What Side of Digital Marketing History Will You Be On?
- Updated on: 2019-02-26
- Read original article here
As a social media entrepreneur and technology innovation consultant it’s my role to work at coalface of digital transformation. From small business, enterprises and start-ups I am exposed to the guts of an organisation integrating it’s digital capability to sales growth.
Today as Head of Digital at a technology investment fund one thing has become very clear.
Digital marketing competency is one of the last bastions of adoption and investment for most businesses. 2018 highlighted where the average business is on the adoption curve of digital marketing and media management.
In Australia, it’s far below where we need to be.
This article is my guide of what businesses can do, the leadership teams in particular to enhance their performance in digital marketing.
Looking back to add context, some game-changing moments are the first sale of the web banner ad in ’93, emails mainstream commercialisation in ’94, Google’s SEO birth in ’98 and social media’s rise in 2002.
Like any good perception altering awakening there can be a mix of confrontation, excitement and perhaps denial about getting to grips with a new worldview.
2018 was the graceful end for businesses sticking their heads in the sand.
The noise not to act became too loud. Digital marketing is no longer an optional ‘nice to have’, it’s now a necessity. Data yesterday is revenue today and tomorrow’s client.
In 2018 the rolling snowball of digital marketing hit home to the average business owner. Larger organisations and their leadership teams at this point in time can manage to pass the task and ownership to the marketing department. Small business owners unfortunately cannot silo of such a responsibility.
Businesses today must bake digital marketing (in-house or outsourced) into the core of their business DNA from operations to culture. Evolving from having a core focus on their products and/or services to now infusing media management.
The race is on for businesses big and small to have their digital marketing house in order.
The road ahead is going to be a crazy morphing marketing world to the likes we have never seen. There is something incredibly powerful about taking a stoic approach to this.
By that I mean, committing to the long tumultuous and never ending pain and gain with a positive perspective. Constant learning, self improvement and courageously redefining the approaches to what is not working.
Critical thinking is now a key for any business in today’s innovate or die culture. Yet many business are still at a loss on how to adjust to this new reality. Are you asking the right questions? Are you even asking questions?
At the start of 2018 Australia came in to top the rankings of the highest cost per digital ad spend user in the world. Businesses big and small have continued to invest heavily for the online engagement of Australian consumers in a pay and spray frenzy.
Although driving costs up, few enterprises have adequately prepared themselves for running, maintaining and taking ownership of an effective long-term digital marketing, PR and publishing strategy.
2018 has shown us that while new and emerging technologies, agencies and start-ups aim to take the headache out of an increasingly fractured digital marketing world the fact remains the responsibility can’t be passed down.
In particular the leadership team has the sole responsibility to drive growth and building a culture of increasing capability. Now more than ever, because winter is coming…
[Read through this article to hear how best to prepare yourself.]
The vast majority of the market is still getting to grips with the last 5 years of digital capabilities while very few are on the front foot and tripling down while they can. There is a window of opportunity in social media in particular, a land grab if you will, and it is slowly closing over the next 3–5 years.
Organic reach on platforms like Instagram will go away and when corporate Australia wakes up from being asleep behind the wheel the prices will skyrocket.
After looking under the hood of countless businesses, the fact remains that success in digital is as much about finding your appropriate marketing mix.
Any marketer knows that this means knowing your market and taking the time to test and refine your brand’s message. While taking the wins when you can and cutting losses early. Some of the most successful campaigns I have seen apply this mantra, as unethical as it may sound:
The average business owner is not Tai Lopez, Gary V, Marie Forleo, Kerwin Rae or one of the many personal branded digital marketing magicians now appearing on the social feeds. The fact is that even these ‘leaders’ are figuring it out on the fly and spending good money to do so.
Taking full advantage of the market hesitation to ruthlessly test, innovate and commit to constant optimisation. Leaving no stone unturned and taking no prisoners.
Very successful e-commerce companies I know of are literally going Hail Mary on Facebook advertising, spending everything they have on ads. A make or break scenario and they are confident to do that knowing they have their marketing mix right. Combined with having a team that can call the plays on cutting losses and feeding the runners.
With digital marketing set to get even more complicated and expensive there are also so many opportunities.
In order to have high performance and success in digital marketing it’s critical to have skill and ever-increasing capability in each of it’s areas.
Breaking out of the technology and media labyrinth is much easier if a business applies the following principles.
1. Map out a measureable strategy: Outline the objectives, the ideal customer segment, and what ROI value you are allocating to this initiative.
2. Develop and support a powerful website: This is the engine room of your entire operation. Keep it working through;
a) clear and concise information on what you do
b) a resource centre (blog) where you pour forth all of your potent, useful, insightful and free business collateral that enlightens consumers with your expertise. When in doubt, give more. Demonstrate your authority, ruthlessly.
3. Harness more traffic: The greater the traffic to your website the great the possibility of converting those eyeballs into qualified leads. A blog can enhance your traffic by 55%, so ensure your website is SEO optimised and the blog articles are back linked.
4. Funnel traffic into leads: The secret sauce in dialling in on a prospective client is simplicity and personalisation. So ensure to contextualise their experience via a landing page and hone in on one core objective. Make it easy for them.
5. Funnel leads into sales: Identify, categorise and softly nurture your prospective clients until they reach the tipping point and convert into a paying customer. There is no set time for this. Stay front of centre with them by continuing to converse with them as you start to track and understand what they are engaging with. Build up the intelligence and engagement trip wires, if it’s email campaigns or Facebook video re-marketing figure out what works for your business. This will pay off in the long run.
6. Measure, Measure, Measure: This may be the tough end of the whole process but it is where champions are made. Figure out your key performance indicators (e-book downloads, sign ups etc.) and build from there. Utilise the software (Heap, Mixpanel, KISSmetrics) that allows you to create reports so you have visibility on your progress.
If you or your team aren’t already on top and very familiar with implementing any of these points listed don’t fret it, you are one of many.
Becoming user engagement and acquisition literate across the current array of search and social channels is one way to tackle this pressing business mechanic head on. It is an investment in the longterm resilience of your core business unit.
As is talent acquisition, which recently interpretative expertise through team members hungry to make the most of every cent, let alone dollar spent.
A report outlined in The Left Bank.edu on employment demand for digital marketing skills, titled ‘2018 Marketing Hiring Trends’. The report mentioned that 69% of companies planned to hire more marketers in 2018 in order to cater for demand. At a rate that has outstripped supply. With the primary focus being digital advertising (45%), content creation and curation (42%) and content strategy (39%).
Developing expertise in each of these arenas takes time with the nuisances of working in particular market verticals and demographics being their own realm of expertise.
For the average all round swiss-army-knife of a marketer firefighting daily to crack the matrix of their CPM, CPC, CPL and CPA the pressure is on. Having personally been responsible for hiring teams that look good on resume and have a track record when placed under significant campaign pressure some buckle.
The costs can de disastrous and despite wishing to think that one person or a group of people can fill the gap in deploying against achieving a strategic plan sometimes they fail. Especially when significant cash and time pressures are applied, people are still people and no bit of data can show you that.
People are people. Skills are an investment and a resource and by supporting the learning journey involved to acquire them you make an environment where people feel comfortable to fail. Failing is learning.
Marketers are always searching for the secret sauce to effective growth hacking, lean generation, email campaigning and social media management. Testing, learning and applying takes time and energy and an experienced marketer knows that ‘everything that glitters is not gold’.
Nature of the Beast — in-house or outsourced
With the focus now on online engagement demand for specialised and the rare ‘all round’ digital marketing gurus and ‘growth hackers’ is at an all time high. Many enterprises now incur hefty operational expenditure for having these growth focused wizards as part of the team.
With the scale of skill level varying, as can be seen with every new LinkedIn member born after 1990 adding ‘growth hacker’ to their skill set it can become hard to find the right mix, for the right price, especially in an undersupplied market. The alternative is the outsourcing route to agency land, often at a premium.
In what can only be described as a modern Gold Rush many agencies have had to walk a tightrope of ethics, with most charging high margins for the mystic and mystery associated with managing your social and search.
Made worse by a few horror stories of business that churn and pull the plug on ongoing services to then have the agency withhold all of the data gathered throughout the period of their campaigns engagement. A loop hole because the campaigns had been run on the agencies ad account not the brands...
Perhaps the most valuable intellectual property of a business today are the coffers of it’s digital marketing data.
Behind the scenes marketing professionals and businesses alike are grappling at the reigns of what has fast become a multi-channelled behemoth — consuming vast amounts of time, cost and energy.
There is no silver bullet or magic pill to the algorithms of the tech monoliths consumers have come to set their eyes while online. The fact remains that the vast majority of Australian businesses are sorely unprepared at dealing with the scope of work required to bridge the marketing chasm.
Yet, Australian’s are spending more than half of their advertising budgets to online digital advertising.
There are two quotes that capture the feeling and attitude of how to approach this unique challenge and opportunity in riding through the pandemonium of digital marketing successfully. One is by our fellow start-up noble Eric Ries of which you may already know; ‘success can be engineered following the right process’.
After attending Sydney’s Growth Hacking Meetup run by Dan Siepen and hosted by Freelancer and StartCon it’s this exact quote that Sydney’s own GlamCorner, it’s co-founder Dean Jones and their chief growth marketer Albert Mai attributed as their mantra for success.
ClamCorner facilitates the rental and return of high end fashion items, solving not only an ecological problem of the waste associated with the fashion industry but also the dire problem every women knows when they can’t find the right item to wear. What started as a basic management of an asset class has now turned into a data and machine learning beast, with extensive year on year growth.
Mai attributed the success of his data science approach to calculated testing, pinpointing, optimising and triple downing on the strategies that are delivering results. It’s clear that the more you do, the more you know.
Mai also acknowledged that setting the company’s rhythm to continuous improvement was the core of the business’ operational and end to end marketing strategy. If success leaves clues then these are the golden three to follow:
1. Set Objectives — People like goals to stretch to
While many organisations are now waking up to the fact that continuous learning of online engagement (both qualitative and quantitative) is building out the runway for growth many are struggling with knowing what are the critical DIY basics.
Is there a one size fits all model?
Are the marketing channels for an e-commerce store the same as a professional services business?
Where is your customer base located online and how are they consuming media?
The life force of digital marketing is that of ‘inbound’ which is value-based hyper targeted content empowering consumers with the knowledge, information and wisdom they are seeking.
It helps prospective clients in understanding how to solve the problem they have, even if they didn’t know they had it. When done well, it is authentic, personable, accessible and builds a relationship for further conversation without “selling”.
Brands and businesses are tapping into these multi-channel life giving veins. Creating original content should be one of the primary focuses of any business.
The previous stats on the amount of touch points a consumer use to require before making a purchase use to be 5.
In 2020 stats are running more like 20. That mean’s your prospective client will need engage with your brand 20 different times, in different forms before they are comfortable enough and trust you enough to want to work with you.
The game has changed in 2018 and we are all being called to adapt to the conditions or fall behind into the big freeze that is sure to collect many brands over the coming years.
Fortunately, corporate Australia in large majority is asleep behind the wheel when looking to social media as a primary channel for engaging with their audience base.
Meaning, that small businesses have a great opportunity to make the most of this land grab while the window is available and it will not be around for long. Now is the time to get serious about taking control of their digital marketing.
Which leads me onto my second quote and far strung analogy.
Preparation is one of the greatest allies in the digital marketing wheelhouse.
How does this apply to digital marketing?
· If we fold Lincoln’s wisdom on leverage and efficacy of time spent into digital marketing let’s look at value-rich engaging content as the swing of the axe.
· The sharpness of the blade must then be targeted and optimised social media marketing, SEO and automated email nurturing touch points with tripwires and tracking.
· Consistently swing by swing all of the hard hitting content is landing into the sweet spot of the consumers pain point building credibility and creating conversation.
· Falling the tree, by converting those engaged prospective clients to qualified leads and then converting to sales. Timber!
With all of this now buzzing around in your head I hope that you can see that the road to 2020 will be measured by how well a business get’s it digital marketing house in order.
Ensuring to work it into their end-to-end operational process. This creates a level of intelligence unique to the business and critical to understanding the consumer beyond any competition.
Getting this strategy right or wrong not only impacts funds, resources, prospective clients and consumers and partners it also can make or break a teams energy and focus.
Mastering some of digital marketing’s dominant channels and tools like CRM, Search Engine, Adobe CC and Social Media can take an army of creative campaign managers and data orientated executioners to get it done. Not right. Just done.
That’s before any optimisations, refinements, testing and the whole rinse and repeat cycle is implemented consistently before committing more marketing dollars.
It’s not all doom and gloom, as consumers, brands, start-ups and small business owners are wising up to the power of data and the micro-costs involved to get to the sweet spot.
That said, there will be tens of billions of dollars poured into digital marketing in 2019 that will fail to hit the mark. Money spent educating your clients on behalf of your competition with valuable online resources.
Being comfortable knowing that the prospective clients you have been carefully nurturing, educating and conversing with for so long, and spending good money on doing so may be converted to a competitor at the last hurdle.
This is now part of the online game.
These 6 barriers can impact you at the finish line:
1. Poor or negative comments about your brand online
4. Lack of engagement, responses and action to consumers social media queries and comments
While I develop this out for my own business and brand because I can just pass it on down the line I feel better knowing it’s a journey. While also seeking advice from those in my network with far more direct experience. Fortunately my relationships are my IP and as nice guy people seem to want to help.
Being motivated to level up my game and being ready to pounce when it all aligns means seizing all of the opportunities available while they exist. I’m excited about cultivating new found lands and look forward to sharing more.
Reach out to me and share your journey, I may be able to connect some dots for you. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alistair-hart-5053723a/
