THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF DIGITAL MARKETING. by Rory Macrae

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1 THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF DIGITAL MARKETING by Rory Macrae

2 INTRODUCTION Digital marketing is hard. The internet is a vast expanse with near infinite opportunities for the go-getting marketer. But where do you start? Which techniques should you prioritise and what should you do if you re not getting results? Effective online marketing can only be achieved when you take time to evaluate what you re doing right now. Some of your activities may actually be having a negative effect on your overall efforts. We ve put together this ebook to highlight some common digital marketing errors and how they can be avoided. Welcome to The 7 Deadly Sins (of Digital Marketing). Enjoy! 2

3 THE ROAD TO NOWHERE For those who are new to digital marketing, the process often follows 3 stages: Stage 1 Inactivity. Your website is five years old but it feels twice its age. The last time anybody posted anything new to the site was in 2013 was when someone wrote a post congratulating Sharon in accounts on her cycle ride to Brighton. Stage 2 Panic. We need to DO DIGITAL! All of our competitors are doing great online. We need more sales! Give me BUDGET! We need a new website. Banners! Adwords! marketing! FACEBOOK! We need to do IT ALL! Stage 3 Why is nobody listening?! Where is our return-on-investment? This is rubbish, let s all give up and go live in a cave (or something like that). Sound familiar? We ve all been there, trust me! So where did it all go wrong? 3

4 THE 7 SINS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM 4

5 1. NO STRATEGY Awareness Consideration It goes without saying that if you fail to plan, plan to Key to crafting a powerful digital strategy is deciding what do we want to achieve? The answer seems obvious. You want more customers, right? But simply gaining customers isn t a very smart goal. It doesn t tell the full story. You are better off focussing upon areas of the buyer s road to conversion and setting specific goals around these. What are the ingredients needed to warm people so that they re ready to buy? Are there metrics that you can focus upon that will help improve these areas? This might mean that you create entire campaigns designed to increase subscribers, gain Facebook followers, or raise the average time spent on your website, for example. Decision These are goals that can help you better understand your customers and ultimately lead you to greater sales. Remember that the buyer s journey is more complex than than just purchase. Many digital marketing campaigns lack efforts that simply create awareness of a brand or service rather than sell-sell-sell. The buyer s journey 5

6 2. TRYING TO TARGET EVERYBODY When you ask a business owner who they would like to target they will often say everybody!. But what they really mean is that they ll happily sell to anybody. This is obviously not a realistic goal and as marketers we of course know better. Without focus upon specific customers, our marketing efforts are useless. We need to correctly identify our target demographic. It s useful to write up buyer personas. Be as detailed as possible. Everything you do from now on should refer directly to your target personas. Try to focus your marketing efforts upon one or two specific types of customer at a time. The more targeted you can be, the more effective your marketing will be. If your target personas begin to change a little over time, that s ok! This is a natural progression for any business. Mailchimp s Persona Posters 6

7 3. THE HARD SELL People only want two things when they re online: knowledge and entertainment The modern web user is entirely different to customers of the past. The internet has brought limitless options and complete freedom of information for consumers. Today s customer researches their various options thoroughly before committing to a purchase. They read third party information and reviews before deciding whether or not they want a product. They re not easily swayed by old-school sales tactics. Web users are becoming increasingly banner blind and generic advertising fails to reach its mark. Today s digital marketing is all about providing valuable content. It s about understanding that your customer wants to be informed or entertained. Not sold to. They want to make their own decisions. The greater value you can provide for your potential customers at an early stage, the greater value you ll receive in return at a later date. 7

8 Selfish vs Empathetic Content Businesses must strive for empathy in the way in which they communicate. Selfish web content that centres around a business, service or product is no longer relevant. People connect with content that is about them. Selfish Content Empathetic Content Press Releases HR News Adverts / Banners Company History Corporate Video Service Information Product Information Case Studies Blog Posts ebooks Reviews Podcasts Survey Results Infographics Curated Resources Viral Video We need to prioritise empathetic content when creating for the web. 8

9 4. UNDERESTIMATING THE SKILLS REQUIRED The modern marketer s role has changed dramatically. In the past, a marketer might have spent around 20% of their time focussed on digital marketing. Now, this number is probably closer to 80%. Digital marketing isn t easy. It requires a vast range of skills in order to execute a successful campaign. The modern marketer needs the capacity to write snappy copy, tell compelling stories, design beautiful web pages and code seamless new features. This is of course impossible for a single person. You need to build a powerful internal marketing team. Or hire an external team of specialists. Research Planning Marketing Web Development SEO Strategy User Interface Design User Experience Copywriting Analysis Social Media Outreach Advertising Psychology Graphic Design Storytelling 9

10 5. NOT GETTING IT OUT THERE So, you ve assembled your band of digital superstars and you ve created a rock solid strategy that targets your ideal customer with total precision. You ve created some extraordinary content that provides the type of engaging insight that you know people will love. Time to sit back and reap the rewards, right? Not so fast. How are you actually going to get your content out there? Unless you re a huge brand who has already established a substantial online following, you might struggle to get more than a handful of visitors. In the early stages of a content lead digital strategy you should aim to devote at least the same amount of effort distributing your content as you expend creating it. Effort Creating = Effort Distributing 10

11 There are lots of ways in which you can distribute your content: Search engine optimisation (increase organic search traffic) Google Adwords Paid social media advertising Social media (organic) Content sharing Niche networks, forums and groups Long form publishing networks, e.g. Medium and LinkedIn Influencer marketing Guest publishing These are just a few ideas. It s best to start with a selection of these in order to begin to find out what works for your you. Some will be more or less relevant depending upon the industry that you operate within. Timing is of course key too. The good news is that putting in this effort upfront will have a snowball effect. Once you begin to gather pace, traffic, followers and customers can quickly ramp up. 11

12 6. NOT MEASURING OR TRACKING...ANYTHING We re all familiar with Google Analytics right? It s an incredible tool and one that few users even begin to scratch the surface of. But it s not the be-all and end-all. Simple metrics such as total visits or sessions are not especially useful for anything other than vanity. You need to be able to evaluate the who, where, when, why and how. There are a tonne of tools out there that can give you far greater insight into the performance of your digital marketing efforts than Google Analytics can on its own. And if you re not experimenting with some of them, then you re missing out on some very valuable data. 12

13 Better Tools Hubspot Hubspot is actually a complete marketing solution that houses a bunch of different tools. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the software is its ability to track users. Hubspot gathers in-depth data about exactly who is visiting your website, allowing you to market to your target demographic in a far more intelligent way. SE ranking SE ranking is a keyword tracker. It allows you to keep track of search rankings for particular keywords and helps ensure that your website is optimised for the right search terms. Buffer Buffer helps you manage your social media channels. It allows you to queue up social posts and gives you useful analytics about their performance. Moz One of the coolest features of Moz is its keyword explorer. This unique tool allows you to search for a specific term and find out how difficult it might be to rank for that keyword. Buzz Sumo Buzz Sumo is a unique tool that allows you to quickly analyse what content is doing well on social media. Discover trends and take advantage of new opportunities. 13

14 7. IMPATIENCE The final sin is perhaps the trickiest to avoid. A long lasting and sustainable digital strategy takes time to implement. Results don t happen overnight and it could take months before you begin to see a return on your investment. The Rule of 70 There s an old-school rule of thumb that says that a prospect needs to see or hear an offering seven times before making a decision. But this isn t the 1950s. We now have far more ways to interact with potential customers. Positive ways in which prospects can interact online: Reading a blog post Downloading an ebook Liking a Facebook post Retweeting Following on Instagram Signing up for a free trial Watching a webinar Signing up for a newsletter Sharing a web page Subscribing to an RSS feed...and a whole lot more It s not unreasonable or improbable for customers to rack up 70 interactions before they re ready to make a decision! Don t give up too early. Take advice from Take That and have a little patience! Keep creating, analysing and refining until you reach that tipping point. 14

15 New Mindset, New Methodology Absolving yourself from your sinful ways and starting afresh requires a new way of thinking. You must learn to focus less on the value that you want to extract and more on the value that you can provide. We call this new methodology inbound. Inbound marketing is all about creating relevant, engaging and insightful content to share online. This will enable you to craft a powerful brand, gain a legion of followers and sky-rocket business growth. 15

16 Written by Rory Macrae Rory is a brand strategist at Digital Results. He combines design prowess and marketing expertise to create powerful digital content. rory@digital-results.com twitter.com/roryjmacrae NEED A HAND GOING INBOUND? Digital Results are inbound marketing specialists. They re an expert team of strategists, developers and designers who focus on helping companies get more out of their digital marketing. info@digital-results.com (+44) Digital Results 12 Rosebery Avenue London EC1R 4TD V1.3