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DIGITAL COMMUNICATION SERVICES

Thinking Differently
About Digital Marketing:
Thought Leadership Beyond Acquisition

Francesca Brosan, Chairman,

Omobono Limited.
January 2010

OMOBONO
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Time to start thinking differently about
digital marketing
Retaining the
relationships you acquire
OMOBONO LTD, THE WAREHOUSE, 33 BRIDGE STREET, CAMBRIDGE CB2 1UW, UK
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2009 was the year in which marketers
accepted the fact that digital was a central
pillar of their marketing activities rather
than a nice to have, as online advertising
expenditure grew 4.6% to £1.75 billion,
overtaking TV for the first time. Finally, ‘new’
media was centre stage.
The majority of the spend however, and
certainly the reporting of it, focuses on
acquisition. Marketers have transitioned
their activities from offline advertising to
online advertising and are now seeking
ways in which to use social media to, well,
advertise – despite the fact that that’s not
how the medium seems to work.
The obsessive focus by marketers on
acquisition makes less sense in the current
climate however. For a start, markets
are retracting, making the retention of
customers an essential exercise. Secondly,
customers are more likely to be influenced
by what peers say about product or service
on a social networking site than by an ad,
and never more so than in B2B decision
making where advertising has always
hovered around a mere 15% of marketing
spend.
In addition, for many businesses the 80/20
rule applies. The opportunity not just to
retain your business but to grow it is more
likely to come from people you know
well. Here the game is not about creating
awareness but about creating preference.
This is where digital really comes into its
own. Preference is not about liking an ad,
but about having a really good experience.
Experience is ultimately what drives your
choice of business partner. Digital is adept
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at building the experience around the
product. In service markets it is actually
an integral part of the product. As Will
Harris, Marketing Director of Nokia put it
at the Marketing Society 50th Anniversary
Conference (a lot of good sense talked
there), “Customers will be interested in
corporations who are doing things, not
brands who are saying things.”
Although Marketing control of websites has
been growing and they have moved from
static, IT driven brochureware to adopt
the full panoply of web 2.0 features they
are still primarily promotional tools. They
don’t do things, and are therefore, arguably,
peripheral to creating preference.
Digital’s real power is to reinforce the
relationships which surround and influence
customer preference.
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that
relationships drive business. As Hakasson
& Ford put it:
“The overall
performance of
a company will
depend on how
well they are able
to manage their
own relationships.” 1

Shifting the focus of But it’s surprising how little work has been
done on how business relationships impact
each relationship
on each other, and on the bottom line.
A study conducted for Omobono, the
digital communication services company,
2
by Judge Business School in 2009
focused on this specifically and highlighted
some important issues for marketers who
are looking to use digital as more than an
acquisition tool.
Omobono’s research showed that
although relationships gel around four
key areas – internal, suppliers, customers
and external stakeholders – the relational
focus shifts, depending on the business.
What also emerged is that relationships
are interdependent. So secondary
relationships have significant impacts on
the organisations ability to deliver to its
customers.
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Service businesses for example, focus
on building relationships with their end
customer. But in truth, as knowledge is
the fundamental source of competitive
advantage for service organisations, the
need to share information across the
company is also paramount. Another
example is the influence of the regulator on
customer relationships. Whilst one part of
the organisation is focused on improving it,
another is in the process of dismantling it.
All of which means that the new place
for marketing is as much internal as it
is external. They need move out of the
promotional corner in which they have
been painted to partner sales and service
delivery teams. Their skills are ideally
suited to improving not just the promotion
of a product or service but the delivery
experience.
Source: Morgan, R.M. and Hunt, D.H. (1994) 3

Jeremy Bullmore backed up the point in
his video input at the Marketing Society
Conference. As he put it (succinctly, as
always). “Marketers need to get back
to being obsessive about products and
services. Forget about the gloss, just do
good stuff.” In digital terms it’s not about
doing better, cleverer web 2,0 promotional
stuff. It’s about using the medium to
enhance business relationships and to drive
maximum value from them.
The good news is that the wiring is already
in place. We have the internet, intranets,
extranets and e-commerce sites. We
have CRM systems and email. We fire
messages down the wires with alarming
regularity. What is telling is how responses
emails vary directly in accordance with
the strength of the relationship. As
demonstrated by the chart below, the
stronger the relationship, the higher the
response levels. An argument begins to
emerge that investing in the tools which
build a relationships, is an exercise which
can pay off financially.
Email Response Levels from Financial and Service industries
Source: Omobono/Marketwatch 2008/9
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As Accenture4 puts it, “Our research
shows, providing a consistent, differentiated
customer experience has the most
impact on customer loyalty, which in turn
contributes to growth, profitability and
shareholder value.”
Which gets us back to the original point.
Digital has come of age. But using it simply
as another acquisition tool is missing a
trick. It’s an essential part of retention. Not
as a clever comms tool but as part of the
actual service delivery. Marketers who think
like this, spend their time developing added
value services which can be delivered down
the line, using the medium to enhance off
line delivery to build relationships.
Judging from the media coverage, it’s
an approach that not many people have
yet tapped into. But, as the Omobono/
Judge Business School research showed,
marketers who do adopt this thinking are in
a position to create commercial advantage
for their organisation.
For further information on how digital
can be used to enhance Enterprise
Relationships go to www.omobono.co.uk/
knowledgebase

Acknowledgements
1. Journal of Business Research, (55(2), 133,
2002)
2. Research into Enterprise Relationship
Management, a concept developed by
Omobono Limtied, was conducted by
students on the MBA programme between
July and November 2009. Findings are
based on depth interviews with senior
management in a range of industries
including financial and professional services,
manufacturing, energy, transport and
logistics, law, IT and public sector.
3. Morgan, R.M. and Hunt, D.H. (1994) “The
Commitment-Trust Theory of
4. Relationship Marketing”, Journal of
Marketing, Vol.58 (July 1994), 20-38.
5. Accenture, “Marketing mastery matters”.
Outlook 2006, Number 2.
OMOBONO LTD, THE WAREHOUSE, 33 BRIDGE STREET, CAMBRIDGE CB2 1UW, UK
T +44 (0)1223 307000 | F +44 (0)1223 365167
info@omobono.co.uk | www.omobono.co.uk
CONNECT info@omobono.co.uk
Relationships drive your business.
We drive your relationships.
ERM® helps world class organisations drive
value from their business relationships by
examining the ways they interact with their
customers, partners and staff; and how that
is measured to help achieve organisational
goals, deliver to customers and create mutual
value. We look largely at the contribution online
technologies can play, and how companies can
maximise value from the infrastructure put in
place over the past 5 – 10 years. By exploring
alternative approaches to improving B2B
marketing effectiveness, ERM enables us to think
about marketing differently, to put it back to its
original place; where marketing has a meaning
and purpose beyond communication and
becomes a business essential, not a business
expense.
Francesca Brosan is Chairman and Founder of
Omobono Limited, the digital communications
services company. A former Board Director
of WCRS, her career has spanned consumer
advertising, PR, live events and digital. She
now focuses on B2B strategy for the agencies
corporate and public sector clients. Francesca
is the author of 3 IPA Advertising Effectiveness
Awards and is a regular speaker and contributor
to marketing forums.
uk.linkedin.com/in/francescabrosan