Your Online Marketing Guide

Marketing executives, those who are the keepers of the brand, have had some difficult years recently. The statistics for the life expectancy of a Chief Marketing Officer is two years or less. Finance and procurement departments however have risen in influence and necessity. One key goal for many organizations is to make sure “those marketing/creative folks” don’t neglect t the bottom line; profits. This issue is very hard for “creative/marketing folks” to dispute, but it is also still of utmost importance to market an authentic singularly identifiable brand.

Authenticity is crucial now more than ever to the successfulness of a brand. Research on branding used to be limited to press releases and a few news stories. The Internet and all of its search engines changed that process forever. Now, anyone with a very basic understanding of HTML can create their own Web page that is dedicated to a least or most favorite brand. Even without a bit of knowledge and a simple understanding of search optimization, that Web page can be seen by billions of internet users overnight.

As the technical ability of the general public increased, brands lost control of findable internet content and the internet user/consumers got the power. Today, you don’t need to know HTML to clearly and specifically share your feelings about a company or their products. By posting reviews, writing a blog, or creating video, you can publish your thoughts and feelings and make them instantly accessible to the entire world in a matter of seconds.

A marketing executive should constantly be asking: “What defines this brand’s authenticity?” and “How can I make potential customers understand what that means?” These are always difficult questions to answer, especially if the marketing expertise in the organization isn’t the one leading the discussion. Every interaction that a consumer has with a brand defines its association and creates an opportunity for those consumers to discuss these associations. As a result, marketing departments should have a say in product development and in the very important customer service departments and others as well.

A marketer is hired to promote the company’s product or a service’s core attributes. When a product does not live up to consumers expectations, which department is at fault? When a brand attribute comes from a “customer service” focus and the customer service rep is not himself focused on servicing his customer, is the marketing department then the one to blame when sales trends are poor? It would be nice to be able to blame someone, but the reality is that Marketing and Sales are two very separate departments.

Opportunity always brings greater responsibility. Marketing professionals who don’t understand the latest web based marketing tools do not deserve that responsibility.

A comprehensive understanding of the importance of internet based consumer queries is at the center of current marketing campaigns. The ability to deliver (accurate) brand-positive web content at every single point of query (Google, YouTube, iTunes, blog, mobile phone, news site, and many others) is critical to the ability to build authenticity in a brand. The constant evolution of internet based consumer queries has made it easier than ever to get out a clear message about brands. The difficulty for any marketer is that most corporations do not yet have the savvy and are not yet ready to fully seize this opportunity. Emotional readiness as well as structural readiness continues to hold organizations back from fully utilizing the potential.

Another key issue in the development of marketing programs is the use of celebrity spokespeople. Celebrity endorsements of brands have significantly decreased in recent years. With customers increasingly savvy to the sincerity of pitchmen it is difficult for a celebrity to give a credible endorsement to a brand or product that resonates with the public. Online consumer research is another large factor that takes away the effect of an endorsement by placing the consumer in real world situations where they can interact with other users and discuss their own experiences.

Authenticity must continue to be embraced because of search centric consumer trends. The consumer continues to take control of the conversation about brands and marketers must have a message that stands up to and fulfills the promise of that brand. If the brand itself doesn’t live up to the advertised promise, a savvy search centric consumer will find it out immediately. Once that secret is out, the authenticity is null and void. Everyone online will know, but the marketer might just be the last one to know.

Search-centric marketing strategies require the company to acknowledge their own brand authenticity and embrace the concept of having an open online discussion about it, even when they aren’t the ones that are actually involved in that conversation.

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