Life in a digital marketing agency gives me the opportunity to see how a lot of different businesses are approaching their marketing. Altogether, it feels sometimes like they are stuck in a Mad Men time warp where the decisions about why their company is awesome are completely divorced from who they really are as a company.
They seem to be at a loss at why they are special, or what makes them different. And they are only focused on the product. So listen up businesses and marketing departments! People like feeling connected to the companies they are supporting/spending money with. One client of mine has a boutique where he sells unique items, and he has a story behind many of them - get it out there digitally and that's a win. I had another client that had a data center, and their marketing department had no idea of the odd-ball, top notch tech team they had actually doing the work that made the company money. Therefore, they couldn't convert their true flavor into their website and marketing. Tech nerds love talking to tech nerds, but they couldn't figure that out and their marketing floundered. These nuances are what make companies different from one another. These little quirks are something to be fostered, and embraced in the corporate culture. They give a company the extra bit that makes them irreplaceable for their customer base. So anyone who is working on branding themselves in the digital space would do well to understand the pulse of their company first. What is the flavor of the company? What do you stand for? How are you always helping your customer while setting yourself apart? What do you really value? Warning - if it's really just about bottom lines and gross margins... you're going to have a really tough time.
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It’s a common idea that the website is the hub of all digital marketing activity. I happen to agree – making the website work it’s best to convert visitors into customers is certainly very high on list of important parts of marketing a business online. But it’s not the foundation. The foundation is the Digital Market Research that provides the back bone for the website structure and content, and the messaging for campaigns. Digital Market Research is the foundation of the whole Digital Brand Presence. This is where the target audience is developed, and their internet usage and buying behaviors are identified. This is where the keyword themes for the website are uncovered, and the conversion paths are determined. Bust most important – this is where the audience pain points and differentiators from digital competitors are established.
Without this initial research, site maps will meander, pathways to collect leads will be inaccessible, and the impact of the brand’s offering will likely get lost in a sea of way to much information. Did I mention it’s all about audience? Once this piece is completed, the website can be built. This includes not just the lead conversion paths and SEO content, but also the establishment of the email database. It is imperative that every visitor that willingly submits an email to become a part of the nurture campaign that will be built later. After the website comes more content development, this time as items that will add more resources to the website for potential customers to review, and will also be used in the next phase: unpaid content distribution. The very last part is introducing paid channels into the content distribution and lead generation campaigns. Naturally, there is more details for each part of this pyramid, but keep this close when developing your digital strategy as a guideline for where to spend time in this year’s marketing plans. |
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