[Principles 1-10] Digital Marketing: 10 Principles for Success (Digest)

This series commemorates the release of Dentsu Digital Inc.'s book, "10 Essential Rules for Digital Marketing Success: Easy-to-Understand Mechanisms for Creating Lasting Sales, Taught by Dentsu Digital Inc.'s Top Marketers. "How did you find the full 10-part series so far?

For this final installment,we'll revisit and overview the "10 Essential Principles"introduced in the book.

 

In digital marketing, one strategy leads to the next, spreading like ripples to generate further actions. Ultimately, the interconnectedness of all these strategies drives significant results. Therefore, it's crucial to start with the fundamental principles that represent the best move for your company's current situation. We hope this series has served as a catalyst for marketing and advertising professionals at companies facing various challenges to take that first step into digital marketing.

【Table of Contents】
▼Strategy 1: Start by Understanding the Customer Journey to Transform Marketing from the Customer Touchpoint
▼Strategy 2: Start by strengthening owned media to maintain constant interaction with consumers
▼Strategy 3: Start by launching an e-commerce site to convert previously untapped consumers into customers
▼Principle 4: Start by setting Key Goal Indicators (KGI) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to structure your marketing activities
▼Principle 5: Start by leveraging social media to deepen customer understanding and expand your fan base
▼Key Principle 6: Start with content marketing to strengthen inbound efforts
▼Key Strategy 7: Start by implementing a DMP to efficiently analyze and utilize data
▼Key Strategy 8: Start by implementing marketing automation to improve sales efficiency
▼Rule 9: Start with customer ID integration to build strong customer relationships
▼Key Strategy 10: Start with MROI Analysis to Improve Marketing Investment Efficiency

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Key Principle 1: Start by understanding the customer journey to transform marketing from the customer touchpoint perspective

This is a key principle for companies shifting from a product manufacturing perspective to a service provider perspective. For companies with diverse customer touchpoints or service businesses where touchpoint quality varies, it serves as an effective starting point for digital marketing.

First, understand the customer journey: the process where consumers feel a need, develop interest in a product or service, make a purchase, continue buying, or share feedback. Identify your brand's touchpoints with consumers within this journey. Then, assess whether consumers are satisfied at each touchpoint and whether these points function as intended, starting improvements at critical touchpoints＊1.

Customer touchpoints include both digital and non-digital elements.For example, if a prospective customer visits your website to run a price simulation and then visits a physical store to try the actual product, the product prepared for trial at the store should be the same model simulated online. Optimizing the relationship between such touchpoints using digital technology is the classic approach to digital marketing.

 

Principle 2: Start by strengthening owned media to maintain constant interaction with consumers

This is a fundamental principle for shifting marketing communication from campaign-centric to continuous initiative-centric.

Among the many touchpoints between consumers and companies,the corporate website (homepage) is the only channelconsumers can access anytime,at their convenience. Contact centers have operating hours, and physical stores aren't always nearby. The digital era gave companies their first window to serve consumers anytime. Strengthening this channel is an effective starting point for digital marketing.

By establishing your own website and providing necessary information when customers are unsure how to use a product or suspect a malfunction, you can maintain customer relationships regardless of time or place. Simultaneously, this reduces the load on contact centers requiring human intervention.When implementingdigital advertising or SEM(Search Engine Marketing), direct visitors arriving through these channels to relevant content on your owned media. This allows you to precisely address what consumers want to know.

Furthermore, proactivelyestablishing amediaplatform(website) online togatherand distributeinformation related to your business operationsallows you to efficiently collect and provide information to consumers. For example, if a seasoning manufacturer operates a recipe site soliciting and publishing consumer-submitted recipes, that site can serve as a consumer survey tool to track popular recipe trends. Submitted recipes can provide hints for new product development, while published recipes can also be leveraged for sales promotion to site visitors.

 

Strategy 3:Start by launching an e-commerce siteto reach previously untapped consumers

This is a standard strategy for reaching consumers previously inaccessible through existing sales channels and expanding your market. For example, a company primarily operating physical storescan use an e-commercesiteto reach consumers geographically distant from its existing locations.B2B companiescan leveragee-commerce sitesto enter B2C businesses. Companies operating domesticallycan use e-commerce sites as a springboard to target global markets.

Market expansion also creates opportunities to focus on your company's strengths and achieve overwhelming differentiation in that field.Companies specializing inchopsticks, tenugui towels, or Japanese tablewareare expanding their sales channels globally through e-commerce. Similarly, companies specializing in custom-made accessories using rare materials are establishing viable businesses. This is because e-commerce sites provide a channel to reach consumers without being constrained by physical location.

 

Principle 4:Begin with KGI andKPI Settingto Structure Marketing Activities

This principle transforms marketing activities from a series of isolated initiatives into a structured collaboration of measures designed to achieve marketing objectives.

Marketing activities are composed of various combined efforts.KGIstands forKey Goal Indicator,and KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator.Closely linking KGI and KPI as means to an end drives digital marketing success＊2.

Supposenew customeracquisition is set as the KGI. To obtain a list of new prospects, you run search ads and banner ads to drive traffic to your company's content. Then, when materials are downloaded, you capture phone numbers or contact details and make outbound calls (calls initiated by the company or call center). In this case,the KPI forsearch ads and banner adsshould be set toconversion count, notcost per click ( CPC ).The KPI forcontent marketing activitiesshould be setto document download count, not bounce rate. The KPI foroutbound callsshould be set to conversion count, not contact rate.If theoutbound callKPI were set to contact rate, it would increase consumer contact but would be less likely to lead to the overall goal of increasing new customer acquisition.

 

Principle 5:Start with Social Media to DeepenCustomer Understanding and Expand Your Fan Base

This principle shifts the method of understanding customers from asking questions to listening attentively, and transforms the driving force for expanding the fan base from corporate power to the power of fans themselves.

Consumers express their natural opinions and evaluations when they speak up spontaneously, not when answering questions.Since social media reflects consumers' natural expressions, listening to these voices is an effective information gathering method. Furthermore, fans know the strengths of your brand best. Fans discover the brand's strengths and excellent aspects in their daily lives. Sometimes, they point out problems or areas needing improvement. They also uncover clever uses the company might not notice. When fan voices reach others, they remind people of the brand, prompt purchases, or offer new perspectives. Fan voices are a treasure trove for turning non-fans' heads and changing thoughts or actions.

In the past, conveying these fan voices to others required conducting surveys among fans and selecting a few voices to share through advertising. The voices that could be shared were limited, and it was costly and time-consuming. However,today we can leverage social media and other platforms.If a company manages its social media accounts effectively,a post like"The beer I drank during cherry blossom viewing this season was delicious"can reach many people within a day, driving beer consumption during the cherry blossom viewing season.

 

Principle 6: Start with Content Marketing to Strengthen Inbound

This principle involves shifting from company-driven outreach to consumers toward a model where consumers find the company when they need it.

Marketing activities can be divided into outbound marketing and inbound marketing. Outbound marketing focuses on activities where the company reaches out to consumers, such as phone calls to prospects and various advertisements＊3. In contrast, inbound marketing refers to a marketing strategy centered on activities that attract prospects to stores or owned media. In the digital age, the emergence of search engines and social media has made it easier for consumers to find companies themselves. When consumers want to know something or encounter a problem, they immediately turn to search engines for answers.

For an automotive parts retailer,the goal is forpeople needing tires or aerodynamic partsto visit their company website or official social media accountswhile gathering information. Even if they don't purchase immediately, continued visits increase the likelihood they will become customers in the future. To achieve this, appropriate content must be prepared consistently and systematically.

 

Standard Practice 7:Start with DMP Implementationto Efficiently Analyze and Utilize Data

This principle involves using data to understand your customers' characteristics, analyze the effectiveness of your initiatives, and apply those insights to future strategies.

By accumulating and analyzing your own customer data in a private DMP,you can uncover insights such as:which genders and age groups make up the majority of your customers; what products or services customers with highLifetime Value ( LTV ) tend to use; and what triggers the start of continued product or service usage. For example, if you discover that customers who purchase large-capacity products in addition to standard-capacity products tend to continue purchasing your products over the long term, strengthening sales promotions for large-capacity products to your existing customer base becomes a strong strategic option.

Furthermore,insights uncovered through a private DMP can be leveraged to engage consumers most likely to become high-value customers.This is achieved by utilizingexternal DMPs(public DMPs) to identify consumers with characteristics similar to your company's high-value customers and send them targeted messages.

 

Principle 8: Start with Marketing Automation to Improve Sales Efficiency

This is a fundamental strategy for transforming sales activities into a scientific and efficient process.

Personal selling is a crucial element of marketing. Historically, this area has relied heavily on individual skills.Forcompanies engaged inB2Bsalesor those where personal selling carries significant weight in their marketing activities, introducing systems and advancing data utilization in this domain can enhance both marketing effectiveness and efficiency.

Marketing Automation ( MA ) systems support the process from discovering prospects to increasing their purchase intent. They provide functionality to hand off prospects to the sales department when the system determines they are close to making a purchase. Estimating a prospect's interests based on the content they've read and predicting their readiness to buy using data are areas where systems excel.

 

Strategy 9:Begin withCustomer IDIntegrationto Build Strong Customer Relationships

This is a key strategy for shifting from selling new products to new customers to driving repeat purchases of existing products from current customers.

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To expand business with existing customers, it is an effective strategy for companies to value consumers they have had contact with in the past, particularly maintaining and expanding their base of high-value customers.

To achieve this,customer IDs mustfirstbe integrated. If a single customer is registered separately for different product or service areas, precise marketing initiatives cannot be executed. For example, a company operating both a hobby-related magazine business and a seminar business might seem to effectively promote seminars to magazine subscribers and magazines to seminar attendees. However, if many customers use both magazines and seminars, this approach is not only completely ineffective but could also risk angering customers. This situation would not occur if customer data for both businesses were not managed separately and customer IDs were consolidated into a single system.

 

Principle 10:Start with MROI Analysisto Enhance Marketing Investment Efficiency

ROIstands for Return On Investment .MROIis Marketing ROI. This is a fundamental principle to help companies conducting various marketing activities shift from operating based on past inertia to making data-driven decisions about the effectiveness of their initiatives.

When embarking on digital marketing,budgets can become fragmented across numerous initiatives likedigital advertising, SEM , content marketing, and video production. Marketing investments also spread across multiple brands and regions. As initiatives continue over time, investment becomes dispersed temporally as well. So, where should investments be directed—which initiatives, brands, regions, or time periods? Evaluating marketing activities from an ROI perspective to improve investment efficiency is a natural starting point for digital marketing, where abundant data is readily available.

 

(References)

1. Kato, Nozomi. e Customer Journey: A Comprehensive Guide to New Marketing Techniques for Becoming a "Chosen Brand" (Sendenkaigi, 2016)

　  Takashi Asaoka, Experience-Driven Marketing: From Brand Experience Value to Service Design (First Press, 2014)

2. Chizuru Ueshima, Marketing KPIs: New Evaluation Axes for "Sales-Driven Mechanisms" (Nikkei BP, 2016)

3. Pulizzi, J. Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break Through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less. McGraw-Hill, 2013. (Joe Pulizzi, Akiko Gunji, Junko Okawa, Chitose Nagao,Masafumi Sakai, Tatsuhiko Daigo, Takuma Shinomiya,Yoshiaki Nakazato, Yuta Ishii, trans. Epic Content Marketing:The Ultimate Guide to Creating Content ThatAttracts Customers, Nikkei Business Publications, 2014)

4. Ryuji Yokoyama, Kenichi Sugawara, Takashi Kusano, DMP Primer: Data Management Platforms for Understanding Customers (Impress R&D, 2013)

5. Dentsu Inc. e-marketing One, Introduction to Marketing Automation: How One Marketer Can Nurture 100,000 Prospects (Nikkei Business Publications, 2015)

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