eMarketing strategy is a complex beast with a deceptively simple goal. Whether you’re a money-grabbing business mogul or a charity planning to redistribute your profits, your ultimate purpose is likely to be the generation of revenue. In order to put together an effective strategy to help you reach this goal, you have to understand your brand. Obvious much? Perhaps not as obvious as you think. As an eMarketer, you need to do more than think, eat, sleep and breath your organisation to really understand what’s going on with your brand. The reason for this is simple – when it comes to all things digital, brands are no longer controlled solely by organisations – they are controlled (in part, at least) by the consumers. So yes, thinking, eating, sleeping and breathing your brand ethos is great, so long as you’re not doing it from a marketing point of view. To really get to grips with your company and gain insight and direction for your strategy, you need to see things from the perspectives of the people using your products and services – the consumers. This week’s tips look at the need to hang your marketing hat in the closet and get up close and personal with the other side of your brand.

Your consumer is king when it comes to planning the strategy of your brand. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

1. Find out where your consumers are connecting with your brand

Step one is to conduct a brand audit of sorts. You need to find every single possible touch point that consumers have with your brand. Bear in mind that there are probably more than you are aware of and that your organisation may not be the original source of the content that you find. Knowing how people are connecting with you and what information they are getting will assist in constructing a picture around what your brand looks like from the outside. This may seem like a mammoth task, but a simple Google search can provide an excellent starting point. There are also various Social Media search tools (like Twitter search for Twitter) that can be useful in this process. If you’re looking for a longer term solution, consider investing in an ORM package like BrandsEye. This will allow you to understand what’s going on behind the scenes presently as well as giving you the tools to monitor this going forward – something that should be built into even the most half-baked eMarketing brand strategy.

2. Understand how they are using the Web

There’s more to understanding your brand from your customer's perspective than just auditing the touch points they have with it. You need to understand how they use the Web and more importantly, how they use it to interact with your organisation. Are they trying to find information, form a community, get reviews, contact you directly, access your products or services, complain or did they find you seemingly by accident? Finding this out is less complicated than it seems at first glance. Google Analytics can tell you how people are using your website and where they are coming from, and analysing this data will give you insight into what they were looking for. Carrying out some basic market research can also give you useful information. In many cases, understanding how people use the Web is as simple as asking, particularly if your subjects are loyal customers and are incentivised for sharing their thoughts with you.

3. Determine perception

Once you know where and how people are connecting with your brand, you need to try and make sense of that information. What does it tell you about how people perceive you? This type of analysis doesn’t require a degree in Psychology but will necessitate making some inferences about their behaviour. You can start by asking some basic questions: Is the majority of sentiment positive, neutral or negative? Is there a disjuncture between your positioning and how your consumers perceive your brand? Do you see yourself in the same way as you are seen from the outside? What do the channels people are using to communicate with you say about how they see you? There is no fool-proof method for this analysis, and there are no right or wrong answers. This is also an ongoing process and it’s critical that monitoring and managing external perceptions of your brand is not a once-off undertaking.

4. Determine what you want perception to be

Right, so now you understand where people are connecting with you, how they use the Web and how they perceive your brand. Now what? Before you can even begin to concretise an eMarketing strategy, you have to decide how you want your strategy to position your company. How do you want your consumers to perceive and interpret your brand message? Figuring this out involves refining your positioning and then putting together a strategy that reinforces it. Consider the areas where your customers’ opinions and perspectives differ from yours and where they are well aligned. This will allow you to focus your efforts on the areas of your strategy that need it while letting the ones that are already working well continue to do so unhindered.

5. Remain Flexible

The end of this process should be the compilation of a comprehensive eMarketing strategy detailing how your brand currently falls into the market, where you want it to fall and how you plan to achieve that objective. However, as time goes on, you are likely to be privy to new insights into the perspectives of your consumers. In addition, the eMarketing landscape is one that changes almost daily. This not only opens up new channels for marketing but also means an ever-growing number of places where people could interact with your brand. Moreover, as channels rise and fall in popularity, it’s necessary for you to adapt too. There’s little point in ploughing your budget into Facebook for example, when your customers have all migrated to Foursquare. Thus it is important that you understand the need to remain flexible in your approach and integrate these touch points into your strategy on an ongoing basis.

Also check out:

• 4 Tips for Integrating eMarketing Goals With Your Marketing Strategy
• Branding in the Digital Age - What Does That Mean?