Thought Leadership Whitepaper

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OMOBONO LTD, THE WAREHOUSE, 33 BRIDGE STREET, CAMBRIDGE CB2 1UW, UK

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CONNECT [email protected]

DIGITAL COMMUNICATION SERVICES


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Thinking DifferentlyAbout Digital Marketing:Thought Leadership Beyond Acquisition

Francesca Brosan, Chairman,Omobono Limited.

January 2010
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Retaining the

relationships you acquire

2009 was the year in which marketers

accepted the act that digital was a central

pillar o their marketing activities rather

than a nice to have, as online advertising

expenditure grew 4.6% to 1.75 billion,

overtaking TV or the rst time. Finally, new

media was centre stage.

The majority o the spend however, and

certainly the reporting o it, ocuses on

acquisition. Marketers have transitioned

their activities rom ofine advertising to

online advertising and are now seeking

ways in which to use social media to, well,

advertise despite the act that thats not

how the medium seems to work.

The obsessive ocus by marketers on

acquisition makes less sense in the current

climate however. For a start, markets

are retracting, making the retention o

customers an essential exercise. Secondly,

customers are more likely to be infuenced

by what peers say about product or service

on a social networking site than by an ad,

and never more so than in B2B decision

making where advertising has always

hovered around a mere 15% o marketing

spend.

In addition, or many businesses the 80/20

rule applies. The opportunity not just to

retain your business but to grow it is more

likely to come rom people you know

well. Here the game is not about creating

awareness but about creating preerence.

This is where digital really comes into its

own. Preerence is not about liking an ad,

but about having a really good experience.

Experience is ultimately what drives your

choice o business partner. Digital is adept

at building the experience around the

product. In service markets it is actually

an integral part o the product. As Will

Harris, Marketing Director o Nokia put it

at the Marketing Society 50th Anniversary

Conerence (a lot o good sense talked

there), Customers will be interested in

corporations who are doing things, not

brands who are saying things.

Although Marketing control o websites has

been growing and they have moved rom

static, IT driven brochureware to adopt

the ull panoply o web 2.0 eatures they

are still primarily promotional tools. They

dont do things, and are thereore, arguably,

peripheral to creating preerence.

Digitals real power is to reinorce the

relationships which surround and infuence

customer preerence.

Its a truth universally acknowledged that

relationships drive business. As Hakasson

& Ford put it:

The overall

performance of

a company will

depend on how

well they are able

to manage their

own relationships.1

Time to start thinking differently aboutdigital marketing


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Shifting the focus of

each relationship

Source: Morgan, R.M. and Hunt, D.H. (1994) 3

But its surprising how little work has been

done on how business relationships impact

on each other, and on the bottom line.

A study conducted or Omobono, the

digital communication services company,

by Judge Business School in 20092

ocused on this specically and highlighted

some important issues or marketers who

are looking to use digital as more than an

acquisition tool.

Omobonos research showed that

although relationships gel around our

key areas internal, suppliers, customers

and external stakeholders the relational

ocus shits, depending on the business.

What also emerged is that relationships

are interdependent. So secondary

relationships have signicant impacts on

the organisations ability to deliver to its

customers.

Service businesses or example, ocus

on building relationships with their end

customer. But in truth, as knowledge is

the undamental source o competitive

advantage or service organisations, the

need to share inormation across the

company is also paramount. Another

example is the infuence o the regulator on

customer relationships. Whilst one part o

the organisation is ocused on improving it,

another is in the process o dismantling it.

All o which means that the new place

or marketing is as much internal as it

is external. They need move out o the

promotional corner in which they have

been painted to partner sales and service

delivery teams. Their skills are ideally

suited to improving not just the promotion

o a product or service but the delivery

experience.


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Jeremy Bullmore backed up the point in

his video input at the Marketing Society

Conerence. As he put it (succinctly, as

always). Marketers need to get back

to being obsessive about products and

services. Forget about the gloss, just do

good stu. In digital terms its not about

doing better, cleverer web 2,0 promotional

stu. Its about using the medium to

enhance business relationships and to drive

maximum value rom them.

The good news is that the wiring is already

in place. We have the internet, intranets,

extranets and e-commerce sites. We

have CRM systems and email. We re

messages down the wires with alarming

regularity. What is telling is how responses

emails vary directly in accordance with

the strength o the relationship. As

demonstrated by the chart below, the

stronger the relationship, the higher the

response levels. An argument begins to

emerge that investing in the tools which

build a relationships, is an exercise which

can pay o nancially.

Source: Omobono/Marketwatch 2008/9

As Accenture4 puts it, Our research

shows, providing a consistent, dierentiated

customer experience has the most

impact on customer loyalty, which in turn

contributes to growth, protability and

shareholder value.

Which gets us back to the original point.

Digital has come o age. But using it simply

as another acquisition tool is missing a

trick. Its an essential part o retention. Notas a clever comms tool but as part o the

actual service delivery. Marketers who think

like this, spend their time developing added

value services which can be delivered down

the line, using the medium to enhance o

line delivery to build relationships.

Judging rom the media coverage, its

an approach that not many people have

yet tapped into. But, as the Omobono/

Judge Business School research showed,

marketers who do adopt this thinking are in

a position to create commercial advantage

or their organisation.

For urther inormation on how digital

can be used to enhance Enterprise

Relationships go to www.omobono.co.uk/

knowledgebase

Email Response Levels from Financial and Service industries


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Francesca Brosan is Chairman and Founder ofOmobono Limited, the digital communications

services company. A former Board Director

of WCRS, her career has spanned consumer

advertising, PR, live events and digital. She

now focuses on B2B strategy for the agencies

corporate and public sector clients. Francesca

is the author of 3 IPA Advertising Effectiveness

Awards and is a regular speaker and contributor

to marketing forums.

uk.linkedin.com/in/francescabrosan

Acknowledgements

Journal o Business Research, (55(2), 133,1.

2002)

Research into Enterprise Relationship2.

Management, a concept developed by

Omobono Limtied, was conducted by

students on the MBA programme between

July and November 2009. Findings are

based on depth interviews with seniormanagement in a range o industries

including nancial and proessional services,

manuacturing, energy, transport and

logistics, law, IT and public sector.

Morgan, R.M. and Hunt, D.H. (1994) The3.

Commitment-Trust Theory o

Relationship Marketing, Journal o4.

Marketing, Vol.58 (July 1994), 20-38.

Accenture, Marketing mastery matters.5.

Outlook 2006, Number 2.

Relationships drive your business.

We drive your relationships.

ERM helps world class organisations drive

value from their business relationships by

examining the ways they interact with their

customers, partners and staff; and how that

is measured to help achieve organisational

goals, deliver to customers and create mutual

value. We look largely at the contribution online

technologies can play, and how companies can

maximise value from the infrastructure put in

place over the past 5 10 years. By exploring

alternative approaches to improving B2B

marketing effectiveness, ERM enables us to think

about marketing differently, to put it back to its

original place; where marketing has a meaning

and purpose beyond communication and

becomes a business essential, not a business

expense.

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Thought Leadership Whitepaper