns. This is mainly due to its diversity, because indeed, one can use e-mailing campaigns to achieve a wide variety of objectives. According to the authors of Digital Marketing (François Scheid, Renaud Vaillant, Grégoire de Montaigu), “we typically distinguish two main objectives for an e-mailing campaign: information and / or incentive. "
An information campaign is characterized by "highly editorial content that gives email a news-dissemination role, such as an RSS feed. "
An incentive campaign is characterized by its "commercial connotation, especially in the case of e-commerce sites. The objective of the latter is to create an impetus that will lead our Internet user to purchase. "
Emailing is also recognized as a very successful channel. Indeed "if we compare it to other direct marketing channels, it has the advantage of being inexpensive, to be easy to deploy and to offer very precise performance measurement. "
However, despite the fact that this channel appears to be perfect and highly adaptable, care must be taken not to go adrift. “The low cost of emailing campaigns has often led marketing managers to adopt marketing practices."mass mailing", in other words sending mass emails to
poorly targeted prospects ", but this is not at all healthy behavior for this type of campaign.
Because a prospect who sees his mailbox overloaded with irrelevant emails, due to a strategy
sending untargeted, no longer bother to open them, will sort them, and set their mailbox to no longer receive this type of email.
B. Social networks
The objective of a web marketing campaign via social networks is to create a relationship of trust and a space for sharing between you and your customers.
They have become an essential development channel for companies because they
offer many advantages:
- Presence and visibility
- Notoriety and popularity
- Sales and profits
“Today more and more companies and brands are using functions from social media (RSS feeds, share buttons, widgets, […] etc.). Even more and more brands are creating their profile on different social and community platforms. »(François Scheid, Renaud Vaillant, Grégoire de Montaigu) Digital Marketing Social media is therefore recommended to allow businesses to use
their social presence for the benefit of customer acquisition and retention. Well exploited,
Social networks can also enhance the brand image of a company.
However, it is still necessary to be vigilant and to think carefully about an adapted strategy:
These actions must be the result of upstream reflection and it must be known that they do not
can alone constitute a social marketing strategy on the Internet. "
C. Paid SEO (SEM)
“Web professionals very commonly use the acronym SEM (Search
Engine Marketing) to designate advertising made on search engines. "
(François Scheid, Renaud Vaillant, Grégoire de Montaigu) Digital Marketing. SEM is
a technique that allows you to acquire immediately but in the short term, a targeted visibility.
"The principle is based on the possibility of buying keywords in order to trigger the display of an advertisement when the request entered by the Internet user on the search engine matches the keyword purchased. »Three American actors propose this type of tool: Google with its Adwords program; Yahoo with Yahoo! Search Marketing; Microsoft with Adcenter.
D. Mobile marketing
With the smartphone boom over the past five years (Institut GFK),
launching a marketing campaign via this channel is a boon and represents a lever almost essential.
The strengths of this marketing technique are obviously its significant number of users, as well as the possibility of adapting the other marketing cited above. For example, an emailing campaign can very well affect a Smartphone user who reads his emails using this technology.
There are several techniques of mobile marketing: it is possible to launch SMS marketing campaigns, create so-called "responsive" websites (which adapt to any screen size), contests or promotions accessible by scanning a QR code (Quick Response Code) or by creating a mobile application. The latter technique was used by La Redoute in 2012, which launched an application "by which it was possible to make purchases thanks to the technique of augmented reality a met with great success: 2 million mobile users exposed; 30,000 downloads.
»(Jean-Luc BERNARD, Jean-Pierre MALLE, Henri Marty) Digital marketing and its levers.
By Netwave / January 21, 2013.
E. The display
The display works like advertising in magazines. It means advertising
on the internet which consists of buying advertising space that will display our content on a web page. According to There are different display formats which will depend on the considered strategy by the company, and its cost is set according to various criteria:
- Or in relation to the number of clicks counted (CPC: Cost Per Click)
- Or in relation to the number of times the advertisement has been seen (CPM: cost for
thousand impressions)
- Or in relation to the format of the advertising insert.
It has many advantages, but also disadvantages. It allows you to have a
high visibility, to create varied advertising content (videos, images, texts, sounds, etc.),
and can be geo-located depending on the target. However the cost remains very high,
there is no guarantee of ROI (Return on Investment) because they are billed per clicks
or the number of views.
4. Structure your digital strategy
A. Value creation
After presenting the tools available for e-marketing, we will see how to structure and implement your digital marketing strategy. What's needed to know above all is that by putting in place this type of strategy, the main objective is to create value. “The creation of value can be defined as the contribution brought by digital marketing activities to business carried out on the channels digital. »(Digital marketing)
Generally, this sought-after value is financially measurable (Figure business), but this may be different for websites with no sales business. "We must therefore consider different models of websites, and thus different models of value creation. »Here are five models of value creation based on a typology of websites offered in Marketing:
- Information sites:
It is all the non-media sites disseminating information. The value sought by these sites is the attention that the Internet user gives to the message that is proposed to him.
- Media sites:
These are online or editorial press sites (webzine, blogs, etc.). The value sought by these sites is directly inspired by the media model traditionally since it is about the audience.
- E-commerce sites:
These are sites selling goods or services. The value sought by these sites is selling: the site's ability to turn a visitor into a buyer.
- Transactional sites:
These are all sites whose objective is to complete a transaction not immediately monetary, that is to say to collect leads. A lead is a business opportunity for the company.
- Online services:
As the name suggests, these are the sites offering a wide range of online services.
The value sought by this type of site is the use of the service offered. (Examples: share a document online, listen to music, watch a video, etc.)
B. The strategic approach
The strategic approach of digital marketing stems from the creation model of previously stated value. According to the authors of Digital Marketing, to create value, it is necessary to be based on three main principles when implementing the strategy of Web marketing :
- Attract: acquire or generate traffic.
- Convert: Convert traffic into value.
- Retain: Repeat the value over time.
A- To. To attract
Attraction is a very specific action in digital marketing. It consists of generating website traffic. This mode of action is often preferred over conversion and retention.
According to the authors of Digital Marketing, "there are two main attraction strategies":
- Acquisition strategies: these are all the online levers the cost of which is in correlation with traffic or value obtained. (Examples: Link purchases sponsored, setting up an affiliate program, emailing campaign, etc.) The results of their strategies can often be measured almost immediately. It is possible to measure the impact as well as the return on investment (ROI).
- Generation strategies: these are the online levers for which the cost does not may not correlate with the traffic or the value obtained. (Examples:SEO optimization, creation of a Facebook page, writing of press releases, etc.) Contrary to the first strategies stated, these are spread over time and their impacts cannot be measured immediately.
b. Convert
This step is the most important for the creation of value, however it is the most often the least controlled. This lack of control is explained by the fact that the conversion is directly linked to the website, and therefore the actions to be carried out may be very technical.
According to the authors of Digital Marketing, “in order to work as well as possible on the conversion, the marketer must have at least one precise indicator to measure in order to know the quantity of value created based on a traffic indicator. "
After having thought about which indicator to use, it is necessary to set up an efficient conversion. “What we call a conversion tunnel is the process that must follow the user to achieve the final action that creates the value sought by the site (validation of the sale, registration for the service, consultation of more than x pages, etc.) ”(the Digital Marketing). This process can be interrupted at any time by the Internet user, there is a tunnel leak and consequently a loss of value (the traffic paid upstream is not profitable downstream). It is therefore essential to optimize the tunnels as much as possible.
conversion.
The optimization of the conversion tunnel goes first and foremost by setting up a
coherent and homogeneous marketing discourse throughout the process. It is necessary to arouse the interest of the Internet user and direct him to the desired action without making any missteps in our speech. For example: "If on a sponsored link it says" trial offer three
months offered. "(Attraction) this marketing speech must be found on the page of
destination (landing page) of the sponsored link »Digital Marketing.
And to put an end to optimization, we must also pay close attention to the design and
ergonomics. For example: "Rearrange, increase the size of a button, add a visual, etc. "(Digital Marketing) are actions that can have an impact in the conversion. It is important to do user tests beforehand to determine which design works best.
vs. Retain
After attracting visitors and then transforming them into value, which we
research is that this value lasts and is repeated over time: it is loyalty.
According to the authors of Digital Marketing “this principle applies to any type of site, only
the type of value differs. "
Loyalty is a step that has often been neglected by marketers, to the benefit of
traffic, however for some time it seems to have been brought up to date and appears
now as an essential action. As Fred Reichheld said in 1996 in
his book The Loyalty Effect, "keeping a customer is five to ten times cheaper than
conquer a new one. "