The 4 E's of Digital Marketing

While going through a power point presentation, I came across a very interesting perspective on Digital Marketing. By virtue of being a two-way medium and the advent of Web 2.0, the way we approach traditional marketing doesn't find place in the realm of digital consumer engagement process. It is important to see Philip Kotler's 4P's of marketing through the digital lens and see whether they pass through the digital filter.

The 4P's need to be replaced by 4E's in the basic digital marketing framework.

Product vs Experience: Unfortunately, digital is often used as a lead generating medium without any focus on brand building. Digital, if used judiciously, can be used to create an unforgettable brand experience that entices and encourages the consumers to not just consume the product but develop a long lasting relationship with the brand. A delightful brand experience can convince a consumer about the role of the brand in its life.

Price vs Exchange: The internet works on the basic principles of 'community living'. You share, I share. Its similar to the age-old barter system. You can't put a price to the content. Its available abundantly. More you share, more you would move up in the social hierarchy in the digital space.

Place vs Everywhere: Once your content/communication is out, it's everywhere. You don't select the touchpoints, the commmunity does it for you.

Promotion vs Evangalism: That's a dream of every marketing professional. You don't promote a brand on the digital space, you search for the brand champions.

My First Experiment

The verdict is out and it’s a success. After being in the digital communication space for more than a year and having talked and seen a lot of interesting stuff, I finally decided to create a viral on my own.

Given the nature of the online medium, you cannot control the message. Once the communication is out, you can just hope that you find favour among the people who get exposed to it.Any communication which is not viral-able, is a waste. With that rule in mind I started thinking of what possibly I could do that can become a viral.

Inspired by the recent Domino’s incident which took the entire digital space by storm, I chose Facebook to do the experiment. During my MBA days at MICA, I met and interacted with lot of talented people who were really passionate about MICA. Due to this reason, I chose to talk to this closed community of MICAns. For that I developed a Facebook application – Which MICAn are you? This application calculates your MICAn quotient based on few questions and tells you what kind of a MICAn you are. (application to be submitted to the directory)

Few thoughts that passed through while I was thinking –

- Don’t tell people what you want to say, tell them what they want to hear: MICAns cherish every single moment that they lived at MICA. Talking about those moments in some form or the other would definitely appeal to them. All the answers in the quiz reminds of those moments – be it the nights spent playing counterstrike or those pfaffy lectures.

- Never tell a person that he is an idiot, he wont pass that to his friends: There are lots of things, good and bad, which we want to tell people. If your message or communication or content offends them, they wont viral it. Make sure you convey the most offending thing in a lighter tone. E.g. You can’t tell someone that he is a womenizer but you can definitely say that he is a ‘palaash-gal’ lover (contact a MICAn to know more about Palaash-gal)

- Understand your TG, their likes and dislikes: As I mentioned earlier, MICAns are really passionate about MICA. No matter what, you can’t hurt their sentiments in any way.

- Positive or Negative Word-of-mouth – You can’t decide: Well, the experiment itself was a big risk. Talking about MICA to MICAns! I was lucky that the community accepted and viralled it. My job was to initiate the conversation, which I did, but beyond that I had no control over it. It was the community which took it forward.

Hope to do more such experiments using this interesting medium and share the learnings with everyone.