In this new era of interactive media, there are plenty of Coyote-centric businesses out there. They have started to use interactive media to try and attract customers, but like Wile E., they tend to miss the point and work with agencies that are merely moving traditional campaigns online.
It is not uncommon at the start of 2002 to find such considerable resistance or complaints that there is not the return on investment in new media technology that everybody has been claiming.
In fact, when technology is part of a marketing strategy built around the customer, the results can be phenomenal. Forrester recently reported that opt-in email campaigns were achieving response rates of 18 per cent and higher, compared with the traditional 1.5 per cent from direct mail campaigns. We can now create brand experiences through interactive media, but it requires an understanding of how customers interact via new channels.
As a result of flawed strategy and marketing philosophy, Coyote-centric businesses have put significant price pressure on technology vendors, agencies and online advertising networks in an effort to make technology solutions and interactive more price-appealing. This effect is compounded by traditional agencies offering interactive as a value-add, further marginalising the real value of the medium.
Businesses must recognise the key triggers for success in an interactive marketing strategy:
- The value exchange between company and customer.
- Brand experiences not brand messages.
- Detach and distribute - utilities and applications.
- "Always-on
optimisation - the ability to refine and adapt campaigns mid-stream to improve the cost per acquisition.
- The new integration - not just with offline advertising, but with your customer database.
There's little room for Coyote-centric businesses in a market where customers are rapidly getting in-tune with the experience they want. Unless we create new campaigns that innovate around these desires, we risk the same fate as our Coyote friend - repeated failure to capture the customer.
