The Noble Eightfold Path to Digital Marketing.

I orig­i­nally posted this when I was doing a lot of con­sult­ing work with smaller mar­keters who had less dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence. I think it holds true for the big fish as well.

That said, it’s one of the only blog posts that I think res­onates or has any value any­more, con­sid­er­ing it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged.

Frankly, keep­ing old blog posts up for­ever just to prove you’ve been pon­tif­i­cat­ing for awhile is not–in my opinion–something for which you should be honored.

That’s why the Inter­net isn’t made of paper. It is mutable.

Delete is bodhisattva.

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I con­sider myself to be very spir­i­tual, yet I’ve never brought my inner life to my work, as what I do for a liv­ing is con­sult with busi­nesses that want to improve their rela­tion­ships with their cus­tomers, and sell more goods and services.

Yet it occurred to me that by apply­ing Gau­tama Buddha’s Noble Eight­fold Path when you are devel­op­ing your go-to-market plan for your dig­i­tal pres­ence, you just might find your own lit­tle nir­vana. Allow me to illustrate.

Some Con­text

First, for those who might not be famil­iar with Bud­dhism, here’s a quick primer.

The Gau­tama Bud­dha is con­sid­ered to be the key fig­ure in Bud­dhism. He founded it. He was the Supreme Bud­dha. And since he was first, he should have that title. I’d take it. In any event, once he became an ascetic, and became enlight­ened, he divulged his teach­ings to his monks.

The basic jist was that there are Four Noble Truths which explain that life is suf­fer­ing; what the nature of suf­fer­ing is; what the ori­gin of suf­fer­ing is; and how to get rid of it. Get­ting rid of suf­fer­ing means fol­low­ing the Noble Eight­fold Path or more sim­ply: The Way. The eight steps in this path to enlightenment–and con­se­quently an end to suffering–in order, are: right view, right inten­tion, right speech, right action, right liveli­hood, right effort, right mind­ful­ness, right concentration.

Enough of the spir­i­tual coach­ing. If you are inter­ested in explor­ing Bud­dhism fur­ther, I rec­om­mend A Bud­dhist Bible

The Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Way

Let me take each of the Eight­fold Path steps, and pro­vide con­text around how it applies to mar­keters who are inter­ested in exe­cut­ing effec­tive dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions (and this includes that now nearly gag-inducing phrase, “social media”).

1. Right View. Trans­la­tion: this ain’t tele­vi­sion or radio, and it ain’t the 1950’s. Audi­ences have never been more splin­tered, and mar­keters either have to spend a lot more money get­ting their ads onto every con­ceiv­able dig­i­tal chan­nel that’s got an audience–which is finan­cially impos­si­ble, even for Microsoft–or, they have to get a lot more savvy about where they are plac­ing their mar­ket­ing mes­sages. They might even want to think about dif­fer­ent ways to deliver messaging.

2. Right Inten­tion. As audi­ences are show­ing their over­whelm­ing pref­er­ences against inter­rup­tive expe­ri­ences, and for expe­ri­ences where they can con­trol the types of adver­tis­ing they see, that means one thing to mar­keters: don’t mis­rep­re­sent your­self. You’ll be clob­bered for it.

3. Right Speech. This ties directly into num­ber two. As you do begin to com­mu­ni­cate with prospec­tive cus­tomers in the dig­i­tal space, you have to craft your mes­sag­ing dif­fer­ently. Just slap­ping up a ban­ner ad doesn’t work. In fact, it’s recently been shown that almost 50% of U.S. Inter­net users ignore ban­ner adver­tis­ing (source). Find ways (using social media is one) to con­verse with your prospects, and not sell to them. It seems un-intuitive, but it works.

4. Right Action. The Inter­net has taken mar­ket­ing to new lev­els because of its abil­ity to enable peo­ple to take action while they are con­sum­ing your mes­sage or con­tent. Make sure you pro­vide the abil­ity for a prospect to become a cus­tomer in a way that’s easy, intu­itive and fun.

5. Right Liveli­hood. Your busi­ness does one thing well that makes it money. Make sure that you fig­ure out how to do that thing well online. Mean­ing, if you sell linen laun­dry ser­vices to restau­rants and hotels, maybe putting up a Face­book page isn’t all that con­ducive to grow­ing your business.

6. Right Effort. Sim­i­lar to Right Liveli­hood, you need to focus your efforts on devel­op­ing expe­ri­ences or com­mu­ni­ca­tion plans online that achieve your busi­ness objec­tives. If your pri­mary busi­ness objec­tive is to sell comic books, ban­ner ads are likely not going to be a very smart invest­ment for you. Both because of what I men­tioned ear­lier in this post (nobody reads them), and because the unit prices of comic books are too low to jus­tify expen­di­tures whose goal it is to max­i­mize reach online. It’s burn­ing money.

7. Right Mind­ful­ness. This one is the hard­est for peo­ple who didn’t grow up with the Inter­net as a tool. But it’s not impos­si­ble. I didn’t have the Inter­net either grow­ing up. And no, I’m not telling you my age. Suf­fice to say, if you spend a lit­tle time online, sign­ing up for a few newslet­ters, social media net­works, etcetera, you’ll get the hang of it.

As I alluded to, get­ting the mind­ful­ness down with regard to dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is about let­ting go of your pre­con­cep­tions or habits, and allow­ing your­self to really see what unique and inno­v­a­tive ways there are to mar­ket your busi­ness online. It is pos­si­ble to gain an innate under­stand­ing of the mar­ket­place and oppor­tu­ni­ties here. You just have to remain open to it.

A good sug­ges­tion for doing this is: if you have an employee who is young, and con­sid­ers them­selves savvy about the Inter­net, ask them for ideas about how you might mar­ket your­self online. I’ll bet you’ll be sur­prised to find out they have some amaz­ing insights that can directly ben­e­fit your business.

8. Right Con­cen­tra­tion. Another chal­leng­ing step on the path of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, but one worth tak­ing. A lot of the efforts you make at first are not going to give you imme­di­ate growth. You have to earn some cred­i­bil­ity. And to do that, you need to con­cen­trate on devel­op­ing your mes­sag­ing over time.

Find out where your prospects hang out. Lis­ten to what they’re say­ing about you, or your com­peti­tors. Watch what your com­peti­tors are doing. It’s a lot of work, but it will help bring some per­spec­tive to your spe­cific cat­e­gory and busi­ness objec­tive online.

I hope these insights help your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing efforts, and bring suc­cess to you and your business.