Digital marketing mix management seems to be a very ad hoc activity for most companies. For example, the company website, being a technology, is left to outsourced web designers, junior staffers and the IT department to manage.
If the role of the website is to be an additional channel to market and get leads and sales like newspapers, radio and television, then the management of this asset should fall within the digital marketing management mix. Specifically the Place and Promotion pieces of the 4Ps of the traditional marketing mix.
The Marketing Process:
- Macro analysis (PESTEL)
- Micro analysis (Porter’s 5 Forces)
- SWOT Analysis
- Target Market Determination
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
- Measure and Control
The items in blue are part of the digital marketing management mix.
The Internet is today the location of choice for people to get information and form an understanding of that information. A call to action can be in place for people to take an action once they are satisfied that they have sufficient knowledge on the subject matter.
Search engine results pages (SERPs), Facebook and Twitter are the preeminent places on the Internet today that people spend their time on. People search for information, follow on topics of interest and catch up with their friends and families activities online.
Having this perspective, a savvy marketer utilizes his knowledge of the marketing mix and looks at the website, Facebook page or tweets as the places to do promotions and attract prospects.
When a person is searching the web for information on a potential service, for example home renovations, the person could opt to follow on Twitter several home renovators, look for recommendations from their Facebook friends and use the search engines to look for home renovators.
If the home renovator has their digital marketing mix in place, then they should rank optimally in the search engine results pages and be able to be found in Twitter and Facebook.
And the home renovator can measure and control their online digital marketing efforts by analyzing their Google Analytics, AddThis Social Analytics, or Facebook Insights data.
The key here is the planning and execution of a management plan to optimize this digital marketing mix. What resources will be needed? What are the specific activities involved? What is the frequency of engagement to be? How to differentiate if required, online promotions versus offline promotions?
It’s like the transformation that occurred in the 1990’s. It was the end of the clerical pool and the move to higher value knowledge workers using computers and multi tasking at their desks.
If the workforce can transform from typewriters to word processing and email handling, then why not start the transformation of the workforce from the telephone to blogging, tweeting and facebooking for the business? And yes, the workforce does move higher up in the value chain with this transformation.
So in a nutshell, the digital marketing management mix should be looked at with a seriousness to maximize business opportunities. For all you know, your competitor is already doing this today.
Kognifi helps local businesses effectively use digital platforms for sales and marketing.Kognifi does this by first digitizing tasks and processes and then digitalizing the process chain for the desired results.
Before Kognifi, Logga was the lead project manager for a MCMC 3G small cells project in East Malaysia.
And prior to this, Logga was an international marketer with B. Braun Surgical, Dell, Tyco Healthcare and Flextronics.
Full details at https://my.linkedin.com/in/trlogga and https://trlogga.com/about-logga/
- Digitalization by Digital Transformation - 21 June 2019
- Digital Tools for Project Management, Morning Talk at PMI MY - 25 May 2019
- Online Marketing Lecture in Universiti Klabat Manado - 3 November 2017