Hello Internet Marketers! I've been promising this interview for some time now and it's finally here. It's not due to anything other than Rok being such a busy guy and not only that, he's a great guy! I hope you enjoy this very informative and in depth interview with marketing expert Rok Hrastnik!
KB: Hello Rok, and thank you for taking the time out to talk with us today. To get us started, would you please tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
RH: Hello Kim, and thank you for inviting me, it's an honor. I'm a marketing consultant specializing in informational approaches to marketing, internet marketing models and processes, and direct branding.
Yeah, sounds complicated, right?
When I say informational approaches to marketing I basically mean three things:
- marketing using relevant information (content delivery),
- attaining relevant information about your prospects and customers (information acquisition and analysis),
- using that information to increase the success of your entire marketing mix (information application).
This is more or less marketing the way most of us are practicing it on the internet.
Now add marketing models and processes to the mix. Every marketing goal can be achieved through multiple marketing models that can have any amount of specific processes attached to them. Each element of the process represents one step for the prospect, one step to bringing him or her further to our company and to loyalty.
The problem with most marketing strategies is that they isolate certain elements of these processes to create individual campaigns that rarely really work together to help advance the entire marketing initiative. My approach on the other hand involves constant and planned management of the relationship with an individual prospect. And I'm not talking about customer relationship management here, but something a lot more process oriented.
Imagine the fact that every interaction you have with a prospect, be it on your web site, through traditional media or personal contact, presents an element in your marketing process. Every single interaction. Considering your individual marketing strategy, even each consecutive visit to your web site might be considered a new interaction.
Process oriented relationship management plans the entire scope of such interactions, providing exact tools and goals for each interaction that bring the prospect closer to your and naturally his goal. The point is to plan every interaction and all the steps that follow it.
Doing this not only allows you to increase your marketing results, but also to precisely measure how good you are at each element and at what interactions you could perform better.
The third area I specialize in is direct branding, which simply focuses on uniting response-oriented direct marketing activities with brand building activities. Each marketing act becomes a branding act, and each branding act becomes a direct response tool.
But the bottom line is, I'm a marketer by heart and as such serve my clients to provide them with profitable marketing solutions that satisfy them and their own customers.
I recently started working with Studio Moderna, the largest Central and Eastern European direct marketing company, as their E-commerce Manager, with the task of developing an integrated internet marketing model that they will be able to use in 18 CEE countries.
I started with Studio Moderna after leaving the business daily Finance, after working with them for almost a year and a half, helping them turn their internet department in to one of the most profitable traditional media internet departments in the European Union.
Before that I was doing regular consulting for a variety of businesses (such as Iskratel, a global telecommunications solution provider for telecom companies) and even co-founded a personal assets management company (sold it quite some time ago).
In addition to my consulting work I'm also a regular speaker at marketing events in Slovenia (over 35 speaking sessions by now) and like to write a little something now and then.
If you'd like to know more head on to my
http://www.marketingstudies.net web site where I share hard data and reports on my marketing activities, including my failures and what you can learn from them. I'm focusing quite heavily on RSS at the moment, since I do believe it has strong potential as a sophisticated content delivery tool.
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