GOING DEEPER INTO DIGITAL:

DEVELOPING A DIGITAL BUSINESS

WHO THE HELL IS ANDREW WALKER?

• Easy Answer: Not a trainer

• Practicioner works better…

• The purpose of today’s workshop

• The practical outcome (mwa ha ha)

• The input you’ll need to make

• There are only wrong answers (That’s a scientific fact…)

Developing a Digital Business(Who wants any easy life anyway?)

– Digital Business Mission Statement

“Digital businesses rarely exit through the same door they

used to come in.”

Knowing Your Domain

– Style Research UK

“Oh yeah, you’re the tweet guy.”

Domain = Digexistential Angst?

• Change your thinking: You don’t define the audience, they define you.

• You’re only an expert within your domain. Outside it, you’re a schmuck.

• You need to know your domain and build a strategy that is domain specific.

• Twitter is a great domain mining tool. Lousy for sales but great for data insights…

• NB: you don’t have a great idea for a <insert the thing you’re copying here>

• Typical Domain mismatch…

Look at this event company feed: is their domain finance community or…?

(clue is in the pic)

Domain Mining / Insight• This is the most constructive thing you can do with Twitter...

• Tools: IFTTT.com / Hashtagify.me / Feedly.com / Yahoo.pipes Use the tools to automate a snapshot of your percieved domain, then match it back to your digital presence – is that your target market (or even a market?)

• Is there a domain mismatch between what you do and user interests – “climate change” is a good example.

• Is there a client domain / public domain clash? (Tweetminster was… what? A media utility? A newsfeed dashboard? Twitter Politics or just generic “news”?)

• Get a handle on where your domain is headed…

Digital USP?

(no… UBR counts)

– Ake Ødin

“The only thing that makes you unique is the fact you’re not actually a clone of another

human being. The rest is ego.”

Unique Brand Relationship (UBR)

• USP in a digital business is often ‘under the hood’ differentiation -can be a source of negative differentiatiation

• Brand loyalty doesn’t exist online You lack the advantages of real world marketing / point of sales to express USP & build loyalty

• The crowd is a self-selecting audience is not a marketplace

• Consider the way you build connections – corporate level is hard, interpersonal is easier

• UBR isn’t always a public conversation (USP is broadcast logic) think Beta community building

Adopting a UBR strategy• Everyone in the company is in marketing and own a client

base

• Tools: Use analytics effectively – Kissmetrics / Leadforensics / Active Campaign – tools that analyse page peformance, user behaviour and enable automated action point contact around user events

• Capture data and commit to analytical approach - it’s a job, not a project.

• Consider using tech to enhance customer experience – e.g. Rainbird AI

Routes to market?

(Think paid, act organic)

– Conventional digital wisdom

“The essence of digital marketing is shifting costs from

your bottom line into other people’s free time.”

– Me

“The essence of digital marketing is stop spending

money on marketing and spend it on content or targeted

Facebook ads, possibly both.”

Routes to market 2.0

• There is no discreet market online, you need identify it through a multidisciplinary approach – metrics, content, multiplatform presence

• Don’t be fooled by people who sell social media services (esp. training), inbound marketing, sponsorship, SEO, Google Ads (etc.) Each case is different.

• Is your marketing ROI dependent or not? Make a choice.

• Consider integrating marketing into your development process from design to delivery – grow a pre-crowd.

• Market to individuals not a marketplace (subscription economics)

• Partnerships are good for PR, bad for business – encourage de-focusing

Practical routes to market• Cross post content – re-use – manage a cross-platform

presence

• “Cutting room floor” approach (or selling broken biscuits)

• Be realistic about your content potential, build beta communities/clubs if “too niche” - you can’t be too niche, btw.

• “Curate” for bums on seats – but don’t expect traction

• Pay to boost visibility of posts, pay for highly targeted ads, don’t pay for generics, sponsorships or ‘native ads’ – they’re geared up for established businesses (and even then they don’t work)

• Consider reward crowdfunding for pre-orders, equity crowdfunding for expansion capital

Positioning

(A self referencing paradox)

– Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“Some like to believe it’s the book that chooses the person.”

Positioning is all art, no science

• “Geek Squad” started as a deliberately ‘geek chic’ brand.

Now look at it. Badly dated, associated with something that feels like an irritating phone scam…

Monetisation of ideas?

(In digital domains, ideas are assets)

– Nicholas Negroponte (Paraphrased, badly)

“Computers aren’t good at drawing smooth curves, so computer based graphic

designers need to make hard lines cool”

Monestisation? Really…

• Most digital businesses don’t monetise easily… why?

• Simple answer: Because everything on the internet is free.

• Complex answer: Because our purchasing decisions are affected by distributed social decision making – crowd wisdom is indistinguishable from herd mentality

• You need a strategy that monetises all your assets (less obvious than you think… APIs, data, customer’s social network presence – like AirBnB media ownership)

• Digital customer has a lifetime value, physical customers don’t (subscription economics, again)

• Consider R&D as investment in monetisation programme, not a luxury

Practical monetisation• Freemium models – effective & established (Buffer, Feedly,

Hootsuite, Apps, reports & delivery – part of the commercial ecosystem)

• Freemium requires meaningful free services = bottom line costs (infrastructure & community management) vs. conversion factor

• AVOID “get users first” approach – been there, Zuckerberg’d that

• Successful models emerging – Zuora’s BRM model for enterprise, works for start-ups too…

• Use Monetisation goals to define product development & build offers around most convertible users with data.

• Don’t expect JVs or partnerships to monetise in your favour – client equality is the only reliable approach

Scaling a digital business

(growing pains are a natural part of life’s journey)

– Cynical Shoreditch Burnout (er… me)

“The best thing about digital business is the ability to scale.

Ego scales best, closely followed by cost and disappointment.”

The Scaling S-words

• Sustainability: Your operations need this – social media a prime example, think automation first.

• Sources: Open source platforms, agile methodologies and APIs don’t always scale.

• Suppliers: Third parties rarely scale the way you need them to – applies to offices, service providers, salaries etc.

• Staff: Scaling is an emotional journey, not everyone can handle it

• Supply: Digital businesses scale best when leveraging supply side economics, not just meeting demand

• Small: Is scaling really something you need to worry about? It can be the wrong goal…

Which S-word is the most important?

Staff.

Right… your turn ;)