My Journey in Digital Marketing

Having worked in the digital marketing environment more than eight years, I have experienced how radically the landscape has changed and how the companies that will adapt and learn to stay ahead of the competition will succeed as others will be barely able to survive. When I launched my career, Facebook was a college-student-only platform and Instagram did not yet exist and most companies were using their websites as digital brochures and not as an effective marketing platform.

I am going to tell you today what I have learnt about digital marketing and those strategies that have remained to achieve results in all the businesses I have ever worked in, including Fortune 500 and small start up businesses.

My Definition of Digital Marketing

My experience with digital marketing darkened my world, as it is so much more than sharing to social media and creating Google Ads. It is all about establishing an engaged connection with your audience using any digital touchpoint. What I have come to know is that effective digital marketing is about making the art of digital marketing and science of digital marketing mix.

When engaging new customers, I will never fail to point out that digital marketing is a paradigm change and no longer about disruption of people with your message but paying people to listen to what you have to say using true value. This shift in attitude has proved to be critical in all the successful campaigns I have handled.

The Core Components That Actually Work

Search Engine Optimization: My Foundation Strategy

I begin with SEO every time as suggested by my experience, I have got the longest lasting results with it. The previous year, I implemented the same strategy to boost the organic traffic of local plumbing company to 400%. All I did was, optimizing their site to target local search users and created something helpful that will cover general plumbing problems.

Over time my SEO technique has changed a lot. At the beginning of my search engine optimization efforts, I paid much attention to keyword density and the number of backlinks to my sites. User experience and Content quality are now taking priority. E.g. in the case of a fitness equipment retailer I was doing business with, rather than overpopulate their product pages with keywords, I helped them build detailed buying guides and exercise tutorials, which magically converted into high-quality traffic and a huge boost in search rankings.

The important lesson I have learnt is that Google rewards websites that actually assist people. When I do search engine optimization these days, I do it not really optimizing the search engine, I optimize human behavior, I optimize needs.

Content Marketing

This has made content marketing my secret tool to long term customer relationships. I recall the time I have worked with a software company that had a problem in lead generation. Rather than stupidly promoting the features of their product we produced a suite of learning blog posts and video tutorials on the most burning problems of their targeted customers.

After six months, their blog was a place-to-go source in their industry with more than 50,000 visitors a month, and 15 percent of a converted visitor into a qualified lead. It was not only that the content strategy sold but also it made them thought leaders in their area.

The easy part of my content marketing philosophy is that if you are not comfortable giving away your knowledge freely then you probably do not deserve the business of your customers either. All my works are designed to solve practical problems, including the ones allowing to share important information.

Social Media Marketing: Where Relationships Begin

The concept of social media marketing has also taught me the most about the building of an authentic brand I have worked with social profiles of B2B technology companies to local restaurants, and the principle is the same: it is more about authenticity than perfection, it is more about engagement than followers, and it is about consistency that will build trust.

My fave success story is of a small bakery I worked with. Their Instagram account at the time had 200 followers only. Long-term tactics using steady posting of behind-the-scenes content, customer story highlights, and especially drool-worthy photos of their daily creation ensured an increasing follower base of 15,000 engaged local followers in just 18 months. Even better, their weekend income rose by 60 per cent as people started going out to try out products they had seen in Instagram.

I have discovered that it is necessary to approach each of the platforms in a different manner. LinkedIn is the best platform to share and connect professionally and with the industry; Instagram is known to be the platform to share visually; and Facebook is the best platform to build a community and to provide customer service.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Strategic Thinking and Bottom Line Results Now

PPC advertising has been my most dramatic high-short-term-winnings as well as it has enabled me to make my most costly mistakes. I once ran a Google Ads campaign that did not have the correct conversion tracking of an e-commerce client early in my career. We averaged 5,000 dollars over a two week period with lovely click-throughs but had not a clue as to whether or not we were making a sale.

That costly lesson pointed me to the fact that measurement and optimization is the key to PPC success. I always begin a PPC campaign by having solid tracking and objectives in place to properly monitor conversions. During the last quarter, I have assisted a SaaS company to generate the triple return on advertising investment by using two methods, i.e. maximizing the targeting of their ideal customer personas and inputting ad copy changes continuously on the performance data.

My PPC strategy has evolved to focus heavily on audience targeting rather than just keyword bidding. Platforms like Facebook and Google now offer incredibly sophisticated targeting options that allow me to reach people based on their actual behaviors and interests, not just what they search for.

Email Marketing: The Relationship Builder

Even when it is forecasted that the email marketing is going to die, it has been one of my most converting channels. My email lists now earn well over $40 per subscriber per year through value-providing content and optimal automation.

The most effective campaign that I ran with email was a weekly newsletter about marketing agencies that included knowledge about the industry, case studies and how-tos. We subscribed only 100 subscribers, but developed the list to 12,000 active readers in the course of two years. This newsletter has turned out to be their main lead generation medium, which resulted in a contribution of more than $500,000 in new business.

The secret to successful email marketing I have learned by experience is to treat your email list as a discussion with your friends, and not a broadcast channel. Personalization is not the use of the first name of anyone, but it is to know what an individual is struggling with and offer what is appropriate.

My strategy formulation approach

Audience research is one of one of the starting points to create digital marketing strategies. I take time to figure out not only the demographics but psychographics too- what gets my target audience going, where they spend their online time and what issues keep them up at night.

As an example, in dealing with a financial planning firm, I learned that their target audience was not necessarily concerned with the rate of investment but the financial security and retirement confidence more so. Such understanding totally changed our messaging direction and contributed to the 150 percent growth in qualified consultations.

I now know that integrated campaigns are always more effective than single channel campaigns. My best performing efforts are the ones that leverage content marketing to establish authority over time, social to drive involvement and community, PPC to generate quick visibility and email to help foster relationships.

How I Measure Success

The thing about digital marketing is that it is measurable, however, over time, I have learned to focus on metrics that will actually determinate business growth. Improperly termed in the world of social media the followers or the traffic looks good, but then is useless unless there is business effect.

I will use three areas in my measurements that are acquisition metrics (the effectiveness of the attraction of new prospects), engagement metrics (the effectiveness of nurturing relationships) and conversion metrics (the effectiveness of driving desired actions). I set measurable KPIs that refer to business goals of all clients and analyse the performance on a weekly basis to see where optimization is possible.

What I Expect It To Be Next

The online marketing terrain is still in a fast-changing direction. The topic that I am especially looking forward to is the impact of video content on the rise in all platforms and the number of marketing automation instruments requiring enhancement.

Nevertheless, I think these basic rules do not change: know your audience, give your audience real value, and develop real relationships. The how will keep evolving as a result of technology but the why of successful marketing remains a constant.

My closing comments

Digital marketing has provided me with the chance to assist millions of companies in their development and establish particular contact with their target customers. And the trick of succeeding is not to learn all the new tools and platforms; it is to realise that behind each click, each view and each conversion there lies, not a faceless, devious persona, but a real person who has real needs and problems.

Those businesses which realize that they cannot forget this human factor, whatever sophisticated the technology is, are businesses that succeed in digital marketing.