STRATEGY #86: Digital Advertising

Digital advertising is experiencing fantastic growth—even in industrial marketing strongholds. An IDC forecast shows that Internet advertising will grow from 10% of all media this year to 13.6% by 2011 as Internet ad spending grows to $106.6 billion worldwide. Don’t discount the advantages of digital advertising.

Engage Your Audience
While they still have their place, static print ads are not as effective as digital media in engaging audiences in a two-way dialog. Even more importantly, digital advertising can be engineered to obtain information about the audience. This mined data is a valuable commodity you can use to guide and influence sales and marketing initiatives, fueling your sales organization and message customization. 

Extend Traditional Marketing Strategies
Targeting—Run segmented campaigns using messages individualized to the interests of each targeted group. 
Branding—Enhance established product and corporate identities with animation, video and other visually stimulating tactics within your ad.
Retention—Optimize customer response and retention by linking your digital ad audience with your website or microsites.
Relevance—Cultivate a positive audience response by making your advertising a favorable interruption that pre-empts audience needs by being exceedingly relevant.

All this is possible because the medium itself can collect and analyze customer behavior. It’s also important to employ technologies that enhance the visibility, portability and impact of your message on a variety of devices and in various settings. 

A new advertising paradigm is here that can rapidly enhance your marketing efforts through the participation of your audience. And customers will always be attracted to messages that are not only highly relevant to job success, but also interactively intriguing. The time to engage is now.