inbound - Kauai Digital Marketing

7 Advantages of Digital Marketing Strategy over Traditional

You’re a business owner or executive looking for ways to grow your business. How do you come up with an effective marketing strategy? What is the role of advertising as part of your marketing strategy? Should it be traditional marketing? Should it be online, digital marketing? Or should it be some combination of the two?

The Modern Customer Purchase Funnel

The purpose of marketing is to enable and drive sales. In my many years of experience as a marketing executive, I believe effective marketing starts with an understanding of your target customer’s buying behavior. Market research and feedback helps you to refine this. But there are some useful customer purchase models to help organize your thinking and idenitify where you may need to gather further information or do testing. A classic customer purchase model was the AIDA one:

Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action

But the Internet has changed that. It is no longer sufficient. A modern customer purchase model that I find useful is:

Awareness
Research and familiarity
Opinion and Shortlist
Consideration
Purchasing
Champion/Repurchase OR Defect/Detract

Think about this with regard to your own buying behavior for different products and services. For example, I am planning to build a house and need kitchen appliances. I have some general awareness of appliance brands, but I have become aware of newer ones through ads and web sites and store visits. I started to research the brands and how they will meet our needs. I asked people in stores. They offered a little insight, but I found a lot more insight and information on the Web. This is a major purchase that we will live with for a long time so I want to make sure we get it right. On the Web, I can also see customer reviews and lab tests of products to understand what other people have experienced. I can see video demos of the products being used. We have formed some opinions and narrowed down the list of brands we are interested in. Now we’re drilling down on those two brands to consider features, pricing, reliability, style, etc. to decide which ones we will purchase. Once we purchase and begin to use those products, we will either be satisfied customers who will champion them to others online and offline and eventually repurchase OR we will be dissatisfied customers who will make that known and detract from the brand.

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing

Customer buying behavior has shifted and so should your marketing mix. Should it be all traditional or all online? It depends on your business and your customers. For many businesses the answer may be somewhere in the middle. But the 4 Ps (product, price, place, promotion) are no longer sufficient.

What are the advantages of online, digital marketing strategy over traditional marketing?

Lower costs –Traditional marketing is expensive. It takes a lot of people, lead time, and materials. Trade shows, direct mail, TV or radio ads are all costly. Digital marketing is much less expensive. The cost to create and maintain a web site is much lower. The cost to write a blog or send an email newsletter is minimal. The cost to run PPC ads on Google or Facebook is much less. The cost to make changes is dramatically less.
Target your message – Your targeting is limited with traditional marketing. Many of your tools are broadcast to a wide audience rather than narrowcast to someone getting ready to make a purchase decision. You can target the right message to the right person and based on where they are in the customer purchase decision process.
Measure ROI – In traditional marketing you are often guessing which marketing elements contributed to return on investment because it would cost too much to find out. With digital marketing feedback is immediate and measurable. Analytics give us data on the performance and conversions associated by different online marketing activities.
Change or refine strategy easily – It’s difficult and time consuming to make changes to traditional marketing elements. Re-designing and re-printing a brochure takes time. Re-shooting a television ad takes time. Digital marketing is much faster to test and refine. You can do A/B testing and get immediate feedback. You can see where you are spending money with results and without results. You can stop and/or change things with less effort and shorter lead times. Real-time feedback and analytics tell you when and how to change your strategy.
Engage prospects longer – Nobody reads a long brochure. A TV or radio ad is usually 30 seconds. A trade show may yield a brief conversation. But online marketing can grab and hold attention. It can help to start building a relationship with a prospect or reinforce a relationship with an existing customer. Online, digital marketing is informative. It is not just PPC ads. It is educating and informing your audience so they can take the next step in their purchase decision process. They can interact with your business via text, images, video, chat. They can see what others have experienced with your business. They can learn more about the values of your business or how you work behind the scenes.
Be available 24/7 – If I wake up in the middle of the night I can still engage with your business as part of my purchase decision process. I don’t have to wait for a store to open or a sales person to call. And the content is long lasting. A blog post I write this year may be just as valuable to new prospects next year. Or it can easily be updated to be always accessible over time.
Be less intrusive – Most of us don’t want to be sold on something. We want to come to our own conclusions. We value advice and a small set of alternatives that are tailored to our particular needs and wants. But we don’t like people pushing something to us based on features and functions that we may or may not need. Online, digital marketing is available when I want it. It is informative. It helps me move through my decision process at my pace.

On the island of Kauai we have many businesses that are targeted to visitors. One of those businesses is selling activities to enjoy while on vacation (ziplines, fishing trips, snorkeling, etc.) It used to be that visitors almost always arrived and then met in person with a concierge at a hotel or a shop to be told what the offers and recommendations are and to make their purchase decisions. But that business model has been shifting rapidly. Now a large proportion of visitors arrive on the island having already researched activities online, reviewed customer reviews, shopped for discounts and promotions, and made a purchase before they ever got here.

Is the answer today all traditional marketing or all digital marketing? For a startup business in particular industries all digital may be the right answer. For some more traditional industries, traditional marketing may still dominate overall marketing investment. But for many businesses the shift is occurring between the two. You may still need traditional elements for that face to face connection via trade shows and an outside sales force. It depends on your product/service and your target customers’ buying behaviors. But chances are your marketing mix will need to shift increasingly toward online, digital marketing.

What do you think? Have you shifted your marketing mix or is it all traditional or all digital? Have you seen customer buying behavior changing in your business? Please share for the benefit of others working on their marketing strategies.

There ain’t no such thing as a free website!

Many small businesses looking at web design on Kauai or anywhere else in Hawaii or around the world are finding free website alternatives online. But what does free really mean? Are you being smart and economical or are you locking into something with other implications and challenges? Over 6 million people and businesses have joined Weebly and have set up many more million websites on their platform. Websiteooltester.com covers the pros and cons of many of the free website providers. So wouldn’t that be the way to go? With them or one of their competitors? Not necessarily.

In economics the principle that there is no such thing as a free lunch is used to denote that everything has an opportunity cost. The phrase was used early on in the U.S. in the days of saloons that offered a “free lunch” if you purchased at least one drink. It was also used to talk about government corruption. But in modern times the economist Milton Friedman helped to make the phrase really popular by using it as the title of his 1975 book.

The concept that nothing is free serves to remind us that there is an opportunity cost to everything. By choosing one investment you have an opportunity cost of what the alternative would have been. Even if someone does invite you for a free lunch, there may be some other agenda or obligation on your part. At the very least there is an opportunity cost of the alternative ways that you could have used your time while eating the free lunch. Your time has value and that value is determined by how you use it.

What does free lunch have to do with a free website?

There is opportunity cost to accepting a free website. You are choosing a set of parameters, design styles, contracts, and timeframes for a free website that may sound good in the short term, but have other costs. After all, who doesn’t want free? You’re starting a new small business and you’re looking to do everything economically. However, being economical may not automatically mean taking the free alternative.

What are some of the advantages of the free website?

It’s free! (well, mostly anyway)
The tools are simple and easy to use
It’s fast to do
You can do it yourself
The complexity of web design tools, domain names and web hosting are masked to you
There are a lot of pre-loaded designs available
The sites are large and growing and adding features over time

What to look out for with free website providers

Is the domain name registered in your name? Can you take it with you?
Are you obligated/required to purchase other services from the free website provider?
How long is the hosting contract with the free provider?
Is the free part limited to a certain time period?
Will they display ads on your site? Will you be able to control the type and placement?
Will they add other external links to your site?
What level of support do they provide and in your time zone?
Do they provide any system availability guarantees?
Do they run regular backups of your site in case of a crash?
Do they require a setup fee or other admin fee?
Do they charge for monthly hosting and is it a higher fee than the industry average?
If you decide to switch later to a custom site can you take the site with you and transfer it to another host?
They may say they will submit your site to search engines, but are there any tools or guidelines to optimize your site for search engines to rank highly?
Do they provide a branded email address with your domain or is that an additional charge?
How much space do they provide? How expensive will it be to upgrade if your business grows?
You have access only to the features they provide
There are limits to what you can customize to your business
What happens to your site if the company is acquired or goes out of business?

You may be thinking I’ll start out with this free website and then switch to a custom one later. That may not be possible to do or it may be costly. You may be disappointed when you are not showing up in search engine rankings, but another web designer can’t help you without building a new website.

Is a free website good marketing?

Free websites continue to improve and add features, but it may still be apparent to your prospective customers that it is a free website. How serious are you about your business? Do you look like a business that is investing to succeed? Or do you look like thousands of other Weebly sites who have chosen the same design template?

Your web site is one of the key marketing tools to reach your new and existing customers. Are you able to provide compelling content in a way that makes sense to them and that reflects the unqueness of your company?

If upfront cost is the issue, you may be able to work with your web designer or digital marketing partner to bundle the cost into a year long contract that could include web hosting or other social media services. If they are open to that alternative, you may be able to spread part or all of the upfront cost over a longer contract with them. You may want to consider alternatives other than just looking at the upfront price and making that your sole decision criterion.

After all, there ain’t no such thing as a free website!

Aulii Luau dancers at Kauai Chamber of Commerce

Kauai Chamber of Commerce Case Study

I was honored last evening to be featured as a new member at the Kauai Chamber of Commerce Annual General Membership Meeting. I am so pleased to be a part of these talented business professionals, to get acquainted, and to become part of the community. There is so much entrepreneurial spirit here across a number of industries.

As a new member I had a display table to do some traditional event marketing with other local businesses. It was great to meet new people and to learn about their business ventures. I was in between the dancers from ‘Auli’i Lu’au and the Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas. While I focus now on digital, online marketing, I have also done a lot of traditional marketing in my prior roles in technology and consulting companies. You may have a business where you can rely solely on digital marketing, but many businesses still need a mix of both. As a business and marketing professional, I would not hesitate to recommend a mix if it were the right fit. There is still a huge value to connect with others in your own industry as well as in others and to form those relationships both in person and online.

One of the things that I love about being located on the island of Kauai is the common view that we are all in this canoe together. The canoe is such an important part of Hawaiian history and culture. It is such a powerful symbol to me that when we row and steer in a common direction we all reach our destination faster and safer. This is part of the culture and values of Kauai that drew me to locate here. For the canoe to move forward, we need to work together. All as one. One canoe, one ohana, one community. And I believe it is a strong value to guide our business interactions.

KaiKini Case Study of Traditional and Digital Marketing

In learning about the business ventures of others based here, I was especially struck by the story of the founder and CEO of KaiKini Bikinis. She shared with me how she started with an idea and vision and acquired the skills she needed along the way. She envisioned designing and making bikinis in her unique style and optimized for wear while being active. She did not know how to sew, but she bought some commercial sewing machines, experimented, and taught herself to not only design but also to manufacture the pieces. She used traditional marketing and selling to get some local stores to carry her pieces as part of starting her business. She also focused on digital marketing and began social media marketing to engage her customers and to gain further visibility. She got additional retailers on other islands to stock her products. As the business started to grow, she hired others to train to sew. And she taught herself to set up a website. She now has several employees and continues to grow her business as a manufacturer and wholesaler while also selling directly worldwide via her ecommerce website at kaikini.com. She uses blogs and social media marketing as well as Google Adwords PPC ads in her digital marketing mix. A consultant manages her PPC ads for her so she can devote her time to other business initiatives. She uses BigCommerce as her web hosting and tools provider. What an inspiration that she has built a business to market and sell Hawaiian-made products all over the world. And the digital marketing and sales are a key growth area of her business!

What a great evening with the Kauai Chamber of Commerce!

Mobile First!

Today it is about being mobile first! If people cannot access your content easily and clearly on mobile devices, you are missing the boat! This is true all over, but on the island of Kauai, this can be a literal statement. I was recently chatting with the owner of a rental shop near the port where cruise ships come in. He was telling me that he had developed a web site, but he had not thought about it being mobile first. But his target customers all arrive with mobile devices. He said, “I see them coming off the ship all looking at their smartphone or tablets.” The same is true of nearby hotel and timeshare visitors.

Nielson reports that over the past year, the average consumer spent nearly seven hours more per month with their mobile phones, and more than 70% of mobile users use smartphones.

Mobile first email marketing

According to Movable Ink’s Q1 2014 US Consumer Device Preference Report email opens continue to migrate away from the desktop. In fact, two thirds of emails are opened on a mobile device. Within that, the tablet share of email opens continues to grow.

Movable Ink said that 66 percent of emails were opened on either a smartphone (47.2 percent) or tablet (18.5 percent) in Q1 2014. That’s up slightly from the 65 percent in Q4. By contrast PC email opens were down to 34 percent.

What an opportunity for online, digital marketing. This means that your email reaches your target audience anytime and anyplace. Think about that. But also think about how it must be designed for the customer on the go. If you don’t grab him/her with the title and the first five lines of your email, they will move on to the next one. It has to be attention grabbing, get quickly to the value for your customer, and then to the call to action. In a previous role, I wrote many such emails to be used by the salespeople in our company. Many of them were surprised that they got a quick response from a senior executive. It was because it was targeted at them, designed to be read on a mobile device, with a clearly stated value proposition and an easy call to action.

Mobile First Blogs

Don’t be surprised if mobile devices are soon the primary way that people read your blog posts. You can use Google Analytics to see how they are being accessed today and what the trend line is for mobile devices for your particular site. Have you looked at and thought about how someone will access your blog from a mobile device? Do your sharing icons work on the mobile device? Can users comment? Is there far too much scrolling to the right required?

The best way to find out is to test your site on a variety of devices. But Google also provides a website called Make Your Website Work Across Multiple Devices which helps you test your mobile website for mobile compatibility. There is also a link to their PageSpeed Insights tool where you can test performance on mobile and desktop devices and get suggestions for improvement.

Mobile First Design

How do you get mobile first design? If you are designing a new web site, make sure your developer is enabling responsive design. There are many tools and themes available now to automatically enable web sites to be responsive to mobile devices and to optimize the display and performance. If you have an existing web site that is not designed for mobile, you have a few choices:

Do nothing – your customers will have to enlarge and scroll on a mobile device
Re-design to be responsive – if your web site is a few years old, it may be due for a re-design anyway
Create a separate mobile site – you could have a separate mobile site, but then you have to maintain two sites

Mobile First Features

The rise in use of mobile devices also opens new opportunities to think about exploiting unique features of those devices. A common example is being able to link to mobile turn-by-turn directions. Not only can they find your business online, their device can guide them to you. They can touch the screen and immediately call or email you. They can check back in with you during the day and at different locations. You may also want to make use of location awareness to push certain information or promotions. And mobile devices are also good for social media integration. Making it easy to share on social media directly from a mobile device may increase your reach.

So it really is a new world. I now carry the Internet in my pocket via my smartphone. When I travel, I stay connected with my tablet to use in the airport, on the plane, and in my hotel room. I may search for information about a business anytime and anywhere that I have a connection. If you are not mobile first, you are missing the boat! (maybe literally!)

Kauai small business landmark Na Pali coast

Does a Kauai small business need social media marketing?

I have heard the question of whether a Kauai small business needs social media marketing. On the island of Kauai we have a small town culture. People take time to talk story with each other. People know people who know people. There are a lot of word of mouth business referrals. But there are also many businesses whose target customers include not only locals, but also visitors. Small businesses here and in other parts of the world are wondering what to do about social media marketing and whether it is worth the time and effort. As a small business owner your goal should not be excellence at social media. Your goal should be to increase your business by picking and choosing some social media marketing that will reach your customers and prospects cost effectively. You could get social media training to do it yourself or you could hire someone to write and manage marketing content for you.

Why Kauai small business social media marketing matters

Gain awareness of your target audience, whether locals, transplants, or visitors: People increasingly look for information online and on the go. There are local Facebook groups for causes and for rants and raves. There are locals, transplants, and visitors not only searching the web, but also searching social media for Kauai information, products, and services. Kauai small business is fortunate to have many repeat visitors. What are you doing to stay in touch with them and make sure they do business with you on their next visit? What are you doing to encourage them to share information about your business with friends and neighbors who may also visit sometime? Social media is another place to find out about your small business and to stay connected over time. It is also a fast and affordable place to do A/B testing of content to see what your target customers responds to most and where they do it from.
Drive traffic to your web site: Having a web site is a basic start for online marketing. Getting your web site noticed, though, is the goal for attracting new business. Social media visibility and sharing useful content for your target audience can help to drive people to your web site for more information and to take action. Or it may cause their friends and neighbors to become aware of your web site by seeing a “like” or share.
Capture contact info for email marketing and newsletters: Sharing interesting content in social media may be the hook to get someone interested in your Kauai small business. You now have a reason for them to give you their contact info and to sign up for email updates or a newsletter. They may become aware of your blog posts and updated useful content that will cause them to come to your web site and fill out a form to contact you. Yes, it’s good to have this on your web site. But you can use social media to interest people in contacting you.
Induce trial of your product or service: In addition to generating awareness through social media, you may also be able to induce a trial of your product or service. Providing useful, interesting content can cause them to take action to request more information or to visit your shop. You might also offer a special promotion on social media for a free sample at a certain time that creates an urgency and excitement to be shared with other friends and neighbors.
Foster customer relationships and repeat business: Social media marketing is also a great way to retain customers, to deepen customer relationships, and re-inforce their buying behavior with you. We feel proud as consumers when we see an ad or promotion for a brand that we use and with which we have a positive relationship. Your customers will feel a much stronger connection to your business by also knowing more about you, your suppliers, your employees, your locations, etc. We all like a peak behind the scenes and to feel like we are insider.
Create social media referrals in addition to word of mouth referrals: This is a real strength of social media marketing. Humorous, emotional, or just useful content doesn’t have to go viral to benefit your business. But having your customers’ friends and contacts seeing and hearing about your brand is an online word of mouth that can spread much faster and certainly much wider than just talking story at the farmer’s market or other local gathering spot. What are the chances that your small business will come up in conversation? But if there is useful or interesting information on social media, that can be seen by or shared with others.

How a Kauai small business can get started

Social media marketing for a Kauai small business takes some time and effort. But you don’t have to be everywhere. Work with an advisor to pick and choose the platforms that make the most sense for your target customers. Focus on one or a few. Don’t try to be an expert on every social media platform. Focus on the content to be interesting, humorous, emotional, useful (see our other blog posts on compelling content). It’s not about selling. It’s about communicating, gaining awareness, inducing trial, and fostering customer relationships. Test to see what works and to focus your efforts on those that produce real results to grow your business.

So if you are a Kauai small business, you can likely survive without social media marketing, but will you thrive?

What is Online Marketing? Inbound? Digital? Content?

When I moved from the mainland to Kauai, I needed to find new resources to assist me. I didn’t listen to broadcast ads or read a newspaper. I went online and searched for information. In the process of searching for information, I formed impressions of service providers based on what I was learning from them. I also was looking for providers who had simple, well laid out web sites, with up to date information. Not only did I search the worldwide web, I also searched on Facebook for local businesses. I “liked” some that I found interesting. I signed up for email newsletters. I read blogs and learned a great deal that influenced how I planned my move and possible vendors for me to contact that would fit my needs.

It’s a new world for marketing your business. Consumer and business behavior is evolving to be much more like my personal experience above. Will your potential customers find you and be compelled to engage with you? Will your online, digital content show up high in their searches? Will your existing customers feel that they have an ongoing relationship with you, recommend you to others, and do more business with you over time?

If you are presenting no online information or stale, out of date information, I would not probably contact you. I would look to your competitors who provide me with information and insight and who show they want to have an ongoing relationship.

If you already have a Web site for your business, that’s great. Is it easy to find information? Is it regularly updated? Do you have a blog that provides background, context, information, and insight? Are you educating your audience, not just selling to them? It’s a new model of marketing that goes by different names such as online marketing, digital marketing, and inbound marketing. It’s not just a technology project. It’s a new way of engaging prospects and customers for your unique business.

Tag Archives: inbound

7 Advantages of Digital Marketing Strategy over Traditional

The Modern Customer Purchase Funnel

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing

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