What did we cover?

In this lesson we learnt about digital tools in more detail, and how they can support and enhance your marketing strategy with their strengths and weaknesses. We also looked at how digital hardware can be co-ordinated.

Strengths and Weaknesses for Some of the Digital Communication Mix

Live chat

Strengths:

• Oversea call centres now mean that we can overcome language barriers, and improve the customer experience
• Live chat enables 24-7 customer service to be available
• Often chat ‘handlers’ are able to multi-task and help 2-3 customers at once
• Chat bots allow you to send relevant and useful links to customers in need of information

Weaknesses:

• Software hitches or technical difficulties has potential to result in a bad customer experience if the line gets cut off

Video

Strengths:

• HubSpot found that 55% of people watch video content thoroughly, appose to skimming. As for blogs where it is more common for people to skim.
• YouTube is the second largest search engine, proving there is a high demand for video content
• Video is widely used for learning and entertainment, educational videos make great shareable content

Weaknesses:

• Costly and time consuming to create
• More bandwidth required
• People won’t always opt for video over text content if they are in an open area with others around them
  

Social media

Strengths:

• It’s Free!
• Humanises your brand and gives the opportunity to represent brand values and voice
• Most social media users will log into their account at least once a day, proving that people are regularly using these platforms

Weaknesses:

• Time consuming
• The Edelman Trust Barometer has revealed that media is the least trusted source of all markets
• Bad PR around social media such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal
  

Podcasts

Strengths:

• Helps to build relationships, your audience is listening because the content is relevant, and they are interested
• Content to build thought leadership perception
• Can be used as live content and then re-purposed as a downloadable offer afterwards

Weaknesses:

• File sizes are often large, which could make it hard for people who have a slow internet connection to access (an audio only podcast would save file size)
• Unlike a webinar or conference call, there is no way for your audience to interact, get involved and ask questions

Applications

Strengths:

• Apps are more than just social, they can be used for news, games, sports etc.
• Apps give brand an opportunity to provide their customers with an app that provide them with something of value, your app could help customers solve a particular issue, or be transactional
• More opportunity within apps if you integrate advertising onto the platform

Weaknesses:

• Mobile apps require on-going maintenance to solve any technical issues
• Expensive

Email

Strengths:

• Flexible design will help to convey branding
• Scalable, meaning you can reach you audience at a global level
• Thanks to marketing automation, we can save time by using automated emails

Weaknesses:

• Bounces and undelivered emails, there are lots of things that have an impact on whether your email will bounce or not (e.g. keywords, html, or out of date marketing lists)
• Resources and skills – it’s sometimes easier to outsource if you don’t have the right time or skills in-house as email campaigns often take a lot of preparation and content

How Does Digital Hardware Fit into Marketing?

Mobile/ handheld devices/ smart phones

Mobile devices are now used more often than desktops are for traditional browsing, and that’s why it’s important to adapt to this change and integrate marketing with mobiles. Mobile marketing interacts directly with the consumer and has great tracking benefits; Tracking is almost instantaneously and helps us to better understand user behaviour.

Wearables

This market is fairly new and has lots of potential, wearables are widely used and predicted to keep growing. Wearable devices provide marketers with more opportunity to give users a more personalised experience, geo-ads are an example of a personalised marketing approach.

Internet of things

The IoT will continue to grow as more and more devices will be connected via the internet. For marketers this means they can give a more tailored and relevant experience to the user that could be based on location, and demographics.

TV/ Radios/ Consoles

Marketers are now having to think about the direction that the world is going in, Netflix’s CEO has claimed that “broadcast TV will probably die by 2030”. Consumers now have more control and would rather pay to just watch the TV shows they want, when they want it, factors that businesses should acknowledge when considering commercial advertising.