The battle
Photography by zachstern
You go into town to buy a nice new jumper. You don’t know exactly what you want, but you’ve got an idea of what it looks like in your head. (A red wine kind of colour, tight fitting, a nice thin wool.) You’ve got money in your pocket and time to look around. You’re looking forward to buying that nice new jumper and wearing it to what’s-her-name’s party tonight.
Except you can’t find one you like. Not anywhere.
So you walk home empty-handed and, just when you’re about to turn into your road, some guy walks past with a really smart shirt that’s much better than the jumper that’s still tumbling around your imagination. And you wish you’d looked for that shirt instead.
And this is the problem with digital marketing.
Are you desperate to be found? Or happy being discovered?
And that means making a decision.
Because unless you or the company you’re working for has a cowshed full of fivers to dip into, you’ve got to make a big “impact” (everybody uses that word nowadays – and I get a little bit of sick in my mouth every time they do) on a limited budget.
Do you do search marketing? Or relationship marketing?
They’re both pretty simple concepts as far as I’m concerned.
Search means SEO and AdWords. You start with a million potential customers, get the attention of one percent and make your pitch, and then hope that one percent of them buy your product.
From one million, you get one hundred. And then you put the data into a spreadsheet and work out cost per acquisition and a plethora of similar ratios.
Relationship marketing is quite the opposite. You start with one customer. Do a bloody brilliant job and hope one becomes ten. And then hope ten becomes one hundred. All by word of mouth.
Of course, you can create catalysts for spreading the word: nice websites with blogs so you can feel more involved, well-written opt-in emails, maybe even a Twitter account. (Note: this isn’t social media marketing. If you’ve got nothing worth talking about, a Facebook page isn’t going to make a sliver of difference.)
The battle lies where the two meet.
Does search marketing happily sit alongside relationship marketing?
Is there any joy in giving attention to someone who’s been desperately seeking it anyway?
Can you start with one and one million?
I don’t know, and it’s something I’ve been wrestling with all day.
Any thoughts?
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:59 am
It already does. Using Search Marketing is fair enough - but unless the next step in the process is planned out hoping that 1% of 1% Adwords traffic will buy your product/service is leakage. Once you get the traffic to your initial goal then you kick in with your other strategy.
That’s where you’re relationship marketing can help. Ideally your existing relationships/partnerships should be able to strengthen your brand/product/service.
Its all part of the big wheel. They both sit under marketing. They already sit perfectly next to each other - the trick is getting the most out of both techniques - that my friend is where the conundrum lies…
Do not bend the spoon - only try to realise the spoon does not exist
July 21st, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Sorry mate, only just found this comment in my pending box (beneath a whole lot of spam).
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think they sit next to each other perfectly – otherwise there’d be no conundrum in getting the most out of both techniques.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is just as simple as getting traffic through SEM and growing it organically through CRM. But in a world that’s full of noise from lazy marketing, is it really that easy to get your message across? I don’t think it is.