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www.bbj.hu
Budapest Business Journal | Dec 11, 2015 – Jan 14, 2016
Marketing goes digital – but not completely We may live in the cyber age, but it would be a mistake to give up traditional marketing methods, according to local experts. They recommend an integrated approach where online and offline toolkits are both used to keep your campaign in motion.
SpringTab seeks to know customers better
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With 3.2 billion people now online globally, some might mistakenly conclude that marketing now has a present and a future only in the virtual world. True enough, online campaigns can easily be measured and are often more costeffective than techniques originating from the pre-digital era. But according to a local professional in digital marketing, success involves taking advantage of both types of toolkits. “You need to have an integrated approach in terms of marketing tools. First you need to make it clear what business results you want to achieve and what your most dedicated clients want. This is the 80/20 principle, 80% of the profits come from 20% of the customers. The common denominator of the two will provide the integrated strategy,” Péter Szántó, digital business development expert tells the Budapest Business Journal. Step one is always getting to know your target audience better. Szántó’s latest project, SpringTab, helps brands do this by analyzing and tracking the digital footprint of would-be customers and providing them a personalized experience in an innovative way (for a case study of how your brand could use this new solution, see story in the box opposite). “The buzz word O2O still has substance in today’s digital word, meaning either Online to Offline or Offline to Online,” Szántó says. “Great examples can be mentioned for both how customers can be drawn into a brick-and-mortar store through internet activity, and how people can be inspired by the in-store experience to communicate with your brand on Facebook or Instagram. This must be treated as part of a heterogeneous process,” he explains.
Péter Szántó: ‘You need to have an integrated approach.’
“Great examples can be mentioned for both how customers can be drawn into a bricks-and-mortar store through internet activity, and how people can be inspired by the in-store experience to communicate with your brand on Facebook or Instagram.”
base every day,” Weiler says of priority number one in his business strategy. For brand building, he sees outdoor and television as ideal channels, especially now that TV advertising rates have slumped so much that even smaller companies can afford them. A recent international survey by Regalix provides a more differentiated result. According to that, television ranks very low, with face-to-face gatherings such as speaking engagements, seminars, and trade shows and the like judged most effective by B2B Never underestimate the power of marketers. guerilla campaigns “We also believe in PR. Therefore we Péter Weiler, president of Dating Central create valuable and relevant content on Europe Zrt., has 20 years of experience dating related issues. The best way to in online advertising and couldn’t agree make clients click is by first convincing more. “You need to get the right mixture, them that we are experts in the field,” that’s what counts.” To operate a top Weiler says. A favorite tool of his is dating site you need a very marketing- conducting guerilla campaigns. A year intensive approach, as it tends to be new ago to support its new casual dating site, people who join to search for the right it put a giant banner up on a balcony on partner. “You need to expand your data Madách tér – an epicenter of the Budapest
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party scene – that read: “I know you are registered on that dating site. Go to your lover, you bastard!!! I’ve changed the locks!” The ad went viral within minutes and generated invaluable publicity.
It all comes down to psychology
Szántó stresses the importance of psychology when harmonizing tools such as data driven marketing, remarketing, personalization or augmented reality. “One dimension is strategy and knowledge, another is the tool used and the specific activity,” Szántó says. “We always have to shift points of view between customer needs, business goals, and technology.” With the above in mind, you may wonder how the domestic e-commerce sector compares according to global standards. Weiler is very positive in this regard. “The Hungarian e-commerce players do a great job. Foreign competitors have a harder time to compete because the domestic market is well protected by the option of payment-at-delivery and personal collection of goods. Up to 80-90% of Hungarian consumers prefer paying at delivery, and competitors from abroad can fight that comfort feature only by offering very low prices.” According to Szántó, Hungary is not Silicon Valley, but small innovative firms run by executives with international experience – for whom the only true benchmark is globally competitive quality – work hard to be part of the game. “There’s a great organization called Alliance for E-Commerce (SZEK) in Hungary that supports the active players with special events and a strong network.
The hottest marketing methods all have the ultimate aim of personalizing content and promoting offers to a specific target audience. SpringTab seeks to raise that to a whole new level by measuring and analyzing customer activities and targeting digital content on websites and mobile apps based on social data – the same way Facebook ads do for advertising. “Understanding our visitors on a deeper level is like shaking hands with everyone on our site and figuring out what is the greatest value we can provide for them,” says Péter Szántó, founder of SpringTab, as well as the local startups B Creative and TouchCo. “This is what the mission of all digital vendors and content providers should be. Once they know what the customers want, they just need to give it to them in the best possible way – and this is what SpringTab is for.” The following case study reveals how astonishingly such a method could create a tailor-made experience for precision-guided advertising: “Mark joins our brand in February and among other information we find out that his favorite team is FC Barcelona and he loves the music of Oasis. So right after he registers with our brand, a video clip of Wonderwall is posted on Mark’s Facebook page just to cheer him up. In our welcome e-mail there is further reference to our brand’s big promotion in March where a long weekend can be won. Since the destination can be anywhere in Europe, Mark would get a special message with images of Barcelona via any of our channels, including our mobile app. Though Mark didn’t win, he started a relationship, so his status changed. On this occasion anything can be offered. For instance it is traceable that he and his girlfriend have both liked scuba diving content before, so we can offer them related products or services. “Mark has friends, too, and it would make sense to collect more information on them. Instead of investing in costly market research, SpringTab can reach them by asking them to fill out a quiz on, say, their favorite smartphone app, which can then be utilized as a promotion as well. This way a lot more people can be reached, since in social media channels one person has 130 friends on average, meaning that a webpage with 1,000 fans can reach 130,000 relevant users. “Mark makes his first purchase in August, which places him into a different status and gives an occasion to send him SpringTab infographics about his activities in the previous six months. The infographics can be paired with a promotional voucher, which Mark uses, and a special Christmas promotion campaign should be launched to tempt Mark and his friends one last time this year to buy something connected to our brand.”
2015.12.09. 20:31