The Main Reason Your Digital Marketing Campaign is Failing (And How to Fix It)
I recently spoke at the Digital Summit conference in Kansas City where I asked the audience, ‘How many of you have been successful with content marketing for at least a year?” In the audience of approximately 300, only about 10% raised their hands. Because content marketing has been in the mainstream of digital marketing tactics for several years, I was quite surprised. I followed up my ad hoc survey by saying, “Well then, you came to the right place!”
In the workshop, we focus on the customer journey, the channels, the strategies and tactics that make for effective marketing in the digital space. I explain how, in the end, success all comes down to one thing: implementation. “It’s important to have a sound idea, but the really important thing is the implementation.” -Wilbur Ross The image above is from my Digital Summit presentation and the slide behind me illustrates just how frustrating it can be for some businesses to be successful with digital marketing.
It takes persistence, consistency and publishing the right kind of content over an extended period. And the number one reason for this frustration and failure is: Not implementing. Many marketers think the reason their digital marketing is failing is because they have the wrong strategy. You can have an awesome strategy in place, great content and focused resources but if you don’t implement (read as ‘publish’), your traffic, leads and conversions won’t increase. You will get frustrated and, in many cases, just quit.
The future of digital marketing in a data-privacy world
Companies have long collected data on consumers to determine what people want and who their potential customers might be. But for anybody doing in business in Europe, how they go about collecting that data just got a lot more difficult. And corporate marketing departments are rushing to figure out what to do next. Last year, Nike held an Air Max Day “vote it forward” campaign to choose a new sneaker design. The company used data on which consumers voted for the winning shoe to target them with an exclusive offer to buy the winning pair, the Sean Wotherspoon Air Max 97.
What changed everything?
The General Data Protection Regulation, which puts consumers in the driver’s seat when it comes to protecting their private information online. Broadly speaking, in many cases, companies around the globe must ask European citizens for their consent before collecting personal information. They can collect only the data they need to do a specific job, and when they’ve got it, they face a host of restrictions on how they use it. Among other rules, they must also delete data when they’re done with it — or when consumers ask them to. That isn’t all. The rules for “third party” data also are getting more complicated. Many marketers don’t collect customer data themselves, so they use the information from other vendors, to help them target ads. Now they must make sure those vendors are in compliance with GDPR standards.
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The digital marketers who are helping artists grow their own music
The music industry is an ever-changing beast. As consumer behaviour changes and revenue streams shift, the industry adapts. Social media platforms and record companies have become media publishers, artists have become marketers, and media have become agencies. The goal however, hasn’t changed. the aforementioned all want to reach large audiences and cut through the overwhelming noise that exists online.
Excelling at your core business is demanding, excelling at your core business and a new sector at once is even more so. It’s apposite then that a troupe of wholly independent digital marketers have achieved great success in the music industry; taking on label, festival, tech company and artist clients to define strategies, increase and engage audiences, and drive measurable returns.
To find out more about how digital marketers are carving out a relevant and crucial space in the music industry, TIO chatted to: Martin Brown, CEO and Co-Founder of Grow My Music , a digital music company providing education, digital marketing, and artists services to artists, bands and music companies. Vanessa Picken , Founder and Director of Comes With Fries , a modular digital agency providing professional services and expertise to those in the music, technology, fashion, and digital industries. And Anthony Zaccaria and Alex Zaccaria , who are behind the team of marketers, analysts, strategists, artist managers, designers and developers at 10-year-old Bolster . What does your company do?
Tips for A Successful Guest Blog Strategy
If you are reading this article, it is clear that you are a strategic thinker, especially when it comes to digital marketing. You are now thinking about exploiting Guest Blogging as an opportunity for marketing your own website.
We have put together the best tips to ensure that you craft a winning Guest Blogging Strategy.
Define your strategic objective
Too often bloggers / website owners/ small business owners jump at the opportunity to be a guest poster on well known blogs without thinking about what they want to get out of it. Just like any other strategy roadmap, the starting point is to define your objectives clearly.
Some common objectives could be:
- Establishing yourself as a subject matter expert to get more work opportunities for yourself
- Generating more awareness for your website / blog
- Getting email ids for a subscriber mailing list
There may be others as well, but it helps to define your strategy by defining your objective sharply.
Assess the guest posting opportunities
Once you have identified the websites/blogs where you want or need to be seen as a guest poster, assess them for the right fit to your strategy. A simple search of the host website URL on Moz or SEMRush will give you an idea of the keywords and topics associated with it. It will also give you the domain authority index for the particular website. Weed out the websites which are suspicious or low on domain authority. See the areas that the websites are associated with and then choose the ones that complement your own domain. Are you a small business into artisanal health foods? Assess your guest posting opportunities and weed out websites that are into mass-produced or highly processed foods. Choose wisely, perhaps a sports and nutrition website would be a better fit for your guest post. Here is one good site you can read about men's wallets.
Apply your content strategy rules to the guest post, too
Write your guest post as you would write your own. The same rules apply for guest post content. Reeling in with a great headline, optimizing the post for SEO, using infographics, making visually appealing content, all the great things you would do for posts on your own website, make sure to apply the same rules to your guest post.
In addition, heed the advice of Matej Markovic, owner of Neevee. He advises, “Write for human readers. After all, they are the ones who have the credit cards in their wallets.”
Exploit your author profile to the hilt
At the end of the guest post is the precious space of all, the space for author profile or bio-data. This is the space to achieve your objective. If it is to establish your authority as an expert or to gain backlinks to your website or get email subscribers to your newsletter, this is the space to achieve that objective.
Are you a small car interior business guest posting on a home & lifestyle blog to try and get a new set of clientele to try out your business with a promo offer? Then this is what your bio could look like.
“Adam (Eve), is nuts about cars and dreams of crazy ways to pimp your ride interiors. As (s)he is on a giveaway spree, (s)he is throwing 5 free interior upgrades to lucky subscribers. Try your luck here.”
Use the guest post as the beginning of a relationship
The guest post doesn’t end there. It is the beginning of a relationship with the host website / blog and the new audience that just read your content. Continue to interact with the new audience in the comments section. Drop links back to your website/blog in the ensuing conversation in the comments section. Give a shout out to the host website/ blog on your own blog in return for the opportunity they offered you. This may be the beginning of a regular opportunity for you do more guest posts with them in the future.
Try our easy tips and you cannot go wrong with your guest blogging strategy. Rock your own blog through a great guest blogging game.
Author Bio: Deborah Tayloe is a contributing writer for Neevee, an international digital marketing agency. She loves to share her knowledge of digital marketing to help small business owners grow! Deborah is a Pennsylvania native who now resides in North Carolina, USA.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
Advertisers demand a clean up of 'the digital swamp'
The digital ad industry has received stern warnings over recent months as many leading CMO's including Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer of Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest advertiser and Keith Weed, CMO of Unilever, the world’s second-biggest advertiser, have demanded action to clean up what has been called the digital swamp.
The problems with online advertising have become a serious issue among advertisers with Big Digital's lack of transparency, the YouTube brand safety row (when dozens of brands discovered their ads were appearing next to extremist content), computer bot fraud where ads are not even seen by humans, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when the data firm obtained personal information on 87 million Facebook users.
The YouTube brand safety row has also encouraged brands to take more responsibility for the placement of their ads. No longer are they prepared to 'spray and pray' and neither will they delegate all the decision-making to their media-buying agency.
Instead, as research by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a US trade body for the digital ad industry and Accenture Interactive, the digital marketing arm of consulting giant Accenture has found, 65% of brands are bringing some or all of their programmatic ad-buying in-house. Many brands have also introduced tougher, so-called 'whitelists' of sites on which their ads can appear, as demonstrated by J.P. Morgan Chase who slashed its list of approved sites from 400,000 to about 10,000 last year. It's clear that digital agencies need to up their game to survive.
Fiona Swainston is SVP Europe of programmatic advertising agency Digital Ignite www.digital-ignite.com
Photo by delfi de la Rua on Unsplash
From digital marketing to marketing in the digital world
We’ve all heard the marketing industry is evolving at a breakneck speed. I actually think its consumers that are doing the evolving. As marketers, we are just trying to keep up. Today’s consumers value meaningful engagement, which can’t be copied or faked. They crave authenticity and social awareness. They are attracted to ethical, responsible, and sustainable businesses. In other words, they’re seeking more of a relationship from the brands they choose to support. Enter the “brand-led experience.” What it isn’t? The predominant approaches to meeting the needs of this new empowered and connected consumer have basic flaws. The traditional brand-led approach is too transactional, too much selling to. On the other end of the spectrum is the tech-led approach, like that of Uber or Tinder, which leverages their vast amounts of data to personalize offerings to consumers but it isn’t distinct enough to build lasting consumer loyalty. What it is? A new marketing approach is needed. One that: - builds relationships. - is in service to consumers. - is distinctive and not easily replicated with technology. We call this new approach brand-led experiences. Done right, customized experiences can deepen engagement with a new type of consumer: one who is willing to spend a little more time interacting with a brand if the pay-off is unique, relevant experiences that add value to their lives. Being a brand experience-led company is about using both brand-led and technology-led approaches to forge deep connections with consumers through meaningful customized experiences. In fact, successful [...]
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Eight Things That Matter from Gartner Digital Marketing Conference
At its recent Digital Marketing Conference, Gartner famously called the future of marketing “fast, frenetic, and fantastic” and we couldn’t agree more. Consumers increasingly expect seamless, highly relevant interactions with brands yet feel trepidation about brand marketing. Marketers must now succeed in an environment where more personalization means greater privacy risk, where walled gardens are the customer’s gateway to the Internet, and where emerging technologies are rewriting the rules of marketing every day. And don’t forget, marketers are consumers too, both practicing and experiencing these factors. We strategize about the best ways to identify our customers — Who are they and what do they want? What are their pains and problems? What do they need? We master ever-growing tech stacks to communicate with prospects — using twelve or more platforms to blog, socialize, email, host online events, optimize our sites and our marketing, measure results, and capture the leads (please, the leads!) from those who make their way to our sites to download, subscribe or even request a demo. We gather databases full of different kinds of information : email addresses, social handles, locations, time zones, device IDs, and more. We do our best to make sure we’re presenting the best creative, the most relevant and useful information we can, not spam. Also Read: Editing is the New Coding Occasionally, we leave the office. We drive or walk or take the train home and open our laptops or swipe our phone screens or turn on the TV. We answer [...]
How to Use Content Marketing to Drive Leads
Content marketing is among the most cost-effective marketing strategies since it drives 3 times more leads than outbound marketing while being 62% cheaper. However, this stat applies only to superb content which adds value to its readers. In other words, by generating subpar content, you’ll fail to drive leads, not to mention that your reputation and authority will be damaged. The thing is that creating useful content which will attract your audience and send it to your website isn’t exactly easy. So, here are a couple of tips on how to craft blog posts and articles which will bring you quality traffic.
Avoid grammar and spelling mistakes
Maybe this seems like a completely redundant piece of advice, but grammar, spelling, and style mistakes in blog posts and articles are more common than you think. Sometimes people just don’t spot errors in their blog posts mainly because they proofread the content immediately after completing it. Besides that, a Cambridge University research study has shown that the human brain can understand the meaning of a word even if the letters inside of it are jumbled. It’s enough that the first and the last letter are correct, which means that the chances are you won’t be able to identify your every spelling mistake. But, luckily there are tools such as Writer and Ginger that can help you make your content impeccable.
Running your content through Writer’s free online grammar check is so helpful and easy, it’s guaranteed to become a part of your writing process. Simply open your web browser and copy and paste your work into the text box provided. The advanced AI will pick up any mistakes your own brain may have missed. The best thing about this tool is that it is free to use on your web browser and does not require you to download any software. The tool won’t just edit what you have already written, it will also suggest ways in which you can improve the content. It does this by proposing words and phrases that could be more suitable than the ones you are using and by highlighting where to include sentence breaks for enhanced readability. No matter how good of a writer you consider yourself to be, these tools will give you a much-needed advantage in this competitive content marketing space.
Find out who your target audience is
Before you create your content marketing strategy, you first need to establish who you will be talking to. This means that you need to create your ideal customer profile. This fictionalized representation of your ideal customer will help you understand your readers and their pain points. In order to find out as much as possible about your target audience, check out industry forums, social media groups, or motivate your existing audience to earn money online by filling out surveys . This way your content will be relevant and interesting as it will address some of the issues your readers are facing and solve them. The only way to drive more leads with your content is to understand your audience and try to help them genuinely.
Take advantage of guest posting
If your blog is still young and you need to spread the word about it and attract visitors, then guest posting is one of the best ways to do so. This practice is excellent for getting backlinks and boosting your SEO rankings. To cut the long story short, when you have your blog post featured on a popular blog, you’ll undoubtedly attract some of the traffic towards your own website. Besides, if your articles are published on respectable, authoritative websites, you’ll build your reputation more easily. Start by researching websites from your niche which aren’t your direct competitors, and offer them some of your finest blog posts.
Craft your headlines carefully
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. This famous quote by David Ogilvy emphasizes the importance of a well-written headline because if your headline is generic and bland, people won’t even bother to give you a chance and read your article. In order to make your headlines more appealing, use numbers, question words and explain what your reader can expect to find in a blog post or paragraph. Intriguing and provocative headlines work but only if you keep your promise and deliver.
Make your content shareable
Since social media plays an important role in promoting your content and expanding your reach, it’s essential to optimize your every blog post or any other piece of content for it. For example, highlight takeaways and make them easily shareable on social media with just one click. Visually oriented content is the type which draws the most attention, so it’s a good idea to create videos and infographics. The latter are liked and shared three times more than any other content on social media. In order to be shareable, content also needs to be inspirational, helpful, and topical while striving to make a change and improve readers’ lives.
Visual Content
The era of text is dying, online as well as offline. Taking over its place is visual content.
Text-based content will always play an integral part in marketing, but to set yourself apart and to attract and retain the attention of your audience, visual content must play a pivotal role in all your efforts.
The following article includes all types of visual content that you can use in your blog post to make them more engaging and valuable. It includes images, videos, diagrams, infographics, screenshots, gifs, memes, comics, and presentations for creating more engaging blog posts. Also, filled with useful resources and statistics related to visual content.
Use repurposing
The benefits of this tactic are numerous. By repurposing your content you can update and upgrade it, as well as give it some new features and values. For example, you can convert your blog posts into videos or infographics, thus making them more appealing to people who are too busy to read them. Also, after a couple of months or years, your content needs a fresh twist, which is why revisiting your old blog post and discussing the topic from a new perspective is a great idea.
All these methods will help you attract highly qualified traffic to your website and boost your conversion rates.
Opt-in Landing Pages with GDPR
Since it came out applications on Facebook openly took user information without account holders knowing about it, new general data protection regulations, or GDPR, have come out from nearly all major Internet application and software providers, ranging from Google and Apple to Snapchat and Twitter. These GDPRs are designed to both clear up a potential issue with user data while providing the highest level of service possible. The general data protection regulation affects just about everything online, including business opt-in landing pages. Due to this, businesses need to understand how to ensure all landing pages are GDPR compliant. Here are several important tips, suggestions, and requirements all companies need to utilize when building and updating all opt-in landing pages.
About the GDPR
The GDPR lays out easier to understand rules with regards to what software companies and online marketers can do while collecting information. This includes tracking a site visitor and what the website can or cannot do with regards to a customer’s personal information (or, in this case, a potential customer on an opt-in landing page).
While created in the European Union, it is not just for citizens of the EU. Instead, the requirements are for any business with stored data assets within the EU. Due to this, it isn’t necessary for a website user to be located inside of Europe. Instead, it’s based on what assets the company has located in the EU.
Companies failing to comply with the new GDPR regulations may see fines of up to four percent annual global turnover (or up to 20 million euros). According to Engadget, while the initial updated GDPR came out specifically for the EU, large companies such as Facebook are expanding coverage worldwide. Due to this, it’s vital for a company to comply with the general data protection regulations.
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The Data Collection Process
The entire purpose of an opt-in landing page is to collect some kind of information (such as an email address). While the individual knows they are providing their email address, a company needs to explain exactly what will happen with the data. Even if the email is to just be stored on site for future newsletters, the company needs to inform the individual opting their supplied information will be stored.
The language used with regards to data storage and intended usage of the information needs to be clear and specific. This information needs to be visibly presented and a visitor to the opt-in landing page needs to indicate they have read the information (such as checking off a provided box on the form indicating they have read and agree with how the data is to be collected and used).
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Requesting Access to Data
Breakthrough Advertising heavily relies on data and the information obtained from both customers and potential customers. However, according to the GDPR, those who provide their information have the legal right to request access to all of their personal data.
Those who provide their data have always had this right, although not all knew about it. Additionally, businesses had a 40-day period to provide the requested information. Although no specifics have yet been put into place, the 40-day request period will likely drop in allotted response length. Due to this, a business needs to actively monitor all information and have easy access to it, in the event of a data request from a customer.
Whether a customer originally signed up for a product made available through an opt-in page or e-commerce product videos on a video platform, new regulations are now in place for what a business needs to do with regards to someone requesting removal from an opt-in email subscription.
Within the send email, a business needs to provide a recipient with the opportunity to request removal from the email list. When requesting removal from the email list, all customer data needs to be expunged from any and all data serves.
How the GDPR Affects an Opt-In Landing Page Appearance
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The physical appearance of a landing page will not change. The GDPR does not alter the visual look of a website or landing page. What may need to change in order to remain compliant with the GDPR is the fine print and how an interested visitor opts-in to the content.
Using a double opt-in landing page can help with this. The double opt-in landing page requires a potential subscriber to not only enter their email address but to check off requests asking whether or not they read and comply with the data agreement.
How This May Affect Landing Page Opt-In Success
According to Clever Touch: Intelligent Engagement, the newly revised opt-in language may impact the subscriber database size. When informed of exactly what a business intends to do with data, those prospective clients on the fence may decide against signing up in order to prevent their information from being stored on a third party data server. However, while the database size may drop, the quality will likely increase. As customers are informed of exactly how their information is to be stored, used and accessed, those who do comply and opt-in are clearly interested in the products or services offered by the company.
Additional Regulations To Come
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The GDPR requirements are currently EU specific. However, as the new changes went into effect in May, it's likely not only additional regulations will come to Europe but North America as well. Due to this, it's crucial for a business to stay up to date on all of the latest GDPR developments in the coming months. As Facebook has stated it will make its EU GDPR a global standard, other companies will likely follow a similar path. However, as Facebook announced these North American changes would eventually establish set U.S. or Canadian standards, it’s possible either some or all companies will establish unique North American GDPRs, or federal governments will step in and create new GDPR specifics.
In Conclusion
The new and upcoming GDPR requirements are designed to provide software and service subscribers with new levels of data protection. In general, the new changes shouldn’t have much of a visual impact on an opt-in landing page. The same product videos, images, and other e-commerce content may remain. However, the way data is collected and stored will change. Additionally, a company must inform subscribers as to what the attended usage of the information is, that it will be stored and it must provide access to stored information upon request. These updates will not drastically alter the way companies do business, and by remaining proactive with updates, a business will avoid any potentially extravagant fines levied by government oversight organizations.
Mike Giannulis
Three E-Commerce Marketing Trends That Will Help You Boost Online Sales
Shutterstock Consumers today have a lot of options when it comes to shopping, and the digital marketing landscape is constantly shifting. If you truly want to boost your sales and convert more visitors into buyers, there are three easy e-commerce marketing trends you should be focusing on. 1. Personalization When is the last time you went to the doctor’s office and were greeted with, “Hello, patient #2345”? Probably never. You enter the facility with the expectation that your medical provider knows your pertinent information to ensure you have the smoothest visit possible. Your customers expect the same treatment. With the rise of AI capabilities , the most successful e-commerce sites will nail personalization, from pre-purchase ads to the entire checkout process. Personalized Emails As an e-commerce shop owner, you know how important a well-executed email strategy is to your success. But did you know that emails with a personalized subject line are 26% more likely to be opened ? Test your emails, then test them again. Most email marketing platforms give you the ability to A/B test everything from subject lines to the color of the button associated with your call to action. Also, use your customer’s first name for a more personalized greeting. "Hey, John! What do you think of that green hoodie you bought? We just got in these new shorts that would match perfectly," packs way more punch than, "Hi there. Check out our new products we think you might possibly like." Emails are a chance [...]