How can digital marketing help you create more innovative campaigns?

Article 1: The Rise of AI in Digital Marketing: Revolutionizing Customer Engagement" In this article, you can discuss the significant impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on digital marketing. Explore how AI-driven technologies, such as chatbots, predictive analytics, and personalized recommendations, are transforming the way businesses engage with their customers. Article 2: Blockchain and Digital Marketing: A Game-Changer for Trust and Transparency" This article could focus on how blockchain technology is disrupting the digital marketing landscape. Article 3: The Future of Digital Marketing: Navigating the Metaverse" In this article, explore the concept of the metaverse and its implications for digital marketing.

Digital Marketing innovation happens when you are able to break paradigms and beliefs based on previous experience. Technology is evolving fast, and frameworks can be disrupted at the same speed. One example is how the use of ABM platforms can make campaigns flows obsolete. ABM platforms allow you to monitor company behaviors before they self identify/convert, and you can focus your conversion efforts when the company has demonstrated enough intent signals and is familiarized with your website. Instead of relying on one person following a specific nurturing sequence, you can focus on 5-10 people on a buying committee, and make sure they engage and eventually raise their hand.

There's a "best before" date on any marketing tactic. Sometimes a tactic that falls out of favour will come back around, and sometimes it won't. Digital marketing innovation is experimentation led by analysis and creative thinking, and it's one of the best ways to keep a brand in the mix. Because it's not the folks doing things the way they've always been done that stand out or even get noticed, and that's a big part of what marketing is all about.

Digital marketing can foster innovation by providing access to data-driven insights, enabling personalization, facilitating A/B testing, embracing content diversity, and leveraging emerging technologies, all of which encourage creative thinking and experimentation in campaign development.

Digital marketing innovation is the use of new technologies and strategies to reach and engage target audiences in the digital world. It is a constantly evolving field, as new technologies and platforms emerge, and consumer behavior changes. Businesses of all sizes can benefit from digital marketing innovation. By adopting new technologies and strategies, businesses can reach their target audiences more effectively and efficiently. For example (i) Domino's Pizza is using AI to predict customer demand and optimize its supply chain to reduce food waste and improve customer satisfaction.(ii) Nike is using social commerce to sell its products directly through its Instagram and TikTok channels to reach younger audiences and increase sales.

Using ABM platforms such as 6sense, Zoominfo Marketing OS, or DemandBase has proven to be a game changer. Not only allows you to focus your efforts reducing waste, but also simplifies immensely your ability to conduct pre-campaign briefing conversations with actual customer insights related to intent surge and website visits.

Marketers tend to be a pretty creative bunch, but I think that it helps to be constrained ever so slightly by what the data are telling you. Quantitative signals from your marketing stack are useful measures of how well your message is landing across your various channels. Be ready to get creative, even downright silly, but also be ready to re-evaluate your approach if the numbers tell you you've made a tactical error.

Digital marketing tools can be used to innovate in a number of ways ie. (i) To automate tasks such as keyword research, content creation, and social media posting. This frees up marketers to focus on more strategic tasks, such as developing innovative marketing campaigns (ii)To collect data about customers and their behavior. This data can then be used to personalize the customer experience, such as by delivering targeted content and product recommendations. (iii) To test and measure the results of marketing campaigns. This allows marketers to identify what is working well and make adjustments as needed.

In my view, while tools are valuable, it's equally crucial to have a grasp of the fundamentals behind how these tools function. Take, for instance, a tool designed to enhance campaign tracking and attribution. Understanding the nuances of attribution, such as distinguishing between post-click and post-view attribution, and recognizing which types of products are better suited for impulsive decision-making (post-click) versus longer sales cycles (post-view), plays a vital role in selecting the appropriate tool for attribution and configuring campaign settings effectively.

Leveraging digital marketing tools for innovation is akin to precision engineering. Analytics tools allow us to dissect and optimize performance, content creation tools empower the delivery of compelling narratives, social media tools facilitate a dynamic online presence, email marketing tools enable personalized communication, SEO tools enhance discoverability, and PPC tools strategically position our messages. These tools, when utilized properly, are the building blocks of a robust and innovative digital strategy.

It can help businesses to reach new audiences, increase brand awareness, generate more leads and sales, improve customer service and satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition. For example (i) Using AI to generate creative content such as blog posts, social media posts, and ad copy. This can help businesses to save time and produce more engaging and effective content.(ii) Using VR and AR to create immersive brand experiences that allow customers to interact with products and services in a new way. This can help to increase brand awareness and engagement.(iii) Using social commerce to platforms to sell our products and services (iv) Chatbots to provide customer support and answer questions

In my experience, digital marketing strategies are the blueprints guiding our innovative campaigns. Content marketing fosters value-driven interactions, social media marketing cultivates relationships, email marketing nurtures connections, SEO enhances organic visibility, and PPC strategically amplifies our reach. These strategies collectively contribute to creating campaigns that not only stand out but also resonate with and engage our target audience.

Once, at work, we experimented with long-tail targeting techniques, which involve targeting indirect interest categories to attract customers. For instance, new mothers might also be interested in skincare products. We realized that testing hundreds of long-tail keywords in ad targeting can yield better results than targeting more obvious keywords, as these categories are less competitive. We've been using this technique in all our campaigns ever since

It surprised a lot how fast digital marketing has evolved and how little most of the marketing teams who are not directly involved with paid media and ABM platforms understand the powerful insights you can get from them. That makes the use of A/B testing a critical tool to demonstrate that many of the "innovations" are based on data and not simple opinions. Even if it will take longer to launch a campaign, spending 1-2 weeks of preparation testing concepts proved to be very effective in creating consensus.

Numbers don't lie, but they can mislead. Don't make big decisions without qualitative input, ideally from your target audience. You can make all the assumptions in the world about why a page is suddenly not converting, but the best feedback is not going to come from the time on page number or the bounce rate: It's going to come from the person who bounced and tells you why.

Digital marketing is very much an umbrella term, and there are a multitude of tactics underneath. It should be noted, that just because the tactic exists, doesn't mean you should deploy them all. Be careful about what tactics you select, ground your decisions in both data and customer feedback, and obtain the buy-in from the relevant senior stakeholders. Don't get caught up in vanity metrics too. Increasing your follower account won't necessarily lead to more sales. Sending more emails won't necessarily lead to increased buyer intent (it could actually lead to the opposite). Be considered in your approach, test and learn, measure what moves the needle and remember that non marketers won't always understand what it is you're doing or why.