Innovation is what drives consumer engagement. Offline or online, getting people’s attention is becoming increasingly challenging. The Internet as a medium had always been over-hyped. There’s also overkill on search and online advertising, with some finding nirvana in search and the rest in online ads.
Search engine optimization is a hygiene factor. Again, search marketing can be compared to newspaper classifieds. It is important, but cannot build your brand. After all, it’s an algorithm that is increasingly getting commoditized. But to make sure you get the click-in and a buy-in thereafter, not only do you need to be in the right place at the right time, but also have the right appeal. Now this appeal is something that is beyond those giant search spiders crawling on the Web. That’s where the beauty of online advertising, branding, user generated content comes in.
Most of us have developed a blind spot to most of the banner ads in the sites. You know where you want to go and more often than not, you do not want to be distracted. It is not about how many impressions or how much media space you are going to buy, but how you want to romance your customer.
Interactive communication is a challenge as well as an opportunity. Striking a balance between content with the right appeal and media is extremely important in the online space. Virals, blogs and other social networking sites provide opportunities for marketers to reach consumers.
As part of the IPL frenzy, every cricket team launched a website, but only a few were successful in building a fan base online. Rather than going for an online media blitzkrieg, Delhi Daredevils offered a distributed digital experience spread across Facebook, Orkut, virals, seeded blogs and a locker room on the site. The result? More than 20,000 fans registered within two weeks of the launch.
A captive fan base that’s translating into online ticket and merchandise sales with minimal ad spend. Now, that’s finding nirvana.
The author is senior vice-president and director, Arc Worldwide.
As told to Anushree Chandran