Sling-Shooting the Brand Experience In the Digital Domain

In today’s digital domain, there is a dizzying and ever-increasing array of channels to engage people through — Facebook, Twitter, Ad Sense, Youtube, et al. There are so many, in fact, that marketing professionals struggle to maintain consistent Brand messages and effectively reach their target audiences through the noise and variety of tactics.

However, to achieve the best results, we must take a step back and look at the big picture. Taken as a whole, the digital domain can be likened to a solar system.

Orbits of Commitment and Influence

At the center is the Brand itself, where the influence of the message is the strongest. Think of the Brand as the sun. As a principal body in this figurative solar system it has a certain amount of gravity (the ability to generate interest and attract prospects). And, like the sun, it’s influence gets weaker the farther away one is. This is represented as different levels of orbit proceeding from one (least engaged and aware) to three (directly engaged and most aware).

In this case, “distance” equals the level of commitment the prospect has to the Brand and “gravitational influence” is the strength of the Brand at that range to draw the person in to the third level of orbit where they engage with the organization directly. This could be manifested as a financial transaction, site visit, phone call or whatever else is the intended objective.

Now imagine planets moving along each of these three orbits of commitment and influence. The planets represent the various channels of Brand message communication — online advertising, micro blogging, social networks, etc. Distance matters at this level as well. The farther away a channel the higher the likelihood of attrition (people dawn off by competing messages, lack of interest, Brand confusion, fatigue and so on) while attempting to move a person along in their decision making trajectory to get them to the third and most direct level of engagement. Three has been selected as the optimum number of tactical steps to move a prospect towards a direct engagement while addressing such factors as the five stages of customer engagement.

It should be noted that the orbits of the tactics in the diagram above are based on a general measurement of the depth and personalization of the Brand message of each channel. In reality, specific channel placement will vary depending on the Brand, market and intended engagement objectives. However, the distances shown between channel and Brand illustrate why many single-faceted marketing strategies that depend on simple one-to-many advertising tactics alone can fail or lead to limited results. One must synchronize a series of different channels to increase the probability of successful prospect acquisition.

The Sling-Shooting Method

Traveling great distances efficiently can be a problem. Russian aerospace scientists had a similar issue when attempting to send the Luna 3 probe to the far side of Earth’s moon. In 1959, they used a method called “gravity assist” (or gravitational slingshot) to accomplish this. Using the gravity of a nearby celestial body (in this case, the moon itself), they propelled the probe through space, successfully delivering it to its destination with a minimal expenditure of fuel resources.

Similarly, great distances in a Brand engagement sequence are best divided into smaller ones by aligning a series of channels to form a cohesive and progressive message. By sling-shooting the prospect from one messaging point to the next they are able to follow their own decision-making trajectory to a direct engagement with the most efficient expenditure of resources and the highest probability of engagement (as shown in the diagram below). In actuality, it’s ideal to plot several different routes to account for subtle differences in the decision-making trajectory of each prospect.

This trajectory is the Relational Line of Logic. Once a person starts asking questions they are, in effect, making little commitments that grow larger over time. With each round of query they’re investing more time in further qualifying the Brand’s fitness. Therefore, each stage of the journey should provide additional insight, answering what’s asked and avoiding overburdening the prospect with too much information. The goal is to keep them asking questions long enough to start making (preferably accurate) assumptions that jump them to the next level of commitment. Once the prospect has achieved either a prerequisite level of understanding or has committed the prerequisite amount of time, the Brand has, in effect, drawn them close enough to their core level of influence to dramatically increase the probability of achieving the Brand objective (whatever that may be).

What does that mean? In practical terms:

• Tell a cohesive story. A Brand message is like a trail of breads crumbs. Don’t make it so complicated that the audience loses the plot. Throughout all three realms of influence keep the story concise, consistent and easy to follow. One leg of the messaging journey should logically (and naturally) open the way for the next. For example, if the ad message is about “aspiring to greatness,” then the website landing page should build on that theme in more detail.
• Don’t give it all away. In the early stages, most prospects don’t actually want to read tomes on a Brand or company. String them along a little. Give them brief tastes of the story. Most importantly, each time leave them with a burning question. If they’re interested they’ll return for more, creating additional opportunities to enrich their understanding in successive rounds of contact. Too much information at too early a stage is almost certain to scare them off … or worse, bore them.
• Let the message fit the channel. Each channel is good for attracting a certain range of individual (demographically and psychographically) with a specific range of interests and therefore should be selected based on the overarching goals of the online engagement. That means, for instance, don’t distribute coupons aimed at mommy bloggers on a social networking platform where the typical user is a marketing professional who prefers posts on professional insight.