Marketers’ worst mistake is making assumptions not backed by research, because when you guess rather than know with great certainty you can head down a time-consuming and costly path. See more! Here are the assumptions that sabotage digital marketing.  Assumption No. 1: We Know What The Customer Wants. The first assumption that sabotage your digital marketing. It’s the marketers’ job to know their customers and to accomplish this, they usually complete quite a bit of work – oftentimes creating personas and getting into the heads of each segment. But sometimes things go wrong. Marketers get off track and start assuming too much. Don’t make assumptions about your customers, even if, as marketers, you know them well. Test your assumptions, use real data, and ensure the response that you will receive is positive before taking action. Assumption No. 2: Social Media Is Always A Profitable Venture. Simply engaging on social media, is not enough. Even if engagement is high, that doesn’t write a check for higher revenue. In fact, a lot of marketers are making some dangerous assumptions about social media. Social media is still young, and many marketers struggle with selecting the right key performance indicators (KPIs). Quantifying a return on investment, however, can be hard. It’s not for lack of data; social media metrics are simple to obtain. Key takeaway. Don’t get caught in the dangerous assumption that likes and shares automatically translate to profits. Test that engagement to see whether it truly improves your bottom line. Assumptions No. 3: You Can Guess About General Trends.   Access to data about general trends is valuable, but it shouldn’t be used alone to determine what to offer customers and how to market it. General trends are useful; however, use them as a starting point and then conduct your own research. Do those trends apply to your customers? Modify your marketing approach as appropriate. Assumption No. 4: All Customers Are Equal.   Most marketers are familiar with the 80/20 rule, which was first introduced by Italian economist Vifredo Pareto. In business, this rule states that 80 percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customers. With regard to productivity, it says that 80 percent of the results come from 20 percent of the actions. You get the point. However, some assume that all customers are equal. But a recent study found that when it comes to social media, as highlighted above, this is not always true. The vast majority of customers who follow brands on social media do so for the discounts, coupons, and sweepstakes. Moreover, these customers may not add the most value to your brand. Key takeaway. Find out where your most profitable customers are spending time and refocus marketing efforts to grow those relationships and find more customers who fit that profile. Assumption No. 5: Loyalty Translates To High Profitability.   Some marketers believe that customers who have been with the company the longest and purchase with high frequency are the most profitable. Yet this too is an assumption. Even though these customers are high-frequency purchasers, it doesn’t mean those purchases carry the highest profitability. Try examining loyalty and profitability in another light. Who are your most profitable customers? Build personas for those individuals. Are these customers also the most loyal? Look for overlap, and find areas of potential for new opportunities. There are some things a marketer should never guess about – branding, logos, and even the colors that customers like best. Additionally, the simple elements of the customer experience, such as whether your customers prefer to talk on the phone or chat live on the website, can also become dangerous pitfalls when combined with assumptions. Use existing data, but also collect your own to create a better understanding of customers and, consequently, stronger and more powerful marketing strategies.

Valentine’s Day is upon us again, presenting an opportunity to launch some quick holiday marketing campaigns. Holidays give marketers the opportunity to play off of popular topics and create messages that resonate with the masses. Here are 7 ways you can leverage Valentine’s Day marketing for your small business. Missed out this year? Don’t worry, build these ideas into your 2020 editorial calendar so you never miss an opportunity to leverage holiday traffic! 1. Add Some Romantic Flair To Your Company’s Social Media Accounts Help your followers get into the spirit of love by adding some romantic flair on your social media profile images and cover photos (Hint: if you’re running a campaign, you should match your art to any other pieces of marketing collateral). Otherwise, just make sure it’s a Valentine’s Day tie-in that allows your brand to still be recognizable but also celebrates the holiday! 2. Send Your Customers Valentine’s Day Cards Yes, it may sound like a throwback to the playground, but sending your customers physical cards is a great way to show you care! Because most brands spend their efforts predominantly on digital platforms these days, going back to more traditional marketing techniques will actually set you apart from the pack. While individuals may be tired of receiving emails, a physical card could be a welcome surprise. Try not to include overly ‘salesy’ messaging. Instead, focus on telling your customers how much they mean to you! If you’re out of time to get your cards in the mail, a digital card can also be fun. Try including a special offer or discount to complement your message. 3. Ask Your Followers To Share Their Love Stories Active on social media? Ask your audience to share their love stories, finding a way to tie in the question with your brand. Be clear that not every story has to be romantic in the traditional sense. (You don’t want to alienate members of your audience). Ask for all types of love stories, including romantic, friendship, familial, etc. Offer a prize for the best story, but make sure you have the guidelines clearly outline before launching your campaign! Keep in mind that you shouldn’t explicitly ask your audience to like and share your post for extra entries. Facebook is cracking down on these types of posts. 4. Show Love To The Singles Not everyone is in a relationship, and it’s important to keep that in mind during any Valentine’s Day campaigns. In addition to addressing couples, send some love to your single followers as well. Offer special deals for singles if you can, or focus on deals that apply to everyone – no matter his/her relationship status. Be careful about using hashtags such as #singlesawarenessday unless your products/services and editorial style are typically tongue-in-cheek. 5. Use Appropriate, Relevant Hashtags Speaking of hashtags, there are ways you can use them effectively for Valentine’s Day marketing campaigns. If your brand uses Twitter, check out some of these successful hashtag campaigns, then come up with one of your own. Keep in mind that hashtags don’t have to include your brand name, but they should be clearly associated with your brand. Choose a hashtag that’s unique and memorable, then include it in your posts and ask your fans to do the same so you can build as much user-generated content as possible. Offer a special prize or offer for the most creative hashtag in a post. If your business doesn’t have a well-known hashtag and you don’t believe that a unique hashtag will have an impact, play off of existing popular hashtags. You can check them out on Twitter’s trending list (left column on your Twitter feed). 6. Run A Valentine’s Contest We’ve alluded to this already; running Valentine’s Day contest on your social media channels can be fun and beneficial for you and your followers! Whether you choose to offer a special date night activity or a product that’s a great fit for couples or singles, focus on contests that will excite your followers and won’t be a huge drain on your marketing budget. Keep in mind that your giveaway doesn’t always have to tie back to your business. 7. Make V-Day Mobile Push Notifications Does your organization have an app that sends out push notifications? If so, then you should think about how you can adapt them to sync with major holidays and big promotional campaigns. Be careful; push notifications can be annoying for users, but when you find messaging and branding that offers value to your customers, they can be extremely effective. Find ways to adapt your existing push notifications and special offers to be more thematic for the holiday.

Last-Minute in Digital Marketing Tips for Valentine’s Day? You’re in the right place! If you’re a digital marketer, you’re probably aware that you can take advantage of every holiday, special occasion, and event as a marketing opportunity. One of the most overlooked occasions to take advantage of is Valentine’s Day. Because Valentine’s Day is a consumer-centric holiday, you can use digital marketing tactics to build consumer interest in your product and drive them to purchase. But with Valentine’s Day just a day away, you may not have thought about how to promote your business with a digital marketing campaign. However, there are some last-minute ideas that you can pull off in just a few days to make the most of the holiday. Here are some of the last minute digital marketing tips for Valentine’s Day. See more! 1. Themed Landing Pages Or Microsites Landing pages or micro sites can be a great way to promote Valentine’s Day specials. Since the holiday is geared toward people buying gifts for loved ones, many retail brands curate products specifically for user groups. Consider making pages for groups that make sense for your brand, like boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, and “galentines”. (a term that references female friends celebrating the holiday by exchanging gifts). If you’re not an e-commerce company, don’t worry. You can develop another creative campaign for the holiday. Share how much employees love your company to recruit new hires, or donate money to charity for every new email subscriber. The options are endless; find out what’s best for your business and what your consumers will respond to. 2. Email Valentines You may not have time to coordinate a direct mail campaign, but email valentines can do the trick. Come up with a fun theme that’s relevant to your customers. Like this ad agency did two years ago. Write a puny poem or love letter to your customers. Or design a fun play of a traditional valentine as an extra touch point with your customers this month. Take the hassle out of distribution by sending them to an email list you already have ready to go. 3. Surprise Flash Sale Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love, and nothing says you love your customers like a good deal. Why not surprise them with a flash sale? This idea can be executed quickly and promoted with display advertising or existing channels you’re already using to communicate with your customers. Know more! Consider putting a time limit on your sale. Giving deep discounts on a few popular items for a limited number of customers, and following up with remarketing. This can help incentivize buyers to make the purchase. 4. Guerilla Marketing Guerrilla marketing stunts can earn tons of positive publicity and don’t have to take long to plan and execute. On the simpler, affordable end of the spectrum, one grocery store used its PA system to share loving messages with customers without much cost. They captured those moments on video to share with other media outlets. Whether it’s conservative, outrageous, or somewhere in the middle, a guerrilla marketing stunt might be just what you need this year. 5. Social Media If you’re really short on bandwidth this month, social media can be a great place to earn engagement. When brainstorming for your Valentine’s Day social media post. Take a look at your analytics to determine what kind of posts your followers react to the most. Replicate that success by giving them what they’re already more inclined to engage with. As you’re planning your Valentine’s Day promotions, consider pairing multiple elements to create your ideal campaign. A flash sale could be promoted through email blasts that drive users to a custom landing page. Or a guerrilla marketing stunt could be promoted on social media to earn more likes and engagement. This would be more helpful in engaging your social media posts. Whatever you do this year, make sure you can execute it well. It’s better to have one or two thoughtful. Strategic touchpoints on Valentine’s Day than several poorly planned touchpoints that turn off your customers and diminish your brand value. For more blogs and references for your business. Visit More! 

How to attract your target audience for valentine’s day? The annual holiday of love is just around the corner. Are you wondering how you can boost your online marketing in time for Valentine’s Day 2020? Have no fear – studies of marketing trends show that Valentine’s Day traditionally inspires a jump in last-minute sales, both online and in-store. Unlike other occasions, Valentine’s Day shoppers tend not to plan too far ahead. Online activity is significantly higher in the week leading up to Valentine’s than the month before. According to one study of US-based online florists, the two days before Valentine’s saw an impressive peak in web traffic and conversions. So now is the perfect time to implement some winning digital strategies to help catch lovestruck customers just before the holiday. 1. Love Is In The Web According to the National Retail Federation, nearly 54% of the people will spend money on Valentine’s Day gifts and treats, with an average consumer. Clearly, Valentine’s Day shoppers are feeling the love – nearly 20% are even planning on buying Valentine’s gift for their pet! How to attract your target audience for valentine’s day? This means it’s the perfect opportunity to entice potential customers with special offers, time-limited discounts, and incentives. Help your customers tap into their loving spirit by giving them a little extra. 2. Set Your Sights On The Right Target Marketing is a lot like love – you’ve got to set your sights on Mr/Ms. Right. Fortunately, when it comes to marketing performance, there’s a range of advanced targeting tools that can make it much easier to find your best audience. On Valentine’s Day, the holiday of love, men are the big spenders – in fact, men spend about twice as much as women on Valentine’s gifts. For many brands and advertisers, it might well be worth creating a campaign focusing on a male audience. True Pheromones, for example, has a line of products that are targeted toward men who are both single and in a relationship, to boost the romantic factor on Valentine’s Day. They go as a pair with any plan men come up with on V-day. Also, the typical Valentine’s day shopper tends to be younger. Among those aged 18 to 34 years, between 60% and 65% are purchasing Valentine’s Day gifts, with the figure dropping to less than 50% for older consumers. Many of these younger customers are using their mobile devices for Valentine’s shopping – half of the smartphone owners will buy their Valentine’s Day gift via their mobile phone, or use it to research and make a purchase decision. So, the perfect match for your Valentine’s Day campaign may well be a predominantly young, male and mobile-savvy audience. Keep that in mind when choosing your targeting parameters. 3. “You Had Me At The Landing Page” If the native ad is the first date, then the landing page is when things start to get serious. By clicking your ad, the user has expressed definite interest in your content. Now’s the time to take things up a notch and really get them to fall in love with your product or service. How? By creating a beautiful, creative, and smart landing page that entices them to follow through and complete the conversion. 4. Love At First Click Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to get up close and personal with your potential customers. According to McKinsey, email marketing is 40 times better at getting new customers than Facebook or Twitter. So what are you waiting for? This Valentine’s Day, launch an email marketing campaign that makes your customers feel special. The happy, romantic holiday is a ripe opportunity to get creative and a little bit daring with your email marketing. Combine a sassy subject line with a special offer that they can’t refuse. The advantage of email marketing is that your offer lands straight in the inbox of the potential customer, which is a great chance for you to make a direct, one-on-one impression. 5. Valentine’s Day Is Not Just Chocolates And Flowers Every month, remind people what you sell. It’s that simple. Do you sell jewelry? Remind people what type of jewelry you specialize in. Men’s? Women’s? Rings? Necklaces? Bracelets? Remind people why they should buy from you. Do you offer free shipping? Do you offer a price guarantee policy? Remind people what brands you carry. If you sell shoes, let them know you’re an authorized Nike seller and that you offer easy returns if the shoes don’t fit. Tell them how big your selection is or what new shoe models you’ve received recently. Reminding customers every month about your product offering and value proposition (Who you are? what you sell? Why buy from you?). ConclusionKeep in mind that you shouldn’t limit yourself to email marketing. You should engage with your audience using email marketing, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.the ntine

1. Meet Your Match In this campaign, you can showcase products that go well together. People need to be inspired because sometimes, they have no idea what to buy on Valentine’s Day. This type of campaign is great because it allows you to cross-promote product categories and increase average order values. For example, you can feature some beautiful necklaces with matching bracelets. 2. Gifts She Will Love This campaign is great for anyone looking for a gift for her. You can showcase popular products for women based on bestsellers or high ratings and positive reviews. Don’t forget to use lifestyle images since it will help shoppers visualize how it would look on them. 3. Gift He Will Love Valentine’s Day isn’t for women only. Men want gifts too! In this campaign, you can showcase some gift ideas men would love to receive on this romantic day. Remember to also use lifestyle images showing a man with the product. 4. This Is What She Wants Guide shoppers in telling them exactly what women want to be based on this year’s trends. People like to gift popular items. You can use this campaign to highlight top trending products within each of your departments or categories. 5. Date Night, Done Right Date nights on February 14th are special and shoppers would want to make sure everything is perfectly planned. Help them plan for it by giving ideas on what they can buy to set the mood. For example: If you sell candles, showcase romantic scents and candle colors. 6. Practice Self Love, Treat Yourself Not everyone has a partner to celebrate with during this day. Some of us might simply want to treat ourselves to something special. Launch a campaign that features items people would buy for themselves. For example A bathrobe or a book. 7. Last Minute Valentine Gifts This campaign is perfect for procrastinators. It’s your opportunity to feature product last-minute ideas for those who haven’t bought anything for their love. During this campaign, consider offering free shipping or a reduced rate for express shipping. 8. The Valentine’s Day Gift Shop If you have a lot of products to showcase on Valentine’s Day, simply create a Valentine’s Day Gift Shop. On this page, you can feature all the different products and product categories fit for this campaign. 9. Love Your Pet Some of us might not have a significant other to share our love with this during Valentine’s Day, but we might have a loving pet. If you sell pet products, this is an opportunity for you to reach those pet owners. 10. Valentine’s Day Giveaway A great way to support your Valentine’s Day campaigns is to host a giveaway. If people aren’t interested in buying something, they can at least take part in your giveaway. This can help acquire new emails as well as generate some buzz on social media.

1. Groundhog Day (February 2) You don’t need to go big for this holiday but have fun with it. You can create a simple promotion offering a discount on specific items or by simply offering free shipping for 24 hours to celebrate it. To help you out, I created a list of marketing ideas you can launch for Groundhog Day as well as subject line ideas. 2. Super Bowl Running a Super Bowl promotion helps you stay current especially if you’re targeting people who love sports specifically football. Again, just like Groundhog Day, you don’t need to go all out but creating a campaign around the event is a good idea. For example, you can merchandise products that people would want to have while watching the game. 3. Valentine’s Day (February 14) Valentine’s Day is the biggest holiday of the month. If there’s one thing you need to plan for in February, that would be it. Here’s a list of articles I’ve written to help you plan for this popular holiday. Valentine’s Day Marketing Campaign Ideas Valentine’s Day Email Subject Line Ideas Blog Post Ideas for Valentine’s Day Valentine’s Day Ideas for Facebook 4. Monthly Giveaway If you have no time to plan for any other campaign in February, you should at least launch your monthly giveaway. This is something I recommend for each month as it’s a great way to get people to visit your website at least once a month. When people visit your site at least once a month, your retargeting marketing efforts will improve as well as it’s a great way to increase the chances of them browsing your catalog. 5. Remind Shoppers What You Sell Every month, remind people what you sell. It’s that simple. Do you sell jewelry? Remind people what type of jewelry you specialize in. Men’s? Women’s? Rings? Necklaces? Bracelets? Remind people why they should buy from you. Do you offer free shipping? Do you offer a price guarantee policy? Remind people what brands you carry. If you sell shoes, let them know you’re an authorized Nike seller and that you offer easy returns if the shoes don’t fit. Tell them how big your selection is or what new shoe models you’ve received recently. Reminding customers every month about your product offering and value proposition (who you are? what you sell? Why buy from you?). Conclusion Keep in mind that you shouldn’t limit yourself to email marketing. You should engage with your audience using email marketing, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

The best ways to add people into your sales funnel is to use digital marketing to drive them to your website. The tools in the digital marketing toolbox include websites; search engine marketing (SEM) – which is an umbrella term that includes search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search – as well as online display advertising; social media marketing; mobile marketing; and email marketing. While this may seem like a lot of channels, it’s also what makes digital marketing so powerful. With digital marketing, you have multiple touchpoints where you engage prospects and deepen your relationship with them across the board. There’s another reason to love digital marketing – it gives you the ability to see audiences interact with your brand and react to your marketing. Within hours of launching a campaign, you can gauge whether it’s working by analyzing the metrics you see with your analytics tools. The bottom line is that digital marketing is one of the biggest things to happen to the market in the past 100 years, which is why we’re devoting several blog posts to the topic. We’ll cover the essentials of digital marketing so that you can have a rock-solid foundation upon which to build your next campaign. In future posts, we’ll take a deeper dive into some of the specifics behind each tactic. 1. Responsive Websites You’ve had a website for quite some time, otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading a post about digital marketing, right? But we want to make sure your website is optimized for mobile Why? Because 15% to 40% (or more) of your website visits are going to be via a mobile device. You’ve got choices: You can do a dedicated mobile site or a responsive site. Most experts believe it’s best to have a responsive website that uses media queries to determine the screen size of the device. Accessing their content and automatically adjust to fit the screen. If you haven’t already updated your website so that it’s mobile-friendly, make sure you ask your web design team to get started on that right away. After all, studies show that businesses that have well-executed mobile websites are more likely to attract prospects than businesses that don’t. 2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Search engine is a web-based tool that scours the World Wide Web to help users find the information they’re looking for. SEO marketing encompasses any activity that attempts to increase your ranking on these search engines. SEM includes search engine optimization (SEO) which involves earning visibility within search engine results and paid search which involves paying to be visible within search engine results. The objective is to increase visibility by occupying the top spot within search results, however, the methods used to attain this goal greatly differ. They might range from object detection in images to having a video on the homepage— the techniques are aplenty. In order to gain more information, one can read various blogs such as Art Daily that might guide them in applying these methods to increase web traffic. 3. Online Display Advertising Online display advertising is, in many ways, a throwback to traditional advertising. You would run an ad in a magazine or newspaper to provide information about your product or service. Today, you can use display advertising to accomplish the same thing. Unlike traditional advertising, digital advertising comes in several different forms such as banner ads, video ads, interactive ads, and rich media ads. With display advertising, marketers have the benefit of targeting audiences based on website content, geography, and device types. Furthermore, developments in the display ad buying process now allow marketers to pre-define their target audiences based on demographics and psychographics (e.g., tastes, attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria). As an added bonus, you can target your prospects as they move from device to device. 4. Video The most common form of video advertising can be found on platforms such as YouTube. A video ad typically plays before, during, or after the content, an audience intends to watch. You can make the video ads clickable so that they drive more traffic to your website. In addition to paying to run ads on YouTube, and similar venues, marketers can also create and distribute their own videos as part of their content marketing strategy. In fact, one study found that 80% of site visitors will watch a video, while only 20% will read a full blog post. 5. Social Media If you’re like most people, you probably have profiles on multiple social networking platforms and have engaged with your favorite (and at times, not-so-favorite) brands on those platforms. Over the past couple of years, social networking platforms have also evolved into robust advertising platforms. This means you have the ability to run extremely targeted campaigns on these platforms, and ensure that no advertising dollar is wasted. The most popular websites for both earned and paid marketing are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. Each one of these tools has its strengths and weaknesses, so be sure to review your objectives before launching a campaign on any of these platforms. 6. Mobile Marketing Mobile marketing, a subset of digital marketing, encompasses any marketing activity that targets users on mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones. Many marketers feel that developing a mobile app is absolutely essential to reaching and engaging with their customers via mobile. However, there are easier and far more effective channels to reach your target audience on their mobile devices. These channels could include: A mobile website Mobile search Mobile display ads In-app display advertising Implemented together, these make the perfect starting point for any mobile marketing campaign. Just as is the case with desktop paid search and display campaigns, mobile campaigns can be tracked and optimized in real-time. 7. Email Marketing Some marketers and industry pundits downplay the importance of email marketing; however, it turns out, that email is more central to marketing today than ever before. This is mainly because email is the most personal way brands can

1. Organic Traffic Looking for the most important digital marketing channels for e-commerce? You’ve come to the right place! One of the most important digital marketing channels for eCommerce is  Organic. The organic digital marketing channel includes all website traffic that comes from search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo.com. Know more! People will discover your website based on searching for a specific topic or product. If your online store is well optimized, search engines will position it among the top results of search pages that can surely get you, a potential client, based on the traffic of your business. If you want more traffic for your business, invest in search engine optimization (SEO). 2. Email Traffic The email digital marketing channel includes all website traffic that comes from your business email messages. If your email marketing is poor, prospects would not choose you and look for similar businesses that provide better email marketing. Try to consider this. Those email messages can be part of: Promotional email campaigns (ex: Christmas Sale, Anniversary Sale, Holiday Sale) Triggered email campaigns (ex: shopping cart abandonment emails) Transactional email campaigns (ex: order confirmation email) In order to drive traffic from email, you will need to grow your email list to gain more customers. 3. Paid Search Traffic The paid search digital marketing channel includes all website traffic that comes from paid ads on search engines. See more! It may also be referred to as search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC). Search engine campaigns can be launched on the following networks: Google Adwords Bing Ads Online stores looking to drive traffic from search engine marketing should focus on launching their Google Shopping campaigns or Bing Product Ads since those types of ads produce among the best return on investment for eCommerce. 4. Content Marketing Traffic   The content marketing channel includes all website traffic that comes from your blog, videos, graphics, and digital downloads such as buying guides. Know more! Content marketing can also be referred to as Inbound Marketing, a term used by Hubspot. Creating content that provides value (helpful) or entertainment can help eCommerce businesses drive traffic to their online stores since this content will be picked up by search engines or shared on social media. 5. Social Media Traffic The social media digital marketing channel includes all website traffic that comes from social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Twitter, Snapchat, and more. Traffic from social media can be free organic traffic or paid advertisements. Over the past couple of years, social networks have been making it difficult for eCommerce businesses to get noticed using free initiatives. They want you to pay to play. If you’re thinking of launching paid ads on social networks, consider the following: Facebook Ads Instagram Ads Pinterest Ads Youtube Ads Twitter Ads Snapchat Ads 6. Affiliates Traffic   The affiliate digital marketing channel includes all website traffic that comes from affiliate partners in exchange for a commission on all completed orders. In affiliate marketing, you are going to use a third-party publisher to help your business buy your products or services. It is a process of earning money every time you promote a company’s product or services and drive a sale. 7. Referrals Traffic The referrals digital marketing channel includes all website traffic that comes from literally everything else on the internet including apps. It can include websites where you may be running display ads, sponsored blog posts, updated posts, or digital newspapers. I usually include anything that’s not included in the other 7 channels both organic and paid. 8. Direct Traffic The direct traffic channel includes all website traffic that comes directly to your website with no referring website. People usually either type your website URL directly in their web browser or access their bookmarks. Direct traffic allows you to also measure some of your offline marketing efforts such as radio, tv, or events. For example, when people see your ad on tv, they might use their smartphone to access your website directly. Conclusion The one thing to always recommend when creating a digital marketing strategy for your start-up business or existing business is to define your objectives (goals) as well as establishing your performance metrics. That’s the only way you can monitor the performance of your business and be able to do more of what works and plan how to get more customers online.

Executing effective marketing campaigns is a challenge for teams of any size. This task becomes even more difficult. However, when you’re dealing with large teams that are distributed across several offices — and, in many cases, states and countries. In these cases, it can be nearly impossible to get your team on the same page when it comes to executing a cohesive and effective strategy. And accomplishing the goals you have defined for your organization. Even worse, having a distributed team can also result in a lack of visibility and communication. Which can stunt the growth of your digital marketing strategy. When you don’t have a way to measure success across the board. You lose sight of which marketing efforts are driving maximum ROI for your organization. It can even be difficult to pinpoint problem areas in your marketing strategy and take proper action when needed. The good news is that getting a large and distributed team on the same page, although difficult, is not impossible. If this is a challenge you’re ready to tackle at your organization. Keep reading to learn 3 strategies that will help you centralize, streamline, and improve your team’s marketing efforts. 1. Implement A “Parent/Child” Model To Centralize Your Efforts And Make Sure They Align With Your Strategy Many teams, even those working within the same office, struggle to launch cohesive marketing efforts. Due to the fact that they don’t have a solid process in place for performing quality control before pushing campaigns and initiatives live. If organizations don’t make an attempt to remedy this problem. It can lead their team to launch lackluster efforts, focus on ineffective campaigns, and struggle to ensure brand consistency. For example, when you have distributed teams that are scrambling to launch time-sensitive campaigns. It can be easy to forget to run the final product by the proper people before hitting launch. In these instances, the best-case scenario is that your marketing efforts go out without a glitch. Most of the time, however, this leads to marketing efforts that are disjointed, not on brand, and that don’t align with your company goals. For smaller teams working in the same office. Tackling this issue can usually be solved by adopting a project management tool and scheduling more frequent meetings. Larger teams, however, have to be more formal in their approval process by defining and enforcing a clear chain of command. These larger teams can benefit from implementing a “parent/child” collaboration model. Which is designed to help companies centralize their efforts and streamline the approval process. This model works by assigning a “parent” account (this is usually managed by your main office or headquarters) that is in charge of establishing guidelines. Granting team members permission to work on certain projects, and managing the approval process. This approach helps leadership ensure that all marketing efforts align with their organization’s strategy and goals. While granting “child” accounts the foundation and tools they need to launch cohesive marketing efforts. Implementing and enforcing this parent/child methodology might seem like a lot of work. But the right tool (such as Act-On’s Marketing Network) makes it easy to introduce this framework to your organization. With Act-On, you can manage permissions, design and designate templates. And share work across teams to ensure all efforts support your strategy and reflect your brand — all in one easy-to-use platform. 2. Leverage Common Templates To Keep Your Efforts On Brand And Eliminate Duplicate Work Consistent branding and messaging should be a priority for any organization. After all, it can help you stay top-of-mind with your prospects, improve engagement, and help ensure that you’re always getting the right message to your target audience. All of which can increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and help you grow your bottom line. Achieving brand consistency is especially challenging when teams are working on different efforts for different regions and, many times, in different languages. These teams already have many variables and contingencies to consider when developing and launching campaigns. Which means that checking for brand consistency is often the last thing on their to-do list. Thankfully, you can drastically reduce your chance of being off-brand by equipping your team members with easy-to-use templates. You can design landing pages, emails, and other key marketing content and assets and store them in a media library where your team can easily access them when needed. This will give your team members, especially those who are in a rush. A great starting point to help them stay on brand. Plus, they’ll save valuable time and effort by not having to build these assets from scratch! 3. Consolidate Your Data To Gather Important Insights That Will Strengthen Your Marketing Strategy Across The Board Marketing teams that don’t consolidate their metrics struggle to improve their efforts and drive growth for their organization. Not having a clear view of how initiatives are performing across the board prevents organizations from changing course and/or improving their efforts when a campaign isn’t performing to its full potential. To make matters worse, even if your marketing efforts are exceeding expectations. Not having the numbers to back up your success makes it difficult to show leadership the value of all your hard work. Leveraging a tool that allows your team to easily consolidate and analyze key data can significantly improve your chance of developing a more successful marketing strategy. When your team can quickly and accurately identify which efforts are resonating well with your audience and other key trends. It allows them to focus their time and creativity on ideas that are more likely to help you get the most bang for your buck. Another huge benefit of measuring your success is that you will finally be able to make the case to grow your budget or bring additional team members on board. Leadership is far more likely to accept your request if they can clearly see how your efforts are contributing to your company’s bottom line.

The world of marketing is shifting from traditional marketing like TV ads, billboards, and mail-outs to digital marketing. This shift has shown an emphasis on things like email communications, web tracking, PPC, and SEO. Digital marketing is quickly growing in popularity due to its effectiveness in engaging clients and leads through accessible means. If you’re wondering what the top benefits of digital marketing are, look no further. 1. Measurable Results There is no effective way to measure home many people looked at your billboard or how many people looked at your flyer instead of recycling it. With digital marketing, you are provided with solid, reliable reports that show you the exact results of how many people opened your email or clicked a specific link, for example. 2. Flexible Consumers today are looking for a more custom and personalized customer journey that simply is not possible with traditional marketing, which is generic by nature. Digital marketing allows you to use an individual’s interests and preferences to tailor the marketing message they receive. Personalization may just be the biggest asset of digital and online marketing. 3. Low Barrier To Entry Traditional marketing activities come with a large price tag. Billboards, TV ads, and radio commercials are certainly not cheap. Digital marketing products come in scalable sizes so that small, medium and large businesses can all utilize these products to reach their audiences. 4. Reach Larger Audiences Since digital marketing takes place online, it is accessible to a larger, global audience. Whereas with traditional marketing, you’re typically limited to a geographic area, digital marketing allows you to reach international audiences through effective means. 5. Easy To Optimize Converting a customer online is just a few clicks away. Instead of a customer having to pick up the phone or get in their car and drive down to a shop, they can click from your email to your website and make a purchase or learn more about your organization from the comfort of their home. Get started on your digital marketing strategy by utilizing marketing automation to start reaching customers online now. From email and SMS to online forms and social media. 6. Improved Conversion Rates Since digital marketing comes with reporting, if you see something that is not performing as well as you’d like, it’s easy to pinpoint it and change it. You can even try several different things, a measure which one worked best, and select that option as the main tactic moving forward.

Having an effective digital marketing strategy helps your business to succeed, as it allows you to connect with a wider audience while encouraging more conversions. However, it can be difficult to understand what you need to do to make sure that everything works well, which is why it’s often a good idea to work with a digital agency. The professionals there can help you with many aspects of the practice, which allows you to establish your brand in a completely different league. If you’re not sure why you would need to work with a digital agency, here are five domains of digital marketing that experts can help you with: 1. Enhancing Your SEO Strategy SEO helps to improve your reach, traffic, and conversions while establishing your brand as an authoritative figure in the industry. While many people think that SEO is just publishing content and tweaking the website, in reality, there’s a lot more to it than that. You have to look at the market trends, conduct keyword analysis, A/B test your campaigns, and adjust your strategy according to the findings. This makes SEO one of the most time-consuming and laborious processes of all, which explains why it’s best that you work with a professional. 2. Integrating Social Media Elements Into Your Marketing Plan If you’re running a company and neglecting to include social media marketing in your business plan, you’re putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. Social media is where people spend the majority of their time when they’re online, so it’s crucial that you establish your presence on those platforms. Professional digital marketing agencies will have an in-house social media expert to help you manage your account and create content for you to publish. This will help to save a considerable amount of time and effort, as you can enjoy maximum benefits right from the get-go. 3. Helping With Your PPC Campaign Pay-per-click campaigns are the best way to encourage conversions, as it’s a way to bypass all the work required for the SEO process – for a price, of course. These two things go hand-in-hand with one another, as effective SEO and SEM campaigns will help to improve your brand’s standing in the market significantly. It can be difficult to understand how to work PPC tools such as Google AdWords, so it’s best that you work with a professional so that they can set up an account and optimize the settings for you. 4. Improving Your Content Marketing Strategy Modern businesses have moved away from competing with one another on the merits of their products alone. It’s not sufficient to tell the audience what your products do. Instead, you need to show people why they need what you have to offer. One of the best ways to do this is through blogging, as this is a great way to show the audience that you are a credible brand and that your products are worth the investment. As you can imagine, blogging can take a lot of energy and time. If this is a problem you’re facing, having a digital agency to give you a hand will be a great solution. 5. Managing All Parts Of Your Campaign Strategy Marketing is a multidisciplinary field that requires the collaboration of many different arts and sciences to see the most success. You have to think about backlinks, content strategies, keyword analyses, branding, and so much more. Before a strategy can be finalized, it has to have gone through several processes to make sure that it works. Your partner digital agency can help to come up with an action plan and guide you through the process. This can help to take the majority of the workload off of your shoulders, which will give you more time and energy to work on something more substantial. This way, you will be able to enjoy an overall increase in ROI more quickly. If you’re looking for a PPC management agency to help you with your campaigns, InfinityHub is your best option. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help.