Category: Digital Marketing
Traditional Digital Marketing Is Broken, Introducing Growth-Driven Digital Marketing
Traditional Digital Marketing Is Broken
If you’ve had digital marketing services in the past, you’ll be familiar with how most agencies deliver services.
The Broken Digital Marketing Cycle
- SERVICE SELECTION: The digital marketing agency has you select from a menu of services which options you want.
- ONBOARDING: With minimal input from you, they begin delivering these services. If you have multiple services, these are typically delivered in isolation (often completed by different people who don’t collaborate on an overall strategy). During the onboarding process, you are contacted several times and you feel confident that progress is being made.
- REPORTING: If the agency is above average, they will report back regularly on the results of these individual services. Usually, these reports have a lot of technical jargon and don’t tie back to your organization’s goals in any way. These results are meant to overwhelm you with data so you simply accept the results as “work completed” and don’t ask many questions about how they are actually impacting your business.
- ONGOING FULFILLMENT: These services continue, never varying from what was initially selected, regardless of changes in technology, new opportunities, economic shifts, or changes within your organization. You are rarely consulted about service delivery. Over time your services become disassociated with your corporate goals. Eventually, perhaps with a staff change, budget cuts, or a change in strategy from management, you become disillusioned with your digital marketing agency, and services are canceled. With new strategic needs, you switch to a different marketing agency hoping they will be able to meet your new needs.
- RESTART THE CYCLE: With new organizational goals and possibly new staff, a new agency is selected and this entire process repeats itself.
This process has weaknesses at every step.
- It starts without a detailed understanding of your needs and goals.
- It relies on you to make choices on services that you may not fully understand, or at least are not well equipped to prioritize.
- You are initially lulled into an expectation of high communication during onboarding but quick that communication drops off
- Reporting is not connected to your goals and usually gives far too much technical data making it unclear which metrics you should be focusing on.
- Often the results presented are not actionable or the key insights about the results are not clearly explained in a way that help you make any decisions or evaluate the service effectiveness.
- Services endlessly repeat without modification and quickly fall out of sync with your changing goals.
🙁 There has to be a better way.
Growth-Driven Digital Marketing (GDDM) is a better way.
Growth-Driven Digital Marketing (GDDM)
Growth-Driven Digital Marketing (GDDM) borrows concepts from Growth-Driven Design (GDD), which is an agile, results-oriented approach to web design.
In collaboration with you, the GDDM team will strategically employ the right mix of digital marketing techniques for each cycle (usually a 1-3 month period). The team reports back to you with actionable results, and together we formulate a plan for the next cycle based on these results and the ongoing and changing needs of your organization. The solution mix is catered to your needs and budget and the GDDM team collaboratively works together on growing your business.
This gives the fulfillment team the flexibility to use your budget in the most effective way. Perhaps one month most of your budget may go towards PPC, but the next month, maybe there is some website conversion optimization needed so we divert some of the PPC funds to allow for that work to be completed. Or maybe some social media advertising would be most useful.
The idea is, you aren’t locked into a predetermined set of services that made sense at the outset of the engagement but now don’t make sense or make it difficult to pivot and deliver optimal services. Rather, based on the ongoing analysis of how everything is performing and what is most needed we have the flexibility to use the full arsenal of digital marketing services to best serve you.
Want to learn more, or get started? Contact us, we’d love to learn about your needs.
3 Tips for Setting – and Reaching – Your Social Media Marketing Goals
Social media marketing and online reputation management are both imperative to ensure the success of a full-service digital marketing strategy. The question is, how exactly do you go about setting your social media marketing goals and, of course, ensuring that you reach them within a specific time period? Here are three tips to help you along.
Decide What You Want to Achieve
In order to set goals, you need to decide what you want your social media marketing strategy to do for your brand. Are you keen to build up your following? Perhaps you want the focus to be on generating brand awareness within your community? Or, maybe you want to drive more traffic to your website? Focusing on one or two of these things will help you to create very specific goals. For example, if you want to build up your social media following, your goals might look as follows:
- Generate 100 followers who are female and between the ages of 25 and 40, within four weeks.
- Generate 250 new followers by the end of April 2020.
Make Your Goals Very Specific
Goals should be extremely detail-oriented, for instance, they should include specific numbers and provide specific time frames. That way, you will be far more likely to achieve them and it will be easier to track your progress.
Adjust Your Strategy
Monitoring how well you are doing in terms of achieving your goals is the key to making progress in the long run. If you notice that you are not on track to ticking them off your to-do list, do not hesitate to update and adjust your social media marketing strategy accordingly. Find out what is working and what is not, and make changes as needed.
The Digital Marketing People are dedicated to helping your business set and achieve your social media marketing goals – whatever they may be. Contact us today for more information regarding our wide range of services in Canada and the USA.
How to Design a Digital Marketing Campaign for Healthcare Providers
While there are general digital marketing best practices to keep in mind when building a campaign, these do’s and don’ts will vary tremendously from industry to industry, and from brand to brand. With that in mind, here is everything that you need to know about successfully designing a digital marketing campaign for healthcare providers in the USA and Canada.
Understand Patients and Their Needs
As with any other digital marketing campaign, you will need to garner a good understanding of your target market. You will need to find out the following:
- What motivates them,
- What health problems they may be experiencing,
- What they are searching for with regard to these particular health problems, and
- What questions they have about these specific health problems.
You will also need to ask yourself who your patients actually are from a demographics perspective and, most importantly, what is it that eventually drives them to make that appointment with your healthcare practice or establishment.
Create Content
Once you understand what health conditions your patients are suffering from and what information they are seeking relevant to these conditions, you can begin to implement a content marketing approach to your advantage. This means supplying them with informative and accurate answers to their questions, all the while establishing your healthcare practice as a trusted, thought-leading authority on the matter.
Become More Relatable
Utilize social media marketing to make it easier for prospective patients to relate to your practice and to feel comfortable turning to it for help. Engage openly with followers and do your best to remain as sensitive as possible to their feelings and needs.
Here at The Digital Marketing People, we are ready to assist your healthcare practice by creating and implementing an appropriate digital marketing strategy that is sure to generate results. Contact us today to learn more.
3 Valentine’s Day Digital Marketing Campaigns That Got It Right
For many companies, Valentine’s Day is one of the most profitable events and occasions of the year. However, just how successful it will be, will depend heavily on the digital marketing campaign that you decide to run and how effectively it will grab and entice your target audience. Below, we highlight three amazing Valentine’s Day marketing campaigns over the past few years that really hit the mark.
Ford’s Valentine’s Day Video
Ford embraced the power of video content marketing for Valentine’s Day of 2015. They created a hilarious prank video that gave ‘speed’ dating a whole new meaning. The video went viral and sky-rocketed the Ford Mustang’s popularity not only for the duration of the special occasion, but also for many months thereafter.
The Body Shop’s Instagram Competition
Another example of how a simple digital marketing strategy can transform sales and maximize engagement. The competition was based on Instagram and simply asked followers to ‘send’ a kiss to a friend via the platform. The winner would nab themselves and their friend a gift pack of the brand’s newly released fruit-scented lip balms. The friends were tagged in the posts, which increased the reach. And, the task itself was easy, meaning more people than expected chose to get involved.
Omaze and Influencer Marketing
Omaze, a philanthropic-auction platform, decided to utilize influencer marketing to its advantage, roping in popular British celebrity, Idris Elba, to help raise funds for the W.E. Can Lead project. The goal was to supply hundreds of young girls in Sierra Leone with year-long empowerment workshops. The ultimate prize was to win a trip to London and the opportunity to spend a romantic evening at a restaurant with Mr. Elba himself. In order to gain entry into the competition, participants would need to donate a minimum of $10 to W.E. Can Lead. The end result was double the anticipated amount, with a total of $750,000 raised.
Are you keen to make the realm of digital marketing work for you this Valentine’s Day, as well as beyond? Then it is time to call on The Digital Marketing People. We are specialists in small business marketing, email marketing, SEO, social media marketing, and more. Get in touch today!
Watch Out for These Digital Marketing Trends in 2020
You can’t ignore how fast the digital marketing world is growing. From fast and rapid advancements being made annually in visual search and the rapid rise of interactive chatbots in most social messaging platforms aiding social media marketing to the advancing implementation of AI in various marketing functions across vast industries and markets.
2019 was a very competitive season among all digital marketers with all the evolving technologies that were utilized. With technology getting more sophisticated, modern customers will have to be very tech-savvy.
Three Digital Marketing Trends to be on the Lookout for in 2020:
Voice Search
There is no denying that this technological feature keeps getting more advanced, and we can expect that more and more digital marketers will want to utilize this feature in 2020.
For instance, this year alone, most searches have been done by voice searching. One can simply make a mobile query on Google using voice search.
Even though it won’t be easy to replace text-based search, the voice search feature will present an opportunity for digital marketers in 2020 that will help them expand their existing market.
Video Marketing
Video marketing has been one of the fastest-growing strategies over the past few years, and it keeps growing. Small businesses with limited resources should consider leveraging this digital marketing strategy as part of their email marketing by 2020. This will make it easier for small companies to start doing their own video production and stop relying on external agencies.
Cisco estimated that 82% of internet traffic will be via video by 2022, which means that you won’t have to wait too long to incorporate video as part of your growing business. This efficient marketing tool will mainly be useful for small business marketing as well as social media marketing.
Visual Search
More and more businesses are leveraging visual search due to how fast and easy one can obtain information online using visual search. The image recognition market keeps growing, and it will only be more efficient in 2020.
With visual search, you can easily find a product review online or identify species of plants just by taking a photo or uploading a picture of the object.
This is a fast, interactive, and fun feature that will help small businesses leverage processing visual information using this visual search trend.
Contact The Digital Marketing People to learn more about digital marketing trends you should be on the lookout for in 2020.
In 2020, Use Notable Days of the Year to Boost Sales
Notable days of the year, such as holidays, are some of the best periods to boost business sales on e-commerce websites. So, in 2020, why not use SEO and digital marketing to leverage festive seasons and big holidays.
How to Achieve This
There are a few ways in which you can go about it. Here are a few suggestions for you:
- You can do this by incorporating social media marketing by posting content related to a big holiday around the corner. The best way to do this is to keep remarketing a few days before the actual day.
- You can also post something on that day because most customers will be trawling the internet trying to find exclusive deals. Leveraging holidays helps a brand improve its sales during slow months.
- To help sustain this, we recommend creating exclusive deals and discounts. Deals and discounts encourage people to shop more, mainly because discounts help them save.
- Your role is to make sure your web design gives your audience a reason to purchase the product on that day. For example, you could be offering free delivery, promotion codes or buy-one-get-one-free deals. The idea is to use SEO to help your audience find your promotion.
- Make sure that your product is offering a solution to your customers’ problem because most clients are looking for a brand to help solve their problems.
- It is the reason customers browse through content on your website in the first place in hopes that they can find a solution to a problem. With content marketing strategy on notable days, you can successfully promote a solution for your clients.
- To increase sales on notable days, make sure to tell your audience about the specials in advance. Use digital advertising like social media marketing, emails and newsletters to speak to your audience.
- It also helps to take advantage of traditional advertising outlets such as newspapers, TV commercials, flyers, billboards, and so on.
- Beginning each year by drawing up a content calendar for the seasonal event crucial to your business will also be helpful. This will make it easy for you to plan your campaigns and decide on an excellent execution digital marketing strategy for the special days.
- Whether you are looking for a right hook for your Back to School promotion, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Father’s Day, Easter or the Rugby World Cup, make sure it resonates with your customers.
- Draw up goals that align with your creative concept to help you be more strategic with the content you feed your audience during your campaign.
Using notable days of the year to your advantage will help you boost your sales, especially during slow months.
For further advice, contact The Digital Marketing People.
A Guide to Partnership Marketing
Partnership marketing allows you to develop your audience size by tapping into another business brand’s audience. It can help both business brands promote their brand’s work by working on a shared project that helps market both businesses. The process could be as simple as giving shoutouts to one another or furnishing links on their respective social media platforms or official brand website. A partnership marketing strategy can also help reduce marketing costs on both ends because you’ll be helping each other grow by using your separate channels.
How to Go About Partnership Marketing
If you choose the right partnership digital marketing partner, you can potentially grow your customer base, provide excellent product selection to your audience and clients, and increase your sales as well. Here is how to go about partnership marketing:
Complement Other Brands by Using Partnership Marketing
Companies can complement other brands using partnership marketing without the two companies being in direct competition. For instance, when Disney partnered with YOOX, it helped drive new types of customers to YOOX. Another example was when Taylor Swift partnered with TicketMaster to help make tickets easily accessible to her fans.
Partner with a Business Brand that Complements Your Brand
A brand partnership helps increase brand awareness of your partner with a business brand your audience will love. However, to achieve this, your partnership must be logical. Make sure that you partner with a business brand that complements your brand without any direct competition.
Partner with a Brand with a Strong and Positive Reputation
Brand partnerships should mutually benefit both brands by improving their small business marketing. It also helps to find a brand with a strong and positive reputation.
Partner with Bloggers
Partnering with bloggers can also help you reach a greater audience because they can feature collaborations with various artists and brands.
Support Your Brand Partners
It is crucial to link out to your brand partners, as well. The success of any partnership is reliant on SEO linking out to their brands on your website. For example, if they sell products in a category on Amazon, you can choose to add a link with their name on top of your top navigation.
Get a Written Contract
While brand partnerships are essential, both of you must sign a written contract to ascertain the partnership to make sure both parties follow the guideline. Whether you need to send emails regularly, post about them online several times weekly, keep their link of your top navigation or other guidelines, you must get it in writing. Hence, if your partner fails to uphold their end of the contract, you can quickly terminate the partnership.
Meet Regularly
Remember that a partnership shouldn’t just be about taking; it’s more about giving as well. Hence, make sure you meet your partner as often as possible to discuss partnership promotion ideas and deals. Remember to treat them like a partner and not a promoter, and provide value to their content marketing as well.
Contact The Digital Marketing People to learn more about partnership marketing.
Get Found on Google in 4 Simple Steps
Here at The Digital Marketing People, we specialize in local SEO services in Canada and the USA. If your main goal is to learn how to improve your rankings on Google, here are 4 valuable tips to help you get started.
Research Keywords
Using the right keywords in your website content is of the utmost importance. While there are various keyword research tools that you can utilize, you can do keyword research for free by simply thinking about what your potential customers may be typing into Google or by utilizing Google suggest. Start typing out what your company does in the Google search bar and see what automatically pops up. This is a good indication of what people are searching for. Include these phrases in any content that you publish, as well as in your website’s base content. If you would like to target a specific area, mention the location in your content alongside the keywords that you have chosen.
Optimize Your Content
Along with keywords, you will also need to ensure that the content you post is relevant, interesting and helpful. Be sure to include a few links, heading tags and alt tags for images. Also, do everything possible to maximize its readability, for instance, make use of short, concise sentences and paragraphs, bullet points, and so on.
Focus on Off-Page SEO
Your search engine optimization is based on more than just your website. Off-page SEO is just as important as on-page SEO. It includes things like link building, guest blogging, social media, and the like.
Constantly Monitor Your Progress
SEO is forever changing. So, what was important two or three years ago may no longer play as large a role in determining your rankings as of now. As such, it is essential that you are constantly monitoring your progress and keeping up to date with any relevant SEO news and SEO marketing tips.
The easiest way to ensure that you get found on Google? Get an expert to take over your company’s SEO! The Digital Marketing People are thrilled to be able to offer you superior local SEO services to suit your needs and your business. Get in touch with us today for more information on how we can assist.
3 Tips for Using Google and Facebook’s Free Attribution Services
Google originally introduced its free attribution services to the world of digital marketing in 2017. The service makes it possible for marketers to unify data from various sources, including Google Ads, Google Analytics and DoubleClick Search without any additional tagging, to analyze performance, and to take advantage of effortless reporting for easy optimization going forward.
Facebook followed suit in 2019 with its own free attribution services, ultimately providing marketers with a host of new opportunities as a result of attribution competition between the world’s two largest advertising platforms. If you are keen to jump on the bandwagon and put these free services to good use, here are 3 helpful tips to keep in mind.
Understand Each Platform’s Capabilities
For instance, in terms of cross-platform attribution, Google’s attribution services are limited to Google properties and Facebook clicks (but not impressions), while Facebook’s attributions allow for insights into multiple partners, although there are some major social platforms missing. The services also differ drastically in terms of verifiability. For example, Google’s attribution services’ verifiability capability is low due to the fact that data is confined within the Google-owned ad network. Facebook’s attribution services are somewhat better because cross-platform capabilities enable cross-referencing.
Get Started ASAP
You definitely do not want to put off embracing the power of either Google or Facebook’s free attribution services. This is especially true for Facebook, as the tool will not have access to any historical data after set-up has taken place. In short, the tool will only track from the day that you set it up going forward. So, do not wait!
Enlist the Help of a Professional
Optimizing Google and Facebook’s free attribution services for your business can be challenging if you are not familiar with social media marketing in general. In this case, it can be endlessly beneficial to enlist the help of a digital marketing professional to assist you in getting the hang of it.
Here at The Digital Marketing People, we specialize in digital marketing, PPC, social media marketing strategy and SEO in the USA and Canada. We are happy to help you learn how to embrace the various free tracking tools as offered by Facebook and Google, among many other invaluable services to aid in boosting the growth of your business. Contact us today to learn more.
Successful B2B Small Business Marketing in Just 3 Steps
B2B marketing may come with challenges. But, it also has a number of innate advantages when compared to consumer-based marketing. As a B2B marketer, you are playing in a narrow field in which your prospects are not merely members of a giant mass of consumers, but specific operators within a particular field. Their needs should be relatively apparent to you, and you have the means to fulfill those needs, or you wouldn’t be targeting this particular market in the first place.
Having established this advantage, how does a small business successfully market itself to its clients? Here are the 3 broad and basic steps you should divide your efforts into:
Establish a Firm Knowledge of Your Audience
How well do you really understand the potential clients you are addressing? No matter how well you think you know them, get even better acquainted. Study them, the language they speak, the platforms they frequent, everything about them. Even if you serve a large industry, your market is still quite small compared to companies that target consumers. That only makes it easier for you to understand your audience inside and out. Once you’ve done your research, you will not only know how to address them, but also where.
Build Links Between Your Product and Your Audience
Look at your audience and your product. What is the connection between them? What will the one do for the other? You now know how to reach your audience and how to address them, so now you just have to relate your product to them. Here’s where your marketing creativity kicks in as you tell them; via their preferred platforms (the appropriate social media sites, and the like); why they need your product. And, remember to open the channels they need to acquire it.
Analyze Your Data – And Repeat
This is probably the most important step. Make good use of your analytical tools. Count your clicks and conversions. And, either keep doing what you’re doing or change it as necessary. Keep a constant watch on your data and adjust your approach as you go. This forms a feedback loop that will maintain and strengthen your marketing efforts.
The Digital Marketing People have mastered B2B marketing and can help you set up a winning strategy. Contact us to find out how we can perfect your campaign.