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chapter 1

The New Ecosystem:

Building Momentum

MOMENTUM.

It’s the thrill of a roller coaster gaining speed.

It’s an unstoppable train barreling down the tracks.

And it’s what every marketer wants in a campaign.

Whether it’s a video going viral or a blog post going from one share to thousands in just a few days, when a marketing initiative has real momentum, it is nothing short of pure magic.

And just like magic, it seems impossible to re-create, impossible to develop using a strategic, systematic approach.

But I’m here to let you in on the magician’s secret: You can achieve that momentum yourself by following five simple principles—principles that will allow you to consistently deliver great results with your marketing.

Today, the digital landscape is constantly changing, and news travels at the speed of a tweet. But there is a way to cut through the noise and build that momentum for your own campaigns.

Want to know the secret?

First, let me ask you this.

What does digital marketing mean to you?

Posting on Facebook and Twitter a few times a week? Emailing a list of subscribers? Cranking out blog posts every few days? Tweaking your website to make it mobile responsive? Trying out the latest new social media platforms to find the trendiest ways of connecting with your audience?

Has digital marketing just added more items to your to-do list?

It doesn’t have to be this way. Effective digital marketing isn’t about embracing every new tool available to today’s marketer— it’s about turning your entire approach to marketing on its head.

» The Future Has Arrived

Imagine you’re going for a jog. You’ve got your trusty fitness band on, to help you keep track of all the miles you’re running and all the calories you’re burning. Maybe it’ll automatically post your route to Facebook in case your friends want to join you. Or maybe you can even tap it to your friends’ bands to compare data and start a little friendly competition.

Now imagine that you’re almost at the end of your jogging route, when suddenly, your fitness band shows you an offer for a free sports drink at a store nearby. All you have to do to redeem it is tap the link on your band at checkout. You’re hot, tired, and thirsty, and the drink is right there. It’s a no-brainer, right?

Next, another offer might pop up, encouraging you to share that same link—along with a picture of yourself, post-jog, sweaty and smiling with that sports drink—to your Facebook page; the link would provide a free drink to any of your Facebook friends who clicked on it. You’re not one to keep a good deal to yourself, or to miss out on a great opportunity to share, so of course you post the link and pic. “So happy my little 5-mile morning jog can help get my friends a free drink, too!” Score!

If you’re a jogger, you might think of this as an incredibly convenient way to rehydrate on the cheap right when you need it most and feel some serious appreciation toward the sports drink company for being so thoughtful and generous.

If you’re a marketer, you see this as the exciting new reality of building marketing momentum in the digital age.

Instead of blindly sticking millions of identical coupons in newspapers and mailers, hoping that a small percentage of them might land in the right hands and evoke a response, marketers can now target customers individually, at the time, in the place, and through the medium that will make them most likely to respond.

This is nothing less than a seismic shift.

The ability to tailor marketing not just to a certain region or a specific demographic, but to an individual—and not just to an individual, but to that individual in the optimal place, time, and way—has revolutionized the nature of marketing.

It’s not just the medium that’s changed here. It’s not even just the ability to customize marketing messages to individual customers. It’s the entire mindset behind marketing. The entire approach.

And this new approach is centered around the creation of real momentum in your marketing: meaningful momentum that helps you reach your goals.

Let’s take a closer look at how we got here.

» A History of Push Marketing

Marketing is not a new concept. If you’ve got something to sell, you’ve got to tell people about it, or no one will ever buy. And since competition isn’t new, either, you’ve also got to explain why customers should choose your product or service over everyone else’s.

Ancient marketplaces teemed with merchants crying their wares, each trying to outdo the others. Latin graffiti has even been found scrawled on a wall in Pompeii, advertising the fish sauce the doomed town was famous for: “Scaurus’s best garum, mackerel-based, from Scaurus’s manufacturers.”

When the printing press came onto the scene, print marketing was suddenly possible. Ads like the following from 1771 appeared in early American newspapers: “James Gardner, Carpenter and Joiner, begs Leave to inform the Publick that he has opened Shop behind the Church. All Gentlemen who please to favour him with their Orders may depend upon his Punctuality, and their Business being well executed. N.B. He makes Window Sashes, on reasonable Terms.”

As time went on, the advent of radio, and later TV, meant that marketing took on new layers of sophistication. Still, the approach remained the same: a business pushing its message out to people, hoping that message was appealing enough to compel them to buy.

There were definitely benefits to marketing as it existed by the late twentieth century. Businesses had complete control over their messaging—over the way they and their product were presented. Thanks to mass media’s mass audiences, they could reach large groups of people with a single ad. Marketing collateral could be put together quickly, because looking for customer input wasn’t a step in its development. And because of this freedom to create elaborate marketing campaigns without customer feedback affecting their direction, creative marketing really could—and often did—ascend to the status of art.

But when the internet went mainstream in the 1990s, all that began to change.

Suddenly, people had choices as to the marketing material they consumed. The information they had access to wasn’t limited to what they saw in the commercials that companies decided to push at them or to what they read in ads in magazines or newspapers or on billboards—they could now take the initiative themselves to go online and research that company, its products or services, and its reputation. As an audience, they were now divided into smaller segments; they were no longer watching the same show on TV as everyone else at the same time as everyone else, or reading the same paper as everyone else each day. Cable and home video recording, and later new technology like DVRs and streaming video, allowed consumers to watch whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Countless different websites provided information tailored to specific interests 24/7. Instead of being advertised to whether they liked it or not, customers now gained the ability to opt in to marketing, supplying their email addresses directly to companies because they wanted to see their messages. The consumer was now in control; the company, not so much.

Faced with this sudden transformation in customer behavior and expectations, marketers found their old methods just weren’t working as well anymore. Audiences that were now accustomed to choosing which ads they received came to see the old model of marketing as intrusive, pushy, and irrelevant to their unique interests.

» The Advent of Pull Marketing

In order to tailor their methods to fit this new trend, marketers developed pull marketing, an approach that harnesses the power of internet search engines and social media to draw people in to your site rather than to a competitors’.

Before the internet, potential customers had limited resources for deciding which business to purchase a product from. Ads created by the company and in-person visits or phone calls with salespeople were the only ways to learn more about that company’s offerings—and that content, which was “pushed” at the consumer, was all tightly controlled by the company itself.

Now, however, prospective customers were free to research companies and products on their own. One way they did this was via search engines—neutral third parties where a customer might end up reading the company’s page, or its competitor’s, or even a review site. Or consumers could find out what peers thought of certain companies or products through social media, which was (and is) even harder for companies to influence than a search engine: A friend might share an experience they’d had with a business, post a link to a blog post reviewing a product, or even just “like” a company’s post or page.

Given these new ways in which consumers were finding information, companies needed to draw customers in rather than disseminate information out; they needed to make sure the company was appearing as a top choice in online searches for the types of products or services they offered. They needed to employ pull marketing.

So how did marketers accomplish this? By learning more about their customers and target audiences. Research into the phrases people actually used to search for their products online led to ever more effective ways of funneling high-quality search engine traffic to their sites. Engagement with people on social media led to clearer insight into what interested their particular audience. By looking at which posts garnered clicks, likes, and comments, marketers could fine-tune their approach. Creating content based on that information gave companies the tools to more effectively attract traffic to their site, where they could then send the brand message they wanted to convey to consumers, versus contending with the various messages consumers might receive elsewhere.

Pull marketing basically put consumers in charge of marketing. They had the power to customize the way they wanted to be marketed to, and they wanted to be marketed to only by the companies they had invited to do so, using the medium they preferred. There was no going back. Successful marketers had to embrace this new normal and cater to this new consumer expectation of control.

One example is permission-based marketing. In its earliest days, email was still considered a venue for push marketing by many companies. Companies could buy lists of email addresses online and blast out their message to thousands of recipients who might never have heard of them before. Today those sales emails would be classified as spam. The flood of unsolicited emails eventually became such a problem that Congress took action, making unsolicited mass emails illegal. Asking website visitors to opt in to marketing emails was marketers’ response to the crackdown.

The benefits to pull marketing are clear. By engaging with the audience in a two-way, personalized conversation, rather than talking to them with a one-way, generic ad, companies can deliver their message in the most effective way possible—and by taking an active role in marketing, consumers get the information they actually want and need. This two-way conversation also means companies are able to take consumer responses into consideration when planning future campaigns, making their campaigns more and more effective. All the data companies gather from engaging the consumer makes it possible to target customers more specifically.

The key difference between the two approaches? Push marketing is all about the company. Pull marketing is all about the consumer.

» Beyond Push and Pull: An Integrated Ecosystem

So what’s the problem here? Why isn’t every company happily pursuing their inbound, pull marketing plans in this new digital landscape and reaping success after success?

Because of the difficulty of engaging today’s segmented audience.

This is not your mother’s internet. It’s not just a matter of websites and email anymore. Social media is a huge and vital but constantly changing force in pull marketing—and like your audience, it’s just about as segmented as you can get. There’s Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and everything in between—different social media platforms preferred by people with different interests from different demographics. When companies decide to make the shift from outbound, push marketing to inbound, pull marketing, they are often at a loss as to which platforms to use.

Beyond that, many companies struggle with integrating their digital marketing efforts with their traditional ones. Isn’t it too risky, they wonder, to scrap their old marketing tactics completely, and revamp their entire approach? So instead, they just add in bits and pieces of digital where they think it might fit into their traditional strategy, or even keep the two separate, so that a misstep in one arena doesn’t affect the other.

That’s not to say you should blindly jump into new marketing options—become active in a new channel or execute some new “best practice” tactic for the sake of staying current, only to exhaust yourself without any results to show for it. That’s an easy way to find your entire marketing program losing its focus.

Instead, the answer is to take a strategic approach to all the new opportunities out there: new social media platforms; new ways your prospects are willing to engage with you; new ways you can get your marketing messages out via your website, email marketing program, and more.

There is a way to keep pace with the rapidly evolving marketing world, see continuing positive results, and most important, do so while keeping your sanity.

The game of marketing is no longer about which digital marketing tool is the most effective. It’s not even just about push versus pull anymore. We are operating in an entirely new ecosystem, a digital paradigm in which ever-changing digital tools play a key role, but are not the sole drivers of success. While the novelty of the new marketing tools at our disposal can be captivating, it is important to remember the real goal: using those tools strategically, in a way that builds marketing momentum.

There are a number of key differences between the old model of marketing and the new ecosystem:

Old Paradigm: Fixed marketing

New Paradigm: Agile marketing

In the old model of marketing, campaigns were developed and then executed as planned, no matter what the response was during their run. Now, real-time analytics tracking during campaigns allows marketers to turn on a dime and shift gears instantly to avoid disaster or take advantage of new insights or opportunities.

Old Paradigm: Brand-led

New Paradigm: Customer-driven

Marketing messages used to be based on what a company wanted to convey about itself. Now they’re based on what a product or service allows customers to convey to others about themselves. And not only that—a modern marketer’s entire strategy is based on the information he gathers about his audience and is customized to fit their preferences.

Old Paradigm: Focuses on push versus pull marketing

New Paradigm: Integrates all marketing channels

Where once marketers would choose between various distinct options—outbound versus inbound, traditional versus digital—now, companies are strategically integrating their marketing methods and channels. Marketers have realized that integration yields a much higher ROI than any single method or medium could ever hope to.

Old Paradigm: Quantity dictates strategies

New Paradigm: Quality dictates strategies

In the old marketing paradigm, frequency of posting was the key to success; quality was secondary. Now, quality is the guiding principle for content, and determines its success in search and social media, as well as with its readers.

Old Paradigm: Branches out to whatever is new

New Paradigm: Utilizes relationships to grow

While it used to be common for businesses to jump on the bandwagon and try every new platform that gained some popularity, novelty does not equal effectiveness, and spreading marketing efforts too thin is never a good idea. Now, smart marketers understand that instead of branching out, looking within can be the key to success. Some of the most effective digital marketing strategies can come from collaboration and integration with partners, customers, and vendors.

Old Paradigm: Forces old metrics on new platforms

New Paradigm: Successfully decodes digital data points

Just as the marketing ecosystem has changed, so have the data points that determine success in the digital arena, and trying to force old push marketing metrics onto these new platforms is just setting yourself up for failure. Understanding how these new digital metrics affect overall goals is a vital part of the new model of marketing.

Old Paradigm: Uses digital marketing

New Paradigm: Embraces digital mindset

Using digital marketing means including digital marketing activities as part of a marketing strategy. Embracing a digital mindset means rethinking your entire approach to marketing. Doing so can mean major change—but it’s the only way to find success in this new ecosystem.

The old marketing model focused on choosing and pursuing just one marketing methodology—traditional or digital, inbound or outbound, push or pull. But in today’s world, where the line between the two is quickly blurring, that forced choice is one that no longer makes sense. Marketers embracing the new ecosystem recognize that, rather than choosing between options, we have to integrate them strategically.

Take event marketing, a very traditional marketing method. You invite prospects and customers to your event and hand them swag bags full of marketing messaging—a very “push” approach. But today, throughout the event, those attendees are also active on social media, using your event hashtag on Twitter and other platforms, interacting with other attendees and hopefully your marketing team—a very “pull” approach, as it relies on the willingness of those customers to engage with your message online.

Your traditional event marketing channel also is no longer limited to just reaching attendees. Simply by collecting some materials from presenters and setting up cameras, you can now have a virtual, digital audience that is downloading speakers’ slide decks, watching live streams of event presentations, and engaging with attendees via social media in real time. What was once a marketing campaign restricted to a single physical space is now a marketing campaign that is global.

Some companies are even taking event marketing completely digital. SafetyLine is a Canadian SaaS, or Software as a Service, that offers a safety monitoring solution for people who work alone. It ran a campaign in which it threw an online “launch party” for its new website. The digital event mimicked a more traditional in-person event, with presentations in the form of webinars, and even provided attendees with “virtual swag bags” with coupons and e-book downloads.

One caveat in this new ecosystem is making sure you aren’t running a campaign just because it’s new or different, but rather because that campaign is the best way to meet the particular goal at hand. In SafetyLine’s case, a fully digital event marketing effort made more sense than a physical event, because the main goal of the campaign was to get its email subscriber list to reconnect with the company and take the steps necessary for SafetyLine to become compliant with Canada’s new anti-spam law. It just happened that the team decided a fun new marketing tactic would be the best way to achieve that goal.

Organizations that follow the old paradigm of marketing let tools dictate their campaigns and strategies. Often, they ask, “What can we do with this new tool?” when they should be asking, “Can this new tool help us with our existing business goals and strategies?”

SafetyLine’s marketing team realized that a new tool—the ability to host a virtual event marketing campaign with elements that approximated an in-person event—could help it achieve a very specific goal. Voilá! Integrated, strategic digital marketing—a poster child for marketing in the new ecosystem.

» How Your Company Can Embrace the New Ecosystem, Too

In this book, I’ll be introducing the five essential principles to building marketing momentum in the digital age: agility, customer focus, integration, content curation, and cross-pollination.

Here’s what to expect from each chapter:

Chapter 2: 1st Principle of Momentum: Agility Through Analytics—Far from the static marketing campaigns of the past, the new ecosystem demands agile marketing based on analytics. This chapter will show you how to lay the groundwork for agility, introduce the most helpful analytics tools, and demonstrate exactly how to tweak your marketing strategy to drive results.

Chapter 3: 2nd Principle of Momentum: Customer Focus—The new marketing ecosystem is completely customer-driven, from its reliance on customer engagement and feedback to its focus on customization. But perhaps most importantly, the most successful digital marketing today enables consumer self-expression. This chapter will show you how to craft your marketing strategy to attract your ideal customers and make them into fans for life.

Chapter 4: 3rd Principle of Momentum: Integration— Marketing today no longer occurs via individual, siloed media. Rather, customers interact with you simultaneously via multiple channels, both physical and digital. This chapter will discuss ways to merge your strategies for individual channels into one cohesive whole.

Chapter 5: 4th Principle of Momentum: Content Curation—The old model of marketing demanded content in high quantities. The new model focuses on quality and smart content curation—filtering the content you share through your unique brand. This chapter will show you how to become a pro at attracting visitors—and ultimately, customers—with your approach to content.

Chapter 6: 5th Principle of Momentum: Cross-Pollination—Every resource you have can be harnessed to give your marketing more momentum, and this chapter will show you how. From leveraging relationships with employees, vendors, and partners, to integrating every aspect of your business under the marketing umbrella, you’ll learn how to move from scattered to strategic in your use of the assets available to you.

The final chapter, Chapter 7: Measuring Marketing ROI in the Digital Age, will focus on how to measure marketing ROI in this new ecosystem. In today’s multi-touch marketing world, are you mistaking the final touch point as the only point of conversion? You have to make sure that you are considering the multi-faceted nature of today’s marketing as you measure ROI.

Making the change from the old model of marketing to the new ecosystem of momentum doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, as you make the transition, you’ll see right away how much easier it is to handle than the old model, with its constant push for more content and more posts on more social media platforms. So take a deep breath, let go of your current notions of marketing, and let’s dive into the new reality of digital marketing together.