Digital marketing: It's all about engaging customers
When selling your business in the digital world, it's more about engaging your customers than simply putting a website up and hoping they will come to it.
That was the message repeated by a panel of experts Thursday at the Daily Herald Business Ledger's Newsmakers Forum on Digital Media and Marketing, held at the Northern Illinois University center in Hoffman Estates.
All four panelists stressed the importance of having a business presence in the digital world — from maintaining a dynamic website to developing strategies in mobile technology and social networking — because your customers are spending more of their time there.
“Mobile phones are where people are living now,” said John Klein, senior consultant for Links Technology Solutions in Schaumburg. He and Miguel Cano, digital and new media director of JSH&A Public Relations in Oakbrook Terrace, added that more people are using mobile devices to get news and information than PCs and other media. Cano noted that mobile device use is expected to surpass PC use by the end of the year and double by 2013.
“Smartphones give the ability to share anything at any time with anyone,” Cano said. “It has changed the way we do things like shopping.”
Cano and the others stressed this has given businesses the opportunity to not only engage and inform customers, but also to work out customer problems. He said Twitter, for example, is very simplistic in engaging an audience, but most businesses still use it just to broadcast messages.
When marketing your business digitally, it's important to make sure you treat your audience with respect, according to Kelly Bolyard, assistant vice president and director of digital development at Paddock Publications in Arlington Heights, the parent company of the Daily Herald and Business Ledger. On social media, Bolyard said, treat your followers as guests, not as an advertising audience. Online, she added, value yourself and show value to your audience.
To customers, “it's all about me,” Bolyard said. “If I'm online, you need to tell me something that I'm interested in.”
That message has to be fast and specific, she added, because a reader's attention span can be very short.
“If you have an offer, make sure you direct people to that exact page,” she said. “Readers won't want to navigate through a site to get there.”
While a digital presence is important, physical interaction is just as important, noted Marybeth Bittel, director of marketing communications at American Slide Chart/Perrygraf in Carol Stream. People inherently learn and remember things better through a multisensory approach, so it is important that your marketing strategy maintain traditional, tangible aspects.
Bittel said the growth of 2D bar codes provides a link between the tangible and digital worlds. People can use a reader on their smartphones to read the bar code on a product or ad, which will take them to an online or social network site for more information and engagement.
Presenting sponsors for the forum were JSH&A Public Relations, Links Technology Solutions and American Slide Chart/Perrygraf. Corporate sponsor for the Newsmaker Forums is Comcast Business Class.