Time For Agencies To Drive Brands With Digital Marketing
Marketing agencies must embrace the promise of digital marketing if they are to do full justice to the brands of which they are custodians.
This is the word from Kevin Lourens, director of Cambrient, South Africa's first integrated digital technology marketing specialist.
"Winning brands will be those which have embraced traditional and digital media," says Lourens. "Digital media alone offer a way for marketers to interact in realtime with their chosen market, to measure effectiveness, and to drive an ongoing feedback mechanism," say Lourens. "In addition, the same technology offers them a way to drive their internal efficiencies. However few agencies in South Africa have identified the opportunity, to the detriment of their clients.
"Marketers should be thinking about converting every opportunity to see into a qualified lead," says Lourens. "For this to happen, they need to begin integrating digital marketing into conventional marketing."
Lourens cites the example of an advertising campaign which would drive traffic to a website. The campaign should be coordinated with website content, so as to elicit a desired response from a target market. This could take the form of a telephone call, an e-mail, a clickthrough, a referral, an SMS, a test drive, or a direct engagement, to mention a few examples. The critical issue is the direct interaction with existing or future customers with the potential profiting and ongoing interaction this creates. From such interactive engagements viral marketing can be sparked.
"Websites alone have the ability to permit such intimate and detailed interaction," says Lourens, "and as such we are recommending that the website forms an integral part of the brief, and helps drive the overall brand promise and promotion. So few agencies have understood this that the market is wide open for the forward-looking ones."
Forrester Research echoes this point, saying that in the future the purpose of traditional campaigns will be to create awareness and to drive people to an interactive medium - ideally a website. And today, people's behaviour patterns reflect this: increasing numbers of people are online and watching TV at the same time.
Traditional marketers have not had to deal with the reality of a visible value chain, says Lourens. "Digital marketing has the potential to expose customer and potential customer behaviour as never before. Currently there is not enough understanding of what people are likely to do. The correct thinking in today's digital world is to ask: what do I want a customer or potential customer to do in response to my advertising? With today's digital marketing, marketers can check website visits and conversion rates and anticipate behaviour."
Importantly, Lourens stresses, marketing agencies should not try and build the digital competency themselves.
"We are not recommending that agencies build an internal digital competency. The starting point is for agencies to admit that they are not technology experts, and they don't have to be. Much as their clients have outsourced brand management to them, we recommend that agencies work with a digital technology specialist to achieve the ultimate digital objective. Conversely, digital experts should be collaborating with agencies, rather than threatening, competing with or tying to eliminate them."
"An unexpected bonus for these agencies will be the use of the same technology platform to manage internal brand development info structure; this in effect is allowing them to drive external customer effectiveness and internal efficiency off one platform."
Led globally by Google, online marketing is growing at 30-50% a year. This makes it far too big a channel for marketers to ignore or avoid, adds Lourens.
There are sceptics who note that the cost of bandwidth inhibits widespread interactive digital marketing, Lourens notes. "However, costs are dropping and will continue to do so, and within a few years digital marketing will be ubiquitous, so now is the time to begin building capacity and capability."
About Cambrient
Cambrient is a leading content management company in South Africa. Offering both services and software products, Cambrient is the most experienced local team in the industry, with almost 10 years' experience in the field.
The company has an extensive and excellent track record in servicing many small and large companies in the country - as well as some significant international customers.
Cambrient owns and manages its own software intellectual property, and has put in place a suite of products over the past five years which are regarded as world-class.
Its product suite includes a powerful content management system for large and medium organisations, as well as a business process management system, on which most of its large projects are based.
Services include a full spectrum of consulting services, project management, and website and Intranet development.
Cambrient believes in making a difference to the lives of end users, and its systems are designed with this in mind. Whether it's the software the company develops, or the advice it offers, Cambrient understands user needs when it comes to content management.
The business is 100% privately held, and is based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Contact
Kevin Lourens, Cambrient, (011) 807-8570, kevin@cambrient.com
Michelle Oelschig, Predictive Communications, (011) 608-1700, michelle@predictive.co.za
