I continually come across people who are adverse to digital marketing! Or more the point, don’t understand the area so pretend its unimportant or not beneficial to business development or marketing strategy, this is especially the case when I mention social media or YouTube! Bit too childs play! but there is no point in putting your head in the sand when it comes to advances in technology, I know your CD collection did look good and you could see what your CD’s had at a glance blah blah blah! but now you own an iPod don’t you? All your music in your pocket, organised in any number of ways! and I bet you even tell your friends about how good it is! You know who you are! I like the feel and smell of a book as well but sorry! They’re next to go!

My point is that people consume mass media in many different ways, so the emphasis should be on content not the platform or device, although you should reach out to as many platforms and devices as possible. Whether it be your YouTube viewing or Facebook account most have an accompanying app on the phone, pad, games console, tv etc, this was just the beginning of the trend, even the most avid newspaper readers are beginning to obtain their news over an iPad, kindle, Samsung Galexy, Blackberry Playbook etc. In order to push marketing messages to our customers we need to be aware of major shifts in media consumption. Unfortunately for some of us this means learning about platforms we don’t yet understand. By identifying or creating good content that relates to our brand or product we start to see where our clients might be. All too often, the only thing someone hears when I talk on the subject is facebook or twitter and then immediately become disinterested, I am talking about a platform, it could be anything and will almost certainly be different for every industry. The major point in the social media arena is that the target has already profiled themselves, they have given you the vitals, there hobbies and interest, where they’ve been on holiday. Yes I did mention social media, sorry, I know a good portion of my readers are now thinking how does that fit into B2B? Linkedin is social media! You can can spend hours and pennies going to conferences, events networking but you also can quickly search a self generated database where employees have already stated who they work for, what their title is and what they do for the company. I agree there’s nothing better than a face to face and that’s where you make sales but in a world where we are continually improving efficiency to save time, we all manage to fill that void with something else and the fact remains that many of us don’t have the time to leave the office.

So lets make this as simple as possible and lets start at the beginning as so many people are attacking the wrong link in the chain. Here’s a short case study, not from an online store, that’s too easy! This is a case study from a job I did for a auto locksmith start up. Firstly ask yourself where are your customers? what are they doing at the time the need your product? what are their needs? A friend of mine had set up as an autolocksmith, his customers were identified as one off users of the service that often would be in an emergency situation, locked out of their car, away from home, lost keys etc. Having this information not only answered a lot of Digital Marketing questions but also design questions enabling them to channel the spend where it would be most effective. The service needed to be found quickly and on the platforms people would turn to when they needed this type of service. For the short term marketing strategy PPC campaigns were essential, the ad needed to be displayed on the first page of search engines, there was a high probability customers would be on a mobile device so the website need to load fast and display the information needed to make contact as well as the services offered. Directories would be important and test were made to see which, if any would produce a return on investment.

Ok, point made, a marketing strategy where I didn’t suggest a facebook page or any form of social media and I might add, one where offline marketing methods such as a yellow pages ad brought in no extra business.