Of hammer and nails

‘When you have a hammer all you see are nails’ is the proverbial wisdom that can apply to the individual marketing solutions provider. An interactive advertising agency can argue that more interactivity equal more user engagement and thus drive brand engagement but search marketing specialists can tout to death that flash is evil, that content is king whilst technology consultants would swear by rich internet applications and Web 2.0 solutions being the holy pilgrim. Blog evangelist… Well, you get the idea.

No wonder marketers are confused.

And to some extent, every offering is plausible. Your marketing mix would be dependent on what you are trying to achieve and the key is to continuously measure what works best for your industry, your market and the audience you are trying to target. The problem is to figure out what to do and where to start – In other words, you need a strategy.

Secondly, a set of KPIs is mandatory to determine the value of your marketing mix. Through web analytics, you can measure the effectiveness of individual campaigns by translating these web metrics against business results such as ROI, sales figures and leads generation etc. The truth is, no longer should companies simply accept intangible qualities such as branding as the primary driver or deliverable of a campaign. Accountability for the marketing process is crucial and the last thing you need is to spend more good money going after the bad.

The good news is that these tools are now a fraction of the cost compared to a few years back and the values and rules of online marketing success is becoming more concrete. In other words, while online marketing has not been around as long as say, television advertisement, the nature of the medium has allowed the online marketing industry to mature far beyond these traditional channels.

The challenge now is not deciding on the channels but rather developing a cohesive strategy and establishing meaningful KPIs.

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