DigitalFace

Win with the in Crowd?

We all use it. According to recent research, the average web user in Europe uses the web for almost 2 hours a day, a figure which is only increasing.

So all our customers are out there, surfing the web. But here’s the pinch: which sites are they accessing? Do your customers switch on their computer and immediately go to your company web site?

The painful truth is of course that they don’t. They chat, email, surf, blog and blether, they buy from huge online stores and sell again at auctions. And one of the things they do more than almost anything else is use social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, in fact Ofcom statistics show that over 40% of web users use social networking sites regularly.

The figures are staggering: Myspace.com enjoys 70 million unique users per month and 67 billion page views. Each user stayed for an average of 26 minutes. Facebook is close behind and along with other major social networking sites they’re some of the most popular on the web.

So what does all this mean?

Clearly social networking is a huge and growing phenomenon. Equally clearly, our customers prefer social networking to brochure-type corporate web sites. The net result is that a fundamental shift in marketing is occurring. Brochures, traditional media and adverts represent a one-to-many relationship between the company and its customers, whereas internet marketing is a one-to-one relationship between an individual user and the company.

A traditional advert is little more than a company name written on a piece of paper. That piece of paper may be large and mounted above a street corner or it may come with a clever picture and a funny bit of text to attract attention but after putting the piece of paper in place, the company paying for it still has to just cross their fingers and hope someone notices it.

This is the disadvantage of traditional marketing: it’s a bit like shouting at a crowd. It’s a lot of people, but the message isn’t very tailored and they can just walk away whenever they like.

So how is the new marketing different?

Rethinking marketing

There are two key distinctions between traditional and online marketing:

1. Marketing online is a one-to-one experience.
Generally people use a computer alone, not as a group. This allows companies to offer tailored experiences - list of products a particular customer may like or special offers for loyalty, for example.

2. The internet is by nature a “pull” medium.
Users visit web sites and request information. They pick and choose which information and services they want and select them at will.

Traditional marketing is by contrast a “push” medium in which a larely passive consumer has advertising pushed at them with little control over what is offered and when. The two types of medium don’t mix at all well - deploying push advertising on the web, a pull medium, is bad practice - this is exactly why pop-up ads, a push technique, feel so intrusive and irritating on the internet, a pull medium.

With pull techniques there’s no need to just hope that a customer will see what you’re offering, if the offering is good enough they’ll come of their own accord. This is vastly more successful and cost-effective than saturation advertising with crossed fingers.

Old-fashioned marketing and advertising relies heavily on creating need and desire for products. Social marketing does the opposite: it allows groups of people with similar needs and desires  to meet and share space and to select products to buy. It’s not hard to see why this is a more successful selling model!

One of the key challenges of marketing is to meet your customers where they are. In an increasingly mobile world, ads fly past in a few seconds as they commute, shuttle between meetings, shop and relax. Social marketing catches customers in one of the places they stop longest: amongst their peers, friends and online communities.

It dispenses with the old-fashioned, aggressive advertising which breaks up their films, plasters their buses and taxis and alternately coaxes and threatens them from every corner. Social networking enables marketing strategies which offer groups of like-minded people products and opportunities which are tailored to their own preferences and needs.

Some companies will continue to spend a fortune trying to talk to huge disparate groups of strangers who may or may not want or even like their products in the hope of making a sale. The smart money however is moving more and more towards building mechanisms which allow small groups of customers with shared interests to review and buy products and services which are selected and provided for them at their request.

So who do you think will be doing better in five years’ time?

EDINBURGH PARK COMMUNITY

EdinburghPark.co.uk/community

How do you connect people from over 20 different companies who see each other almost every day but don’t even know each others’ names?

Edinburgh Park is one of the country’s largest business parks with around 7000 staff working for major employers such as Diageo, HBOS, Fujiitsu and Oracle. But until Digital Face turned their talents to the issue, those staff were isolated in their own companies.

We created a site which allowed them to create a thriving community which shares news, traffic updates, car sharing arrangements and even running clubs and social groups. That’s great for the staff but it’s great for the shops, businesses and services on and around the park too, giving them the chance to offer discounts and special offers to a focused, local group of consumers instead of wasting money on general advertising to anyone who’ll listen.

Edinburgh Park now has a true community with its own common interests and which connects and benefits those in it and those businesses which serve it.

See this project in the portfolio >>

WILDERNESS JOURNEYS

WildernessJourneys.co.uk

Ever thought about going a bit Indiana Jones -canoeing down remote rivers in unexplored jungles? Well, Wilderness Journeys are the company to speak to. As well as being a leading organiser of serious adventure holidays, they’re one of the UK’s leading experts in sustainable tourism with numerous awards to their name.

The holidays and locations are superb and Wilderness Journeys needed a web site to match. We developed a complete sales strategy for the site: nobody books a premium 3 week holiday on the strength of one page of text or one photo. So we created a site packed with features which slowly build, step by step, the desire to book a holiday. A superb search function forms the core of the site and leads the customer into a rich system of photo galleries, trip reports and availability listings which gradually build interest until a booking is made.

Of course this strategy requires a lot of content, so we developed a community framework which the guides and staff can use to update the site on the fly while trips are actually going on. This keeps the site incredibly fresh with daily blog and gallery updates which draw customers into a community of people sharing the adventure.

The site is garnished with photography from Colin Prior and a slick visual design from our creative team but it’s the community that makes the site work so well.

See this project in the portfolio >>