In the age of innovative digital marketing and viral content, how do you make sure that your online strategy serves its purpose?

Picture this. You’re running a business; it doesn’t matter whether it’s a small brick and mortar family establishment or a well-known brand with multiple branches and franchisees to carry forward your brand legacy. Either way, ‘Marketing’ is a word you would often find yourself repeating; and given how innovation drives every aspect of business today across the board, there is no dearth of marketing tools to help further your cause. 

As much as we all know how important marketing is to sell a product or to establish a brand identity, we must also understand the importance of answering these few questions before engaging in any sort of marketing plan or strategy, primarily in the digital arena. Of course, we do live in exciting times where digital marketing presents us with a multitude of tools that assure a wider reach than traditional modes of marketing ever could, and at the same time, providing us with the data and analytics to make better sense of the kind of audience we’ve reached out to. Now, that takes care of the ‘how to market’ part of the entire equation. But what many companies fail to realize is that there are a few other salient points to be considered before engaging in the ‘how’. 

Take a moment to consider this:

1. What am I marketing for? Is it to sell a product? Is it to establish the brand? Is it to promote an event? Sometimes you may have a very creative ad that may not say much. This could ensure better reach, but what is the ROI here? What is the ad trying to achieve? Brand building? Which of your products did it sell? 

One simple rule to consider: When marketing, always remember Newton’s Third Law. Whatever you put out there, it has to result in some sort of a reaction. 

2. Who am I marketing to? Is the target audience I am reaching out to valid for my business? Sure, a great social media post could reach over a thousand people, but are these people likely to engage with the brand or buy the product? 

For example, it makes no sense in marketing a premium brand of automobiles to adolescents because your return on that marketing investment would stand to yield little or absolutely no results. 

3. Why do I need to use a particular digital marketing tool or portal? Of course, almost all digital marketing tools promise fantastic reach and excellent analytics as well as the high chance of ‘going viral’. 

4. Where am I marketing? Which medium do I use to derive maximum results? What most businesses tend to do is spread themselves thin across all platforms hoping they would get noticed and that being present across all these would ensure them visibility. Again, once you have the answer to the first three W’s in the list, this should make answering the last W a lot easier. 

Accidental Marketing: The ‘What’ and ‘How’

Then there is a completely different scenario now popularly referred to as Accidental Marketing. That can be defined as some sort of jackpot that anyone posting online could experience. In the case of accidental marketing, what happens is that a certain online content or post on social media could get shared and re-shared multiple times to ultimately go viral. People all over get curious about your content, they would be talking about your content and sometimes it becomes so much of a phenomenon that traditional news portals pick up on the news. Now imagine yourself to be a brand or business that has just had a stroke of accidental marketing luck online! Sure, you’ve got the spotlight on you. Would you and how would you leverage all that attention? Here are two examples of what two different brands did when their online content went viral. 

Many of you may have seen a certain post on Tumblr that went viral a while ago. Users were asked to look at the picture of a dual-coloured dress and reply whether they saw the colours as White and Gold or Blue and Black. The whole internet was divided and the post went viral. Unfortunately, the original post did not mention that the dress was by a brand called Roman Originals, something that would have got the name of the brand out there quicker than any marketing plan or campaign could have. But the brand decided to respond quickly and aligned themselves as the creators of the dress. They took out a social media campaign, rand advertisements and linked it to their website while hosting a competition for users to take a shot at winning the dress. This is a great example of where a brand made use of a case of ‘Accidental Marketing’ to their benefit. 

At the same time, to promote the release of the last Baywatch movie, a swimsuit company called Sunny Co. Clothing announced a promotion on their instagram page for their latest Baywatch-themed swimsuit called The Pamela. The promotion stated that the company would be giving away a pair of ‘The Pamela’ worth $65 to every user who reposted their promotional post along with tagging the brand when they did in the next 24 hours. What the company did not expect was for the post to go viral, being shared over 3000 times, ultimately ending up in a massive PR disaster for the company because they didn’t have enough stock to give away to everyone who shared the post. In spirit, the campaign was quite innovative and was bound to have worked really well, but the company was not prepared for a situation where it became ‘too much of a success’ or maybe they under-estimated the whole concept of ‘going viral’.

A marriage of Analytics and Creativity 

The truth is, most companies treat digital marketing as a game of numbers and are still playing it as a shot in the dark. When we have access to powerful tools that can relay back information, a business which knows how to use these tools well and purposefully will be able to garner positive results. Recalling the whole “15 minutes of fame” idea as expressed by Andy Warhol a few decades ago, we are now living in an age where anybody and everybody are entitled to their fifteen minutes of fame just because of some sort of online post or content that could be anything which resonates with people on an emotional basis or just for being incredibly ludicrous or silly. In this time where there is a lot of white noise going on in the digital arena, it is essential to use both your creative and analytical faculties while considering your digital marketing strategy.

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