Many digital business strategies are based on meaningless metrics and fail to deliver value.
This was the message from Mike Sharman, owner of Retroviral Digital Communications, speaking at the ITWeb Digital Economy Summit 2015 at The Forum in Bryanston yesterday.
"You don't have to be the biggest," Sharman said. "Stop counting meaningless metrics. South Africans are terrible at developing online strategies. There's a disconnect between marketing and business - we're so caught up in LSMs [living standards measurements] and numbers, but it's not making a difference to brands."
There are so many "me-too" campaigns out there, copying what's worked for other people.
"Content has to be about story telling. You have to build a connection to your brand. And then you have to measure it."
Measurement is often the part most lacking, he said. "How are you tracking the conversion of awareness into purchase consideration, and finally into purchases? You can't do that unless you have clear objectives from the start."
Free isn't
A lingering myth is that online distribution is free, Sharman added. Because you can upload a YouTube video for free doesn't mean it will achieve anything.
"Digital gets the production/publishing costs backwards," he said. Companies should still budget for distribution, to make sure their campaigns receive initial boosts by the right online influencers as well as ongoing support.
Sharman's agency has a track record of pushing boundaries - and buttons - with campaigns like the "dinner for six" Nando's campaign which spoofed Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. The online component benefited from unexpected engagement with the popular British journalist Stephen Fry, helping it go viral.
"Many campaigns go viral for unexpected reasons. Give your message as many legs as possible because you never know what's going to work, then work with whatever comes along. And get out of your comfort zone. If your campaign feels comfortable, that's probably because it's all been done before and you aren't offering your audience anything new and interesting.
"Many companies have been burned with online marketing," Sharman noted. "Don't plan to fail, or experiment and be willing to accept poor results. Set reasonable expectations, and then measure yourself against them. You can't set out to create a viral campaign. But you can create a solid campaign, give it the means to go viral, and take advantage if it does."
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