Marketing Technology

Marketing isn’t what it used to be.

Marketing Technology: Say What?? We used to know that marketing had three basic tools: advertising, branding, and public relations and we used to know exactly what went into each. A creative agency would come up with appropriate print, radio, and television spots. A big enough brand might adventure into billboards or event sponsorships. A media agency would figure out where to deliver the message to the highest demographic index and a PR company would announce our new moves to the world while a graphic design company put it all into a well designed package. This process gave us household names like Macintosh, Ivory Soap, and even “got milk?”

Things were simpler then. Customers were compliant and the world hummed along.

Then disruption happened. The Internet happened. Our world exploded into thousands of fragments with a new piece of software being written every day in an effort to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

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Progression to Marketing Technology

Today the tools cross over disciplines, creative is difficult to apply, and thanks to social media your customer has become your PR agency. It’s all very confusing. Many companies report that once they begin implementation they lack the necessary human resources to take advantage of the technology they have purchased. Goals and objectives are different between departments or even two individuals in the same department. The entire marketing technology engine lacks focus, the message gets lost, and customers are left vocally frustrated in blogs, amazon reviews, and product ratings. It’s a mess.
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By using Marketing Technology we are able to manage and engage your customers on any device through any platform.
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Marketing Technology is a highly valuable process and should be added to any businesses marketing strategy. At Mojo Creator we don’t want to glue together all the broken pieces of the marketing technology spectrum, we want to toss most of them out. We want to leave you with the most relevant set of tools for your business and make you into a power user again. By using Marketing Technology we are able to manage and engage your customers on any device through any platform.

Marketing Technology: The Big Four

Forget Facebook and Twitter. Forget Google. Forget the brands – at least forget them for a few moments. We need to back up to where things should have started if the technology hadn’t sprouted like mushrooms while we were still muddling through it nine months behind the curve (if you were just coming to terms with DIGG when Reddit came out then you totally get this). The culmination multiple online networks can be used to market your brand or service. The ability to leverage marketing with a software toolset is Marketing Technology.

There are four basic marketing technologies/methodologies that dovetail to form an online marketing technology strategy.

The core components here are not things like “branding” or “social engagement” – in this section of the site we’ll stick with the technological component. It takes a bit of getting used to but once you are able to decouple the technology from the strategy and the execution you will have a far easier time understanding the online marketing ecosystem. We will outline the Marketing Technology components below.

 

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing a web page’s visibility and ranking through organic or algorithmic search. When you look at a set of search results you will first see featured listings, then paid listings, then organic listings. If a key phrase is specific enough, something like “interior design for lofts in Chicago” vs “interior design”, frequently, there may not be any paid listings at all! In this case it makes sense to focus on organic search. When SEM (see below) gets too expensive, focusing on organic search results can let a company can avoid large parts of the keyword auction house and bring in qualified traffic under-the-radar with a far greater efficiency than they might otherwise achieve. [more]

 

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a type of internet marketing that seeks to increase a web page’s visibility through paid listings. A company can buy either the top search rankings, or they may choose to focus on a system like Google AdWords. That said, a campaign isn’t as simple as saying “hey, I have a band, I want to buy space under MP3″ – in fact this would be a very bad idea. The way SEM works, every click drains a bank account and some clicks like “Arizona DUI Lawyer” or “Student Loans Consolidation” have been known to top $60 a click. Most business simply can’t afford this so part of the process of SEM is knowing what keywords to buy, how specific to make them, and what negative keywords to use. For example, often times a company will exclude showing a paid link to anyone who puts the word “free” or “cheap” in their search as a way of only advertising to qualified individuals. [more]

 

Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization is a broad term for a set of methodologies that seek to drive site traffic through social tools. If you thought SEO or SEM were complicated, social media is enough to make even a professional’s head spin. There are currently over 200 active major social media websites with over 450 tools designed to monitor them and that’s before you even begin to discuss blogs, amazon reviews, bulletin board forums, Craigslist, or SMS as additional legitimate forms of social. Here there be dragons. It’s hard enough for a company like MojoCreator to pick the right tools and targets. It’s prohibitively expensive for most companies to do social media right and downright impossible for any small to medium sized businesses. Again, we’re here to dispose of the clutter and leave you with only the most relevant tools to your business. [more]

 

Database Marketing

Database marketing was the first major component of internet marketing to gain legitimacy and is an integral part of modern customer relationship management (CRM). The concept itself was a natural evolution of the same database marketing tactics that have powered offline campaigns for years. It is a form of direct marketing that uses a database of customers and their preferences to send personalized emails with an attached call to action. The effectiveness of these campaigns is typically measured in response rate and varies wildly depending on the approach. This is the most mature of the internet marketing technologies but it is still a valuable component of a full service online strategy. Most recently, the booming use of group purchasing organizations (GPOs) like Groupon and LivingSocial falls under this designation.

In summary, Marketing Technology encompasses a broad range of services that help you, the customer, not only increase your marketing reach but helps you communicate when you get there. The art of Marketing Technology is not a finite point, it is a culmination and utilization of tools to enhance the customers experience while offering an open communication path. Listen, Engage, Evolve!!