By Diego Prusky*
With the growth of InPulse Digital, I learned something hard for those of us who run expanding companies: what got us to where we are will not take us where we want to go. Having met thousands of people and hundreds of companies over the past few years, I learned what the typical problems of small and mid-sized companies are. Among them, one of the most common is that most small companies do not know how to do marketing, or how to follow and monitor a marketing plan for their own company.
Years ago, the CEO of a company with hundreds of employees and more than 10 million dollars in annual revenue told me: "We don't believe in marketing". One of the biggest independent bands in Latin America told me the same thing. Fortunately, though, marketing has changed a lot and now tends to deliver value and interact with its audience. The two-way communication of the Internet and the huge volume of consumer-generated content make effective marketing very different from what was practiced 10 years ago. The main problem that companies and artists have (small companies, and sometimes not-so-small ones) is a lack of order: what to do marketing on, and how.
TL;DR: the 5 Cs of digital marketing at a glance
- The 5 Cs of digital marketing are Consumer, Concept, Content, Communicate and Count: InPulse’s method to plan, run and measure any campaign.
- Consumer: before planning, define who your most loyal customer is (your champions) and how and why they use your product.
- Concept and Content: a creative idea without content to communicate it ends up as a product (a blog, a site, an app), not a campaign.
- Communicate: no campaign goes viral on its own; you need a reason for people to share it and an advertising budget to drive traffic from the right segment.
- Count: define from the start how you will measure success and optimize; no campaign performs at its best from day one.
What Are the 5 Cs of Digital Marketing?
A Marketing Plan can be as simple as a document that includes 2 to 5 priorities for the year. However, it is the execution and follow-up that often present challenges. To address this, at InPulse we have developed the 5 Cs methodology. First, these five Cs help you thoroughly understand your target audience, which, in turn, makes it easier to create relevant and valuable content. In addition, by identifying the right channels to reach your audience, an effective online presence is ensured, allowing brands to connect, convert and retain their customers effectively in the digital environment.
Next, we will go through each of these Cs in detail:
1) Consumer: who are you selling to and why do they buy?
I must know the user of my product or service from several points of view. Who is my most devoted consumer (champions), the one who can recommend my company? How do they consume my product, and why? As an example, beer companies like AB-Inbev or MillerCoors have a wide range of beers, not only because of the types of flavor but because they target different types of consumers and consumption occasions.
'Value' (low-cost) brands target the younger population with lower incomes, such as college students. Other brands target the 'blue-collar worker' (workers without a college degree). The same consumer may consider a brand suitable to drink at home during a soccer game, but when out at a bar on Saturday night, decide on a more expensive (premium) brand.
In the case of music, for example, a woman who works and has a family may be interested in a certain kind of music when she is thinking about her day and her job, and in other music when the day is over and she can relax for a few minutes.
2) Concept: what creative idea will make people recognize you?
Marketing is not simply making a brochure that explains the benefits or functionality of your product. Digital marketing allows for greater creativity and experiences. Within your annual or quarterly marketing plan, think about what actions you can take.
A clothing brand will have its actions for Mother's Day, summer seasonal collections, and so on. A home air conditioning and heating repair company has high and low seasons, and different concepts can be thought up for each. The CONCEPT involves generating creative ideas so that the CONSUMER you are targeting recognizes your brand, product or service.
As part of the concept, you can decide to create a blog, a video, a website, a game or app on Facebook or for smartphones, a frequent-user program, a contest, a partnership with celebrities, and so on. For example, many nonprofit organizations have chosen a concept of high-impact videos, in some cases with celebrities.
At InPulse we support brands at this stage with digital marketing strategy and creative for campaigns.
3) Content: how do you communicate your concept so it becomes a campaign, not just a product?
We very often see large and mid-sized companies skip steps 3 and 4 in planning, ending up with a product and not a campaign.
A product is a blog, website, app, etc. If this product, which came out of a creative concept, is not communicated correctly, it fails. Content planning is important to communicate the campaign, but it is also important to think about whether the concept allows you to generate the right content to communicate. As an example: it is known that on social media, users tend to share positive information.
Therefore, an NGO that is looking to solve a problem must find a way to engage the public in an emotional and positive way ("look what we can achieve with your support") and not in a negative way (sad message, statistics).
4) Communicate: why would people share your campaign and how do you drive traffic?
The word viral (and in particular viral video) causes a lot of confusion. The concept of viral gives the impression of implying a virality coefficient greater than 1, meaning that each person who engages shares it with more than 1 person, which makes it spread and communicate quickly. Studies by experts say that all cases of viral videos on the Internet have had a coefficient below 1.
In other words, the message has to be repeated multiple times. When 3 people recommend Gangnam Style to another person, or when the press (online, radio, TV) mentions it, we get virality. In real terms, to COMMUNICATE our CONCEPT we have to think about two things:
a) Is my concept going to be shared? Am I asking for, or giving, a good reason for the user to share it? If the answer is no, I have to ask myself: is it feasible to make a change to improve this virality coefficient? Sometimes a few minor changes or additions are enough to encourage the campaign to be shared. We must always keep in mind that what we ask of the user does not go against their digital alter ego (digital persona). Almost no user will do something that makes them 'look bad' in front of their peers on social media.
b) I must have an advertising budget (or an equivalent) to promote the campaign and drive traffic to it, whether it is a video, a site, a Facebook page or a mobile app. The goal is to generate traffic from the identified CONSUMER segment at the lowest possible cost. Generating low-cost traffic from a segment that is not interested in your product only creates noise and makes future actions harder.
If you need help planning that budget and driving traffic from the right segment, see our paid media service.
5) Count: how do you measure success and what do you optimize?
You have surely heard of Google Analytics or Facebook Insights. A great advantage of digital marketing is that it allows you to measure a great many things, in real time or near real time. A disadvantage is that there are so many variables and options that we must plan ahead and test that our measurement process works properly. The key is to define how the success of a campaign will be measured.
For example, whether it is by Likes on Facebook, visits to the site, purchases on an e-commerce site, new contacts, etc. Once we have defined what we are going to measure, we can optimize the campaign for that expected result. It often happens that at the start of a campaign the results are below expectations.
But one advantage of measuring correctly is that we can identify the underperforming points and make adjustments to improve them. A campaign is never performing optimally: we always have to keep measuring and optimizing.
To build your reports and measure everything in one place, see this guide to marketing dashboards in Looker Studio.
Our recommendation: start by planning with the 5 Cs
With hundreds of projects executed, at InPulse we have been evolving in how we analyze them. And a simple but powerful conclusion we have drawn is that projects that follow a plan and a methodology achieve better results. Thinking in terms of the 5 Cs of digital marketing lets you do a strategic validation of whether you have the most important elements of your campaign covered.
Our recommendation: if you don’t have a plan yet, write down 2 to 5 priorities for the year and check every campaign against the 5 Cs before you launch it; if you already have active campaigns, start with Count: define your success metric and optimize what you are not measuring today. Also meet our Hispanic marketing agency.
Frequently asked questions
What are the 5 Cs of digital marketing?
They are Consumer, Concept, Content, Communicate and Count, InPulse’s method to plan, run and measure a campaign. It helps you check that your plan covers the essentials: who you are talking to, which idea you use, which content communicates it, how it spreads and how it is measured.
What is the difference between a product and a campaign?
A product is a blog, a site or an app. It becomes a campaign when there is content to communicate it and a plan to bring traffic from the right consumer. Without that, the product fails even if the idea is good.
How do you measure the success of a digital campaign?
Define before launch what will count as success: leads, brand awareness, engagement, visits, purchases, new contacts. With that metric clear you can optimize, and you can confirm that measurement works before you start.
Is it normal for initial results to be low?
Yes. At the start, results are usually below what you expected. Measuring well lets you identify the low-performing points and adjust them; a campaign is never performing at its best.
Is a viral video enough for a campaign?
No. The idea that a video “goes viral on its own” is usually wrong; the message has to be repeated many times, an average of more than 10 times according to Google, and you need to give people a good reason to share it and a budget to promote it.
Want to know more? To work with or hire InPulse, contact us.
* President of InPulse Digital
