THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO DIGITAL MARKETING SUCCESS

Transcription

1 THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO DIGITAL MARKETING SUCCESS

2 CONTENTS What Is Digital Marketing? 3 Building Your Digital Marketing Strategy 4 Identify your goals and audience 4 Reach your audience 4 Engage with them 4 Convert them into customers 4 Keep them loyal 4 Identifying Your Goals & Audience 5 Start from the end and work back 5 Funnel Goals 6 Secondary Goals 6 Ultimate Goals 6 Who is your ideal customer? 7 Useful Tools 8 Reach Your Audience 9 You know who they are, now you need to reach them 9 Social media isn t a sales channel yet. 9 But it s getting there. 9 Beyond Social 9 Speak Their Language 10 Let Them Help You 10 Useful Tools 11 Engage With Your Audience 12 It s Good To Talk 12 Go To Them 12 Useful Tools 13 Convert Them Into Customers 14 From lead to sale 14 Marketing Works 15 Useful Tools 16 Keep them loyal 17 Dealing with churn 17 Satisfaction, guaranteed 17 Know Your Weaknesses 17 It s Not What Happens, 17 It s How You React That Matters 17 Keep Telling Them How Great Your Product Is 17 Useful Tools 18 Improve Everything 19 How you can use your data to improve: 19 Useful Tools 20 In Summary 22 Who are we? 23 About the author

3 WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING? Quite simply, digital marketing is using digital media to promote a product, brand or service. The key difference between digital and traditional marketing is that you can: MEASURE EVERYTHING. This is why, in the relatively short time digital marketing has been around, it has exploded. Gone are the days where you have to go almost entirely on gut feeling. Everything can be put under the microscope, analyzed and optimized, often in real-time. 3

4 WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING? Building Your Digital Marketing Strategy Failing to plan, is planning to fail, as the saying goes and it s as true when talking about your digital marketing strategy as it is climbing a mountain. When putting together your strategy, there are some key elements you need to address. Identify your goals and audience Who is it you want to reach and what do you want them to do? Reach your audience How and where are you going to target your audience? Engage with them What are you going to do to get them to engage with you? Convert them into customers How are you going to do to convert them from a lead into a sale? Keep them loyal What will you do to retain their custom? 4

5 IDENTIFYING YOUR GOALS & AUDIENCE Start from the end and work back This sits near the very top of the tree. You should identify what it is you want to do with your marketing and who you want to reach. Define your ideal customer or customers. Write detailed descriptions of who that person is, the sites they visit, the things they identify with. How you achieve your end goal will likely vary per channel, because people interact with each channel differently. The funnel of interaction for an marketing campaign with existing customers will almost certainly look different to a social media campaign, paid or otherwise. Choosing your marketing goals is critical. If you go into anything, whether it s digital or traditional marketing, not having clearly defined goals and metrics for measuring your achievements, means that, potentially, anything you spend on marketing is just like burning money. 5

6 IDENTIFYING YOUR GOALS & AUDIENCE Funnel Goals The little baby-steps along the way to your ultimate goal. Secondary Goals While not critical, these can certainly be beneficial. Ultimate Goals Your holy-grail. Everything you do should be done with intention of making this happen. Open Rate Click Through Rate Registrations Engagement Rates Post Likes Social Shares Conversions Transaction Value All of these goals are just an example. Every business is different. But getting everything down at the very beginning is key. It s better to have a draft goal plan than none at all. 6

7 IDENTIFYING YOUR GOALS & AUDIENCE Who is your ideal customer? Write down 3 or 4 examples of who your dream customer is. Is it you? Then write that down. Even if you know yourself, chances are other people will understand you differently. Age, Gender, Interests, Location, Favourite Sites By clearly defining your audience, you can make sure your marketing strategy speaks to those people. If you don t define them, how and where they communicate, how can you reach them? (Hint: you won t). 7

8 IDENTIFYING YOUR GOALS & AUDIENCE Useful Tools Google Analytics Out of all the tools mentioned in this ebook, Google Analytics is probably the most important. And, it s free! GA has been a mainstay for digital-marketers for a while now and with good reason. When implemented correctly it can be a highly effective way of gathering all important analytical data. You also use the demographics features to give you a clear picture of who your audience are, where they are and more. Most importantly though, you can use the ecommerce functionality to track conversions and then attribute value to those conversions. If you have a group of 5 or more people working together, having a unified, internal communication system, like Slack, is a must. Slack If you re a team of people, working together towards a common goal, not only do you need to be communicating with your customers, you need to be talking with each other. Slack is a great way of bringing teams together to collaborate on projects and you should definitely take a look at it. It allows you to create team channels, private channels and send direct messages. It has a whole host of integrations with things like Google Drive and Dropbox. 8

9 REACH YOUR AUDIENCE You know who they are, now you need to reach them By defining who it is you want to reach the next step is actually speak to them. Picking the best channels to reach your audience can be tricky, but it s made much easier if you know who you re talking to. Different types of people use different platforms and channels in different ways. Social media isn t a sales channel yet. But it s getting there. Right now social media is seen as more for brand building than directly driving sales. But the data contained within social media can be a goldmine if you re looking for ways to improve everything from tweets to ad copy. Seeing who interacts with what and how they do it can give you key optimization insights. Beyond Social In almost every scenario, your website should sit at the heart of your on-site flow; you want people to go from wherever they are, to your site. 9

10 REACH YOUR AUDIENCE LINKEDIN PAID REVIEWS HOW TO... INDUSTRY NEWS COMPANY UPDATES MONITOR AND ENGAGE LOCAL PRINT DIGITAL PRESS RELEASES BLOG SOCIAL FACEBOOK BOOSTED POSTS SHARED CONTENT MESSAGES CONTENT OTHER NETWORKS YOUR AWESOME WEBSITE VIDEO ADS INSTAGRAM PINTEREST OFFERS BLOG CONTENT NEWSLETTER PPC TRANSACTIONAL SEARCH DISPLAY CHURN ADWORDS BING YANDEX SOCIAL DISPLAY GOOGLE DISPLAY ADS WE MISS YOU... SURVEY FEEDBACK RETARGETING Speak Their Language If you re going to have a multi-lingual presence and product, don t think that simply translating will be enough. Often, localisation gets looked at as just converting your native language into that of your target market, but that won t do. You need to actually localise you content and communication so that it s relevant to that country. Let Them Help You If you already have an existing customer-base, why not consider letting them help you? Firms like Dropbox and AirBNB have seen incredible success through their campaigns: offering discounts or added storage (in the case of Dropbox) every time someone you know signs up. It can be an incredibly cost effective way to grow quickly and early on in your life-cycle, even with a relatively small customer list. 10

11 REACH YOUR AUDIENCE use spreadsheets, try including descriptions and in-context examples to help smooth the localisation process. Useful Tools Hootsuite Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to manage, create and monitor social media posts, all in one place. Using a social media management tool is great way of taking the sometimes laborious process of creating content for lots of different social media platforms and streamlining it. If you plan on using social to build your brand, you should really take a look at it. Other Platforms To Consider: Buffer Sprout Social CrowdIn If you re looking to localise your content, either in your platform or on your marketing website, CrowdIn is a great tool for managing that process. It s effectively a CMS for your translations, allowing you to manage your translators, whether they re internal, agencies or even using crowd sourced translations. It also allows for in-context localisation; translators can see the text as it will appear to users, in platform, rather than dealing with spreadsheets where text contains little or no context. Top tip: If you re localising your content, avoid using spreadsheets. If you must 11

12 ENGAGE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE It s Good To Talk Once you ve reached your audience, getting them engaged and invested in your brand is key. Involve them in the discussion as much as possible to make them feel valued and understood. By doing this you keep them invested in what you have to offer. Go To Them If your customers want to send sales queries via social media, despite you having a shiny, dedicated sales page, then let them. Have the discussion with them there. Engage with them where they feel most comfortable. By forcing them to have to go through another step in the funnel, you re increasing the risk of them giving up on you and looking elsewhere. You can use comments on your social media posts as an opportunity to engage with them. Not only does this show your openness and willingness to communicate in their eyes, if it s an open channel, like a Facebook post, others will see that as well. 12

13 ENGAGE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE Useful Tools Intercom Intercom is a multi-faceted set of tools that covers everything from sales and support to transactional , but it s Intercom s Engage product that s really relevant here. It allows you to use targeted, automated messages (either by , in platform or in-app). You can use it to announce new features at the time when you know they re most likely to be relevant to individual users. Klout This is a really useful tool to help build engagement on social media by suggesting content to share or create to generate an impact with your audience. It allows to track retweets, likes and shares and aggregates all of that into a Klout Score. Lithium Klout is actually now part of Lithium, but the tools offered by Lithium are likely to appeal to larger enterprise-level organisations. 13

14 CONVERT THEM INTO CUSTOMERS From lead to sale After capturing a lead, you now need to convert them into a sale. Most frequently, this lead will be in the form of an , so sending them timely, relevant messages is key. Consider using incentives, like discounts, free trials or account credits to get them onboard. Free trials can be a very effective way of improving conversion rates if your product is SaaS or something similar. You can even consider combining a free trial, to onboard your customer and then combine that with a discount on their first 3-months of membership. 91% 73% Is Marketing producing ROI? * Produces significant ROI Produces some ROI Will eventually produce ROI Indirectly produces ROI Not likely to produce ROI Unsure 21% 32% 20% 18% 5% 3% 73% of marketers agree that marketing is core to their business * Source Salesforce 14

15 CONVERT THEM INTO CUSTOMERS Marketing Works Recently, marketing has gone from being the ugly duckling of digital marketing to seeing somewhat of a resurgence. Why? Targeting. Very Effective / Effective Somewhat Effective Not very effective/ not at all Don t know Transactional s 74% 18% 6% 2% Loyalty 72% 21% 5% 2% Birthday 75% 17% 6% 2% Browser Retargeting 73% 20% 5% 2% This all comes back to defining your audience and goals at the beginning of the process. If you re clear in your own mind who these people are and what you want them to do, wrapping that up in a simple, elegant message becomes that much easier. Using subject lines that are both clear and relevant to them means people will open the . Then keeping the contents of that brief and to the point means they re going to read it. Finally, having an understandable, clickable CTA means they re going to reach the page you need them to be on to convert. If you ve already managed to capture a lead or maybe on board someone with a free trial, sending them messages triggered by specific actions within your platform or site can dramatically increase the likelihood of them converting into a paying customer. * Source Salesforce 15

16 CONVERT THEM INTO CUSTOMERS Useful Tools MailChimp There s lots of things to keep on top when you re using to market yourself and MailChimp helps a lot with that. Covering everything from designing templates and campaigns, managing lists and tracking the success of your marketing efforts. It allows you to AB test many things, something that is very useful when optimizing your campaigns (you should really be optimizing). You can also use it to create forms to capture leads on your website or via social media. If you re looking for a way to handle transactional s, MailChimp also offers their Mandrill API. YesWare Offering a lot of the same functionality as MailChimp, but with a more sales team oriented approach, YesWare is great for optimizing your direct sales channel. It provides valuable analytical data on open rates, device types, click through rates and how your potential customers are viewing your sales presentations. 16

17 KEEP THEM LOYAL Dealing with churn Churn is a problem for any business, but it can be especially problematic for those whose product is SaaS. It s inevitable that a percentage of your customers will stop using your service at some point, due to things beyond your control. But there are things that you do control and can act upon to keep people onboard. Satisfaction, guaranteed Using short surveys to understand why customers have stopped working with you can help you understand where you went wrong and where you need to improve. Avoid using leading questions that can end up contaminating your results. Most importantly, don t make it seem like work. If it s 20 questions long and looks like an exam paper, people are going to close it the moment it s loaded. By keeping it short, you ll get better responses, and people will be less likely to start randomly clicking to get it over. Know Your Weaknesses Understand where you need to improve is key to retaining customers. You need to give them the opportunity to easily contact you if the have a problem - whether that s through an easily reachable feedback form or asking for their feedback every time you them. It s Not What Happens, It s How You React That Matters You re going to mess at some point. It happens to the best of us. But what happens after is what really matters. Say sorry. Tell people what went wrong and what you re doing about it. Share what you ve learned and the measures you re going to put in place to prevent it from happening again. Make it clear that you re looking forward to their continued support. Keep Telling Them How Great Your Product Is Customers these days have a huge amount of choice. Use every interaction they have with you as a means to reinforce the message that your product is the best out there. Keep giving them reasons to stay with you and they will. 17

18 KEEP THEM LOYAL Useful Tools SurveyMonkey If you want to run surveys to find out how your customers feel about your product, Survey Monkey is a great place to start. It offers MailChimp integration, so you can use your existing customer lists, without having to re-add them. It contains all of the question types you should need and allows you to randomize answers and test subject lines. Other Platforms To Consider: Google Forms: Super simple, super free. If you re just getting started and you want a simple way to reach out for feedback. Qualtrics: Enterprise grade surveys and feedback. It may be out your budget range if you re just getting started, but it offers a lot of powerful tools and flexibility that is sometimes missing in SurveyMonkey. 18

19 IMPROVE EVERYTHING Use your data to deliver better marketing The key advantage you have with digital marketing is that everything is measurable. So, measure it. From the very outset make sure you re tracking everything that can possibly be tracked. If you re not tracking early on (read: from the beginning), there s no way for you to go back a get that data. It s gone. Small changes. Big returns. The idea of marginal gains, making small changes that, in the long term can have a huge impact on performance, is nothing new. There are examples of these kinds of test being run on everything from WW2 aircraft (reducing crashes on landing) to Google themselves. These kinds of experiments can be run on virtually any element of your digital marketing. It can be something like slight changes in the hue or colour of an element, changing the font size. But don t be afraid of trying BIG changes. Sometimes if you have a completely new idea that is a total departure from, say, your normal copy or design language, test it. There s almost never any harm in running it as a variation of your existing page or mailing. What if you re test yields no or poor results? Good. You ve learned something. Take that learning and feed it back into your overall marketing process. It s surely better to test something new, learn from it and understand that it doesn t work than just push a change out based on a gut feeling and damage your marketing in the process. How you can use your data to improve: Look at your social media following and identify posts that have done well. Look at the kind of copy you used on those posts and try integrating it into your ads. A/B test subject lines in s (in fact, A/B test all the things) Use analytical tools to identify where in your website s sales funnel potential customers are dropping off and try to streamline things. Similarly, you can see if certain elements in registration forms are acting as barriers. Try removing them and seeing if your signups increase. Ask your customers if they are happy and if not, why? 19

20 IMPROVE EVERYTHING Useful Tools Optimizely With its powerful, easy-to-use interface, creating testing and optimizing your website and platform is simple. You can use it to quickly create multivariate tests, experimenting with copy, images, colours - basically anything you can think of you can test and optimize. It also provides you with actionable insights, so you can see what s working and push the winning variation to 100% of your traffic. Not only that, you can use it to create and display targeted page designs and copy based on things like location, device, browser language and more. It s not cheap, but used correctly the ROI can be immense. Other Platforms To Consider: Google Content Experiments: Tucked away in Google Analytics, Content Experiments allows you to A/B test variations of websites. It is pretty basic and requires a lot more effort than Optimizely, but it s a good place to start. Visual Web Optimizer: The entry-level packages give you a lot more to play with the Google s offering, including a similar interface to Optimizely. 20

21 If you re testing, you cannot fail. 21

22 IN SUMMARY Define your audience and goals Define your metrics for success Establish where you want to reach your audience Understand how you will engage with them Use data to educate yourself and refine as you go Test and experiment with new ideas 22

23 WHO ARE WE? Adcash is a real-time advertising trading platform that delivers maximum exposure for advertisers and a simple, effective way for publishers to make money. We use a unique combination of industry experience and advanced optimization technology to provide our customers with digital advertising solutions that deliver results. 23

24 ABOUT THE AUTHOR This ebook has been lovingly handcrafted by the Adcash Head of Marketing, Liis Ristal. Liis career has been focused on many areas in and around communication. From public relations to sales, through to marketing strategy and beyond, she has a huge wealth of experience. Just one small element of that experience is what she has condensed down into this ebook, for you to read and share. She is always open to feedback, new ideas and concepts for further ebooks and you can get in touch with her using liis@adcash.com 24