Displaying items by tag: marketingstrategy

This last weekend I attended one of the most amazing digital marketing conferences there is in the world, the Traffic & Conversion Summit 2017 in San Diego, California - organized by DigitalMarketer.com. It’s a conference designed for more advanced and experienced marketers and marketing agencies, rather than for people looking to get started in digital marketing. The speakers dig deep into marketing strategy, things that work and don’t work, the exploration and testing of new technology and much more.

During the four days of packed back-to-back sessions with some of the leading experts in digital marketing, thousands of words in notes and over 300 photos shot with my phone of some of the slides; here’s a list of my top 25 takeaways, tips and trends of the state of digital marketing. Do keep in mind that approximately half or two thirds of the sessions were led by the internal team members of DigitalMarketer.com

Setting your business up for success

A comprehensive digital marketing strategy is more essential than ever in today’s ultra-competitive marketplace. If you own a new or growing business, it’s crucial to have some understanding of the potential that lies in digital marketing.

If Your Company Doesn’t Exist Online Today, It Doesn’t Exist

Online presence is absolutely vital for every company in the modern business world. So much business is conducted online that it would be foolish for any business owner to think that a digital presence is simply a luxury. Just about every business-to-customer retailer has an online store in addition to traditional brick-and-mortars, and most are starting to figure out new ways of connecting the two to provide customers with the best shopping experiences possible. Your small business may be a way off from this stage right now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taking steps toward that end.

If you’re a million dollar author like J.K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter series, it’s easy to achieve success with subsequent books. After all, you’re known, and loyal followers can't wait to pluck them off the shelf. The problem lies with your first book, and Rowling had massive problems with that one. Harry Potter spiraled through various rejections, before Joanne K. Rowling hit it. Rowling wrote fiction, but both fiction and nonfiction authors struggle to market that first book. Let’s see how two famous authors of each category succeeded.

Over and again, I have found that fledgling innovators or entrepreneurs start with the product idea first and link their strategies to it. Campaigns flounder because they start from their vantage point rather than that of their clients. In the end, these individuals may end up pleasing just themselves - or not even themselves because they end up at a loss.

It is well-known that controversy sells, but some marketing campaigns succeeded beyond their wildest dreams when they flipped off the deep edge and teetered on the edge of lunacy. Here are three of the most memorable.

Hitting on the right marketing strategy can save you money and time. Instead of skidaddling down one route, only to reverse and backtrack, you’ll tread the likeliest direction and more confidently advertise your business.

Let the experts show you how.

1.Create a scientific and systematic approach for your marketing

Wilson Hung, author of The Scientific Marketing Strategy Behind Exponential Growth, writes that developing a marketing plan that is based on a scientific approach will save you wasted money and time. This is because your tested ideas protect you from flitting around, and they show you where to invest your money.

You can make a name for yourself in well-known papers such as the Guardian, Huffington Post and Washington Post, and promote your business at the same time. People do it all the time. There’s one condition. You can't advertise yourself. Readers don’t want to be marketed to. They want to be helped. To win editorial acceptance, you need to use your expertise to write on a topic that helps that paper’s readers. Your post should be useful, timely, original and relevant. Your byline directs people to your business, and if readers were sufficiently wowed by your article, they will come to your website, or call your number to find out more about you.

The Simplicity of Trello.

Staying organized these days seems to be just as hard as ever, even with the thousands of apps and tools out there designed to make things easier.  But one tool really stands out among the rest for online marketing and practically anything else - Trello - and it's because it's so darned simple.  Imagine an old time card punch system. The card sat in the "out" slot until the employee came in, entered data to the card (by punching it) and moved it to the "in" slot.  At the end of the pay period, the cards would be collected and taken to another location for processing paychecks. This is the simplicity of Trello.

Away with the word customer case studies! It sounds too clinical and detached. Call it a ‘success story’, instead. Your client had a need or problem that no one could solve. You, or your organization, swooped in and provided a product or service that helped that person. Your client’s business soared, or his skin healed, or his dog recovered - whatever the case - you helped him live ‘happily ever after’.

That’s the crux of a ‘customer success story’.

Keeping track of marketing efforts is essential for every business.  Doing so produces a guided track to visualize the company’s strategies and illustrates how it plans to achieve goals and objectives. One of the most popular ways companies accomplishes this is by creating a marketing plan.

According to William M. Pride, "the Marketing Plan is a written document or blueprint governing all of a firm's marketing activities, including the implementation and control of those activities."