Building your badass digital marketing strategy

We are living in a digital world

Marketing is so many things but few are more important right now than digital marketing. Email, blogging, social media, PPC, SEO — and the list goes on. Where to start? What’s really important?

Digital marketing is important for the obvious reasons – everyone has their phone on them literally all. the. time. According to a 2015 Verizon survey, nearly 90% of people admit to using their phones in the bathroom. Talk about opportunity.

But the real question isn’t how to reach your audience, but instead, how do you reach your audience effectively? Clearly, digital isn’t a new landscape – so how can you become something that resonates, is relatable… without becoming ‘noise’?

Step one – bring on the right people. Is it important to know everything about marketing? No – because marketing, particularly digital marketing, changes almost hourly.

Instead, bring on people who are hungry. People who are motivated. People who love what they do.

The rest is smooth sailing…at least, in theory.

Know your audience, find your voice

Hello, obvious.

Yeah, it’s like Marketing 101. But after recently attending a digital marketing conference, it was surprising how often the speakers mentioned this point. Do you really know who you’re trying to reach? Have you spent real time putting yourself in the shoes of your customers?

Stop trying generic marketing tactics, and instead spend time talking to and researching your customer’s pain points and evaluating what they actually need. It’s OK to be specialized.

Let me say that again.

It’s OK to be specialized.

Your product isn’t for everyone. Focus, instead, on who it is for and market the hell out of those people.

Once you identify who those people are, who those people really are and what they really need, determine your company’s voice. Who are you? Are you funny? Informative? Tactical? Find your voice and own it.

Content is king

There’s no getting around it. People want stuff.

If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes on Facebook, you’ll notice the crazy amount of sharing and liking of posted content. Viral videos are gold, and if you’ve managed to successfully infiltrate a ‘trending topic”, then you deserve that after work beer.

The thing we all need to understand (because I’m still guilty of it — even when I’m aware of the issue) is that no one – no one – wants to be sold to. We’re absolutely railroaded with sales pitches. On TV, on the radio, on every site or social media platform I go to, in my inbox. I’m surrounded.

Stop it.

Start, instead, by giving your audience something they can use. Something they value. Something for free.

*Insert screeching brakes sound here*

Yeah, free.

You cannot ask your customer for their hand in marriage when you’ve never even bought them a drink.

Give them a little, prove you’re “the one”. Become the resource in your industry. You know your audience, and you know their pain points – help them with those…even if it’s not what you sell.

Believe it or not, becoming a resource helps your brand and your business, even when you’re giving things away.

Use technology to your advantage

You HAVE to be on top of the trends. You just have to. There’s no getting around it. Which brings me back to the whole hungry thing. If your team truly loves what they do and are looking for new resources and ways to improve, then you’ve chosen the right people.

Back to the buzzword game – SEO, PPC, analytics, boosted posts, sponsored ads, influencer campaigns, viral videos. There’s something new everyday, you have to be on top of it.

By constantly using the tools at your fingertips to evaluate then reevaluate what works and what doesn’t can help fine tune your marketing plan. Be advised that this isn’t a one time effort, but instead something that will need continuous assessment and modification.

Tools like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics can paint a good picture of the success of a campaign. Open and click rates combined with unsubscribes on email campaigns can also give valuable date regarding the effectiveness of your marketing.

You can’t afford not to

Marketing is both incredibly simple and incredibly complicated at the same time. Aligning your offerings with the needs of your audience, while marketing to their heads AND their hearts will build a sense of resourcefulness while expanding your reach to new markets.

#DigitalMarketing