E-Marketing Communication: Owned Media

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)

  • IMC is a cross-functional process for planning, executing, and monitoring brand communications.
  • The goal is to profitably acquire, retain, and grow customers.
  • IMC is cross-functional because every touchpoint a customer has with a firm or its agents helps to form brand images.
  • Profitable customer relationships are key to a firm's existence.
  • IMC strategy begins with a thorough understanding of target markets, the brand, its competition, and other internal and external factors.

IMC Goals and Strategies

  • AIDA model: "awareness, interest, desire & action"
  • Hierarchy of Effects Model: "think, feel, do"
    • Awareness (Cognitive Phase)
    • Interest
    • Desire (Affective Phase)
    • Action (Behavioral Phase)
  • Build brand equity.
  • Formulate a direct response

Traditional Marketing Communication Tools

  • The five key marketing communication tools (promotion mix):
    • Advertising
    • Public relations
    • Sales promotion
    • Direct marketing
    • Personal selling
  • IMC is often discussed in terms of senders and recipients, media type, and owned, paid, and earned media.

Advertising

  • Advertising is "any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor"
  • Social Media examples: Paid message placed in a YouTube video, Facebook or LinkedIn; Ad sponsored content delivered to mobile phones.

Public Relations

  • Public relations involves “building good relations with the company's various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good "corporate image" and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories and events"
  • Social Media examples: Company-created multimedia content (e.g. online videos, blogs, wikis, photos…); Social media press releases; Social media events; Social media apps for mobile phones.

Sales Promotion

  • Sales Promotion consists of "short-term incentives to encourage the immediate purchase or sale of a product or service"

Direct Marketing

  • Direct Marketing is: "an interactive process of addressable communication that uses one or more advertising media to effect, at any location, a measurable sale, lead, retail purchase or charitable donation, with this activity analyzed on a database for the development of ongoing mutually beneficial relationships between marketers and customers, prospects or donors."

Personal Selling

  • Personal Selling is "personal interactions between customer's and the firm's sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships"

Owned, Paid, and Earned Media

  • Communication media are communication channels used to disseminate information, entertainment, and promotional messages.

Owned Media

  • Corporate website, campaign microsite, blog, brand community, Facebook fan page, mobile, etc.
  • Owned media carry communication messages from the organization to internet users on owned channels, at least partially controlled by the company.

Paid Media

  • Traditional advertising - news, print, television, radio, display, direct mail, paid search, retail/channel.
  • Paid media are properties owned by others who are paid by the organization to carry promotional messages. The company controls the content; However, the media have content and technical requirements to which the advertisers must adhere.

Earned Media

  • Word of mouth, Facebook comments, Twitter (@mentions, @replies), Vine, Blogs, forums, review sites
  • Earned media are when individual conversations become the channel. Also called User Generated media (UGM) or User Generated Content (UGC).
  • Social media blend technology and social interactions for co-creation of content and value.

Examples of Owned Media

  • Company Website
  • Blog
  • Support forum/community
  • Podcast
  • E-mail, text messaging
  • Online event
  • Sales promotion offers
  • Virtual world
  • Online games
  • Gifting
  • Branded mobile apps
  • QR codes
  • Location-based marketing
  • Social network, microblog
  • SEO – natural/organic

Examples of Paid Media

  • Display ads
  • Sponsorships
  • Classified ads
  • Product placement
  • Social media ads
  • Mobile ads
  • SEO: Paid search

Examples of Earned Media

  • Digital coverage from traditional media
  • Viral marketing
  • Wikis
  • Ratings and reviews
  • Social recommendations
  • E-mail
  • Social site discussion
  • Community discussion
  • Widgets & social apps
  • Location-based services
  • Collaborative content

Owned Media

  • Includes e-marketing media channels that are fully or partially controlled by the organizations allowing them to produce and control the majority of the multimedia content.
  • Primary goals are to:
    • Engage consumers with positive brand content.
    • Entice them to pass along content to others.
    • Exercise CRM (customer relationship management).

Content Marketing

  • Content marketing is a strategy involving creating and publishing content offline and online on Websites and in social media.
  • As a result, digital content functions as inbound marketing to attract customers and prospects, with appropriate content available when and where users seek information.
  • All owned media can be considered content marketing.

Website

  • Marketing Public Relations (MPR) includes brand-related activities and nonpaid, third-party media coverage to positively influence target markets.
  • MPR is the portion of PR directed to the firm’s customer and prospects in order to build awareness and positive attitudes about its brands.
  • Every organization, company, individual, or brand Website is an MPR tool because it serves primarily as an electronic brochure, including current product and company information.

Website Landing Pages

  • Landing pages are closely related to Microsites because they are often stand-alone Web pages.
  • A landing page is a unique page that appears after a user clicks on a link associated with a Website.
  • Companies create many different landing pages that match key words, current offers, ads, and more.

Mobile Site

  • The rapid growth of mobile internet access has marketers scrambling to create mobile versions of their Web sites. Mobile Sites are:
    • Quicker to download
    • Simpler
    • Focused on the key content

Website Chat

  • Some companies provide real-time sales assistance online.
  • Many companies offer a live chat feature.
  • Users can open it and ask questions about products in a real-time chat with a customer service representative.
  • The rep can also push Web pages directly to the customer so he/she can view the product and take the order during the chat session.

Blogs

  • Blogs (from the term Web logs) are Web sites where entries are listed in reverse chronological order and readers can comment on any entry.
  • Objective of Blogs id to disseminate views, attract site visitors, engage in conversations, and support expert standing

Support Forums/Communities

  • Companies create spaces for consumers, prospects, and business customers to:
    • Discuss topics of interest,
    • Provide new product ideas or
    • Seek company support with technical or product issues, among other goals.
  • For success, marketers should observe, recruit, evaluate platforms, engage, measure, promote, and improve their online communities.

Podcasts

  • A podcast is a digital media file available for download online to computers, music players, tablets or smartphones.
  • Podcasts began with purely audio files for the iPod and other MP3 players
  • Now users can download video podcasts ("vidcasts" or "videocasts") for use on many types of receiving appliances.
  • The aim of Podcasts is to support brand-building

E-Mail

  • E-mail remains the most important communication technique for building customer relationships.
  • 75.4% of marketers invest in e-mail campaigns.
  • E-mail has advantages over postal direct mail:
    • No postage or printing charges.
    • Immediate and convenient avenue for direct response using hyperlinks.
    • Can be automatically individualized and is quicker

Permission Marketing: Opt-in, Opt-out

  • Opt-in: users have voluntarily given permission to receive commercial e-mail
  • Marketers messages to opt-in lists can generate response rates of up to 90%, because these are interested users.
  • Opt-out is when users have to uncheck the box on a web page to prevent being put on the e-mail list.
  • Opt-in techniques are part of a bigger marketing strategy called permission marketing or "turning strangers into customers."
  • Permission marketing: an opt-in form of marketing in which advertisers present marketing communication messages to consumers who agree to receive them.

Rules for Successful E-Mail Marketing

  • Use opt-in to build trust
  • Check ISP filters to ensure e-mail reputation
  • Use professional email addresses
  • Make it easy to unsubscribe
  • Use micro-segmentation
  • Small improvements can raise response rates
  • Give recipients a plenty of opportunities to engage with the email
  • Use metrics to track success

Spam

  • No online users like to receive unsolicited email.
  • Now illegal due to the CAN-SPAM Act
  • Spammers routinely harvest e-mail addresses from o Newsgroup postings and Universities and colleges.

Privacy

  • Databases drive e-mail marketing
  • Firms must collect personal information both online and offline
  • Firms must use information to provide value and not share without permission
  • Users don't mind their behaviors being tracked if they are for specific purposes

Text Messaging

  • Short Message Services (SMS) are up to 160 characters of text sent over the Internet usually with a cell phone or smartphone (Twitter).
  • Instant Messaging are short messages sent among users who are online at the same time
  • Multimedia message service (MMS) is not commonly in use yet because of handheld capability

Online Event

  • Designed to generate user interest, build traffic, or generate revenue with paid admission.
  • May include:
    • Online fashion shows,
    • Seminars (Webinars),
    • Workshops
    • Online discussions

Sales Promotion Offers

  • Sales promotions are short-term incentives of gifts or money that facilitate the movement of products from producer to end-user.
  • Online sales promotions can build brands, databases, and support sales.
  • Most do not build long term customer relationships.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  • SEO Is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a Web or social media site by ensuring that either:
    • the site name and links appear high on a search engine results page for appropriate key words; or
    • ads on search engine sites get a high click-through
  • This reflects two type of SEO:
    • Natural Search (Organic Search)
    • Paid Search

Owned Media Performance Metrics

  • Marketers use Web analytics for company-owned Websites and blogs such as number of unique visitors, time on each page, or conversion to sales.
  • For owned media, sales promotions, and direct marketing, there are also appropriate metrics.

Owned Media Performance Metrics, Cont.

  • Podcasts: number of downloads and length of time listening.
  • Online events: number of questions asked…
  • Virtual World: number visiting the company property…
  • Online games: number playing….
  • Branded mobile apps: number of downloads, updates and actions.
  • QR Codes: number of scans and actions taken at the site destination..
  • Web landing pages: exit rate, click-through rate…

Sales Promotion Metrics

  • Marketers need to know how their sales promotions contribute to the overall communication goals.
  • By measuring how customers use and link from their promotions, e-marketers can measure what is working most efficiently.

Direct Marketing Metrics

  • Response rate and ROI are the most appropriate metrics for any direct marketing campaign.
  • Many firms use direct tactics to build databases and measure success in terms of customer information growth.