The Great Debate: Digital Marketing vs The Letter Box DropI attended a Sydney Marketing function in June this year held by the popular Real Estate platform, RateMyAgent, and led by CEO, Mark Armstrong. His presentation was aimed at addressing the evolution of communication with an audience based on how quickly the commercial environment is changing today. This is both a relevant and tough debate, indeed!While this event was Real Estate specific, it is a topical discussion being held across every industry and every market around the world in all boardrooms and strategy meetings: digital vs traditional marketing.Where do we spend our precious budget to get the most cut through to engage our audiences and achieve our organisational goals?So, it’s finally time to analyse both sides and get to the bottom of this debate.Where Are Our Customers?Effective Marketing is all about your audience. This is never up for dispute as we all know it to be true. Knowing that, it may be time to take a step back and consider that age old question: have we thought about our customer?Recent research shows that 87% of consumers now search online for reviews to determine the quality of a local business, and I’m sure that statistic is pretty similar for how people are researching product information too. This is a big shift in behaviour from only a couple of years ago. Organisations didn’t start this- consumers did. We did. We, as people, changed the game, and organisations today are hugely naïve if they don’t think people are already doing most of their research before even contacting your business.As An ExampleMark Armstrong said his son needed an internet router for his house the other day, and at first, he had no clue what a router even was. In about ten minutes online, he become a pro with all of the brands, prices and specifications, then went straight into a local store, went to the shelf and purchased it without speaking to anyone in store.This is very indicative of the modern customer.The Digital InterviewToday, it’s all about ‘the digital interview’- in other words, searching online to find more information about a person or business without actually contacting them. Online dating, LinkedIn, Facebook, websites- it’s all about research before meeting in person. Around 70% of customers make up their mind before that stage, which is something businesses need to accept and adapt to.While statistics are always fickle, all you need to do is think about your own customer’s behaviour, and you instantly know this to be true. Hardly ever does a customer go in unprepared or uninformed.They’re All OnlineHow often do we go to a bar or a restaurant, and find everyone looking at a screen? It’s a sad reality, but a reality none the less. That is where your customer is! On their digital device.People aren’t looking for reviews and information in your physical office or in your marketing collateral – they are looking online. So, being there for your audience is absolutely crucial for your business success.
It’s all about your audience, after all.The Three Arguments: Digital vs Traditional MarketingThere are the three main considerations when deciding the pros and cons of new digital marketing versus more traditional methods, like the letter box drop or print.(1) Cost
(2) Effectiveness
(3) AccountabilityCOSTAs a general rule, more traditional methods tend to be far more costly in so many ways. It’s expensive to design, print and physically deliver materials like these. Now look at digital methods: it’s almost instant, requires little design due to templates, and the reach is not physically limited, meaning you can get ten times the exposure for around one-tenth of the cost.They seem to be light years apart on the cost front.For example, a client came to me recently and told me that the only advertising he was doing was on the back of local shopper dockets, which wasn’t giving him any tangible results, but was still costing him a few hundred dollars a month. For a fraction of this cost, I put his adverts onto Facebook and Google, and he immediately noticed the difference in leads generated!EFFECTIVENESSHow long do letterbox drops, print media and even mainstream advertising last?
Think about a letterbox specifically. The printed material sits in an office, then in a mail box all day. Then, when your audience gets home, are they truly engaged when they check their letterbox, stumbling in from work? They are coming home with the shopping, or wrangling the kids. This material has literally one second to capture them in amongst the rest of the clutter, and is so easy to ignore. That’s not to say it doesn’t occasionally work, but the chance of engagement is very low.Now, consider digital ads. It stays online for a much longer time, and due to the customisable nature of online targeting, it can pop up when the customer is more engaged and in the right headspace. It meets them on their terms, like when they are on their phone killing time, or browsing on a website, and so on. They can also interact with it by clicking on it, watching it, zooming in on it, saving it and much more.In comparison, think about when you hear a radio ad or see a TV ad: you have to remember and recall the advert at a later time for it to have any impact. This means your audience has to spend the effort to remember to act on it at a later time when it’s more relevant, such as when they get out of the car. Making this worse today is that we are constantly bombarded by ads and messages, which means that it’s very hard to keep one specific advert in your mind. You can’t rely on your customer recalling the message – you need to make it easy and at their fingertips.Digitally, your customer can fully interact at the very point they experience the piece of content, meaning engagement is far greater.ACCOUNTABILITYWhich technique truly works? What really has cut through and metrics to measure it? If you ask most organisations who spend budget yearly on letterbox drops, for example, they will say things like “$50,000 a year”, and then if you ask them “does this work?”, all they do is shrug their shoulders.The problem is, some businesses get into a rut of “it’s how we’ve always done it.” This represents a concerning shortfall in our perspective and our priorities. Our industries are too tough and our competitors too smart for us to be thinking this way anymore.On the digital marketing side, with retarget marketing and tracking cookies, online communication and adverts are able to serve up your communication to more defined and far better aligned demographics. Your adverts are more intelligent because they learn about the behaviour of your audience and adapt to how they consume content, then works out where and when to best display your marketing.The Three Battlegrounds of MarketingFrom the 1960ies, there has been an evolution of Marketing and communication battlegrounds based on how we built our customer database.(1) The Physical AddressOrganisations clambered to obtain the physical addresses of customers to communicate with them physically, either with a sales person, door knocking or letter box communications.(2) The Email AddressNext, emails went through an effective stage and businesses rushed to fill their databases with everyone’s @.com address. However today, we have found this to be far less effective do the quantity of spam everyone receives daily.(3) The Computer AddressPeople live on their mobiles and tablets now- this is where they are today. The battlefield has become exposure based on IP address online. Building a database of tracking cookies has become the Marketing battleground of today.While these IP addresses are kept private due to Privacy Laws and you never get the actual details, it doesn’t matter as you can rest assured that this technology is getting your message in front of the right people. Then tracking success comes from the metrics and analytics behind these interactions.
The core essence of Marketing hasn’t changed across any of the above battlegrounds: it’s always been about reaching your audience. The only thing that has changes is how- and this is a direct result from how the marketplace and consumer behaviour is evolving.What is it about Digital Marketing then?Digital Marketing is effective because it is customisable. It can target specific demographics to ensure that the best audience is getting your adverts and content at the right times.The following are three combined ways of how digital marketing finds your audience.(1) LocationGoogle tags computers with a geographical location. While letterbox drops can do the same, location is where the comparison ends. Digital is able to combine location with the following two qualifiers to ensure that your message is tailored, rather than mass distributed to just anyone.For example, in the Real Estate industry, around 70% of residences are investor controlled, which means letterbox drops are ineffective because the people receiving the materials are not the decision makers and therefore not finding themselves in the hands of the right people. Digital equivalents would use location and the following two to ensure it is being fed to the right customers.(2) Browsing HistoryIt is the fact above that allows digital marketing to take it one step further. The history of your browser paints a picture of the type of person your customer is and their interests, which means that adverts can be served up to match this. It’s not a perfectly accurate science, however due to the cost effectiveness of digital marketing, it has a far better cut through and success rate.(3) Remarketing and Tracking CookiesAs you move from website to website, tracking cookies embed themselves into your web browser to allow the content be catered specifically to you, so you are not receiving irrelevant messages. This allows advertising content to be shown to a relevant audience rather than just anyone.Where is Marketing Heading Next?Given that digital marketing is following around your ideal customer and delivering them relevant content, it seems to be working effectively at the moment. However, if I know Marketing the way I think I do, the next stage will be empathetic retarget marketing, which means showing the advert not just anywhere on any website, but when the person is browsing material that is contextually relevant.For example, when your customer, who has already been identified as interested in Real Estate, reaches a Real Estate or property website, the ad will be displayed, as opposed to how it is now, where it comes up on any website they may be looking at.It’s all about being in front of the right customer when they are in the right frame of mind.

Climbing the success ladder and standing atop the management hierarchy is every professional’s dream. If you are too a working professional, don’t you aspire to be one among the senior management one day? Don’t you want to be on the other side of the table – commanding, leading from the top, and setting an example for many to follow? It’s not easy definitely; getting there requires immaculate efforts, and of course, the requisite skills.One among such most vital skills is marketing. Does not sound very common when it comes to senior management roles, right? But yes, it’s a skill that’s highly valued by employers today across organisations. It is, in fact, one of the pivotal competencies of a strong senior manager. We, at Times TSW, will help you explore why and how marketing skills form an inevitable trait for senior management roles, in this article below.Marketing Skills Form the Core of the Senior Management’s ResponsibilitiesIf you thought that marketing is a task restricted to the creative marketing department of your organisation, it’s time to rethink. Competition in the corporate world has brought marketing competencies right to the lap of every employee therein. And, once you start working on augmenting them, you’d soon start treading the path of success.This is because managers must know how to promote their specific product/idea in the market amid cut-throat competition. For this, they need to polish some of the basic marketing competencies such as:Effective communication
Communication is the lifeblood of a team lead/manager. That’s common knowledge. But it shouldn’t just be restricted to interpersonal or in-house communication. Marketing is a type of professional communication that happens between organisations (B2B), as well as with potential and existing customers (B2C). If you exactly know how to market your service idea outside the four walls of your enterprise, you’d be doing immense good to the latter as well as to yourself.Out-of-the-box approaches
What’s the most impactful quality of a senior manager? Their ability to think out of the box for the most trivial or critical issues at hand; to offer creative solutions when needed. Marketing skills require you to develop analytical thinking towards project goals and requirements and present innovative ways to achieve them, both to your team as well as your customers.Keeping pace with technology
Technological changes have seeped into every phase of work functions today. You may be part of any domain in your organisation, be it IT, marketing, finance, HR, or any other, you do need to adapt yourself to fast-paced changes all along so as to surpass the competition.Moreover, you need to keep an eye open for cues all along. For instance, keep a check if the traditional means of advertising the project idea are failing to attain desired results? See if digital marketing is the new trend in the market that can put across your message more effectively? Figure out and work on your marketing strategies in accordance with changing technologies.Efficient collaboration
Marketing competencies also involve effective coordination with other departments of the organisation as you work on your product. This may require you to sit with the design team to prepare your product design/logo for promotion, or spending time with the research team to analyse consumer survey data.Since all of these activities form a part of marketing, it’s a good idea to have a working knowledge of all these essential skills so as to qualify for senior management roles.How Can Executive Education Help?Marketing is the backbone of any company today. Your product literally has no value until it’s promoted effectively in the market. And this is exactly why each department needs to possess marketing skills to stay in and beat the competition.To help the ambitious professionals of the 21st-century sharpen their marketing skills and make their way to the senior management roles, the prestigious IIM Kozhikode has introduced its Executive Post Graduate Certificate in Marketing Management (EPGCMM) programme. The one-year Interactive Learning course is aimed at providing specialised marketing management training to executives, helping them grow into senior management positions in their respective organisations. The Executive Post Graduate Certificate in Marketing Management (EPGCMM) programme can be attended in any of the Times TSW centres across India, and the sessions are delivered live via a technology platform by none other but the senior faculty from IIM Kozhikode. So come and join the EPGCMM programme to augment your marketing skills and rise as the best in the field.