Buy vs. Build - the Right Mix for Online Marketing

The trickle of marketing dollars from offline to online has turned into a torrent, and online ad spending looks like it’ll continue to gain momentum for the forseeable future. What do companies need to consider as they shift marketing budgets online?

Pay per click search marketing and banner ad placements are relatively easy—you pay a certain amount, and you get a certain amount of traffic. Want more traffic? Pay more. Budget tight? Buy less traffic. It’s like ordering off a menu. Too many marketing execs stop here, simply allocating a big portion of their budget to online ads and not thinking about it much.

Where do the clicks go? Your corporate site? Unfortunately, a good corporate Web site is not a great landing spot for online advertising. 90% of the clicks you’ll get could be classified as “warm” leads, not ready to buy today. They might just poke around in your brochure-ware product information, and then wander off to find some other information to help in their research.

A truly great online strategy includes landing pages, microsites and mini-features designed to engage prospects at multiple stages in the buying cycle—everywhere from “vague interest” to “buy now.” It includes community features to engage with the specific online audience, and viral features to build a network within that niche. And of course, tight integration between online and offline efforts to maximize effectiveness.

In reality, executing on a fully integrated online strategy is not a simple process—not nearly as easy as dumping your budget into media placements and calling it a day. It requires attention and creativity. But the benefits, oh the benefits, are outsized and well worth the effort.

Consider Dell. Dell isn’t a client of ours, but their online strategy is a great example. In addition to their vaunted direct business, online you’ll find:

Resource centers full of valuable information to educate the small business audience

User Community and Forums to interact with and participate with their niche

Blogging Community to discuss future plans and gather feedback

Landing pages by segment , offering specific discounts and offers, like this university tie in

Webcasts and other educational offerings

Online Video as a new engaging communication medium

A New Idea Contest to collect community ideas and drive innovation

You can bet that each of these initiatives is backed by an integrated media and communication plan designed to optimize each channel—long ago Dell abandoned driving every single marketing contact straight to the dell.com home page.

Adjust Your Strategy

Obviously, not every enterprise has the Dell’s resources. Budget limitations don’t mean that you have to abandon a best practice strategy—but you do need to consider how to match your online spend with the right amount of investment in your online properties.

If you consider yours to be an innovative organization and want to communicate that to your audience, you’ll definitely want to invest in more ways to reach out with participation and communication within your specific online community. If your organization is more traditional, then you’ll probably lean towards making most of your investment in online ad placements and search marketing.

For our clients, we advocate a balanced portfolio for all marketing activities. That applies online and off—the right mix really depends your audience, industry, history and more.