15 Top-Marketers Share Their 3 Most Powerful Digital Marketing Strategies

Email Automation, Content Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Retargeting, Facebook Pixels, Inbound Marketing , Outbound Marketing, Keyword Density… Sometimes it seems like a new approach for digital marketing comes out every day. Its enough to make even seasoned technophiles to throw up their hands and give up. But please don’t give up. We turned to turned to 15 top digital marketers for them to share their 3 most powerful digital marketing tips.

Goldie Chan, Founder, Warm Robots agency

Goldie Chan is a top LinkedIn Video Creator and a global social media strategy and branding expert. She is the Founder and Head of Creative at social media agency, Warm Robots, where they run strategy and content creation for large B2B and B2C startups and corporations. She serves on the PGA’s New Media Council and has been featured as a fresh voice on strategy, branding and pop culture in Inc. Magazine, Huffpost, Fast Company, Tubefilter and Buzzfeed.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“Creating a top-ranking personal brand while running strategy for your own brands or marketing agency is crucial. It’s best to be a practicing thought leader both in the marketing industry and outside of it. My three tips for getting you there is:

1) Pick a platform and dominate it. Whether it’s travel photography on Instagram, threaded discussions on Twitter or memes on Facebook, create a clear personal brand on a platform that shows off your creative and marketing skills. Make sure it’s a subject that you’re personally interested in since it will be attached to your personal brand.

2) Learn more. Always be reading books, listening to podcasts or going to cool talks (and then share them). This will make you look not only like a thought leader in your industry (and helps you make more connections) but a thoughtful leader, too.

3) Agree to interviews and podcasts. Always agree to (good) press and podcasts — while this feels like extra work, it will pay off if and when you’re featured on larger publications (like this one). Not only can more of your potential clients, customers or collaborators find you. If no one is asking you, go out and find the press outlets and podcasts that you’d like to be featured on and start asking. Even if it might not work out for one particular article that a writer is working on, it may work out for the next.”

Peter Sloterdyk, VP of Marketing, Grindr

Peter Sloterdyk serves as the Vice President of Marketing for Grindr, the largest LGBTQ social network in the world. Sloterdyk oversees the multi-tiered operation responsible for user acquisition, digital and traditional marketing, brand health management, social media, CRM, analytics, customer operations, and content development & distribution.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“1. Stand out in the crowd. Place your brand in unexpected but contextually relevant locations across the digital landscape. Find authentic opportunities to help consumers view your brand differently and surprise them by rising above the noise.

2. Mobile Everything. While it might seem obvious, the digital world is now the mobile world and you can’t succeed if your marketing efforts aren’t entirely mobile-first. According to Smart Insights, mobile digital media time in the US is now significantly higher at 51% compared to desktop (42%), and even higher among audiences under age 35, so we must ensure that everything is mobile.

3. Brand Consistency. Your brand now has an exponential number of points of consumer interaction. It is imperative that each point be consistently connected to your brand identity in order to create lifetime connections with your consumers. “

Daniel P. Calderon, Managing Partner | Brand, Farley, Calderon + Associates(FCA)

I am an entrepreneur (from Brooklyn, NY) who owns two businesses — an advanced crisis, brand and reputation management firm: Farley, Calderon + Associates(www.farleycalderon) and an online creative platform named Four Thirty (www.four-thirty.com). Farley, Calderon + Associates(FCA) was created to be a one-stop shop for corporations, government agencies, politicians, celebrities, public figures and more — to solve their crisis, branding, and reputation issues in a modern world. Four Thirty was created to help brands easily connect with top-tier creative freelancers online.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“Go Hard, or Go Home

Social media is one of the most powerful tools companies use to spread their message to their target audience. With ever-changing algorithms on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter — to name a few, brands need to understand how to use quality content to their advantage. Simply put, brands need to “go hard or go home.” Competition is steep and social media users are looking to consume the most thought-provoking and visually compelling content. Also, video content has become more critical, giving companies a boost in favorability and reach on social media platforms. Once a brand is confident in their content’s virality, they then should add a budget for paid boosts to guarantee their campaign’s success.

Segment Appropriately

Marketing crises are at an all-time high for major brands and organizations. When creating marketing campaigns, companies need to ensure they are using data that is both intrinsic and extrinsic in nature. Even though a company has a specific identity and brand voice — cultural, socioeconomic, and political climates should still influence final approvals for the creative elements and execution of a campaign. Using an internal or external focus group is a great way to validate the appropriateness of a campaign and helps the team segment messaging. “”All campaigns are not created equal.”” Companies may need to do several versions of a campaign to ensure their goals are met.

Be Authentic

Guess what? When companies market their product or service, they are actually trying to connect with real people. There are many brand voices and approaches, but the number one advice I give to my clients is to be authentic. Someone who never lived or visited Brooklyn, NY will never understand how to communicate with a Brooklynite. One of the best tactics, I suggest, to ensure a company’s messaging and overall campaign is authentic is to connect with real people and hire a consultant/employee that matches the profile of the target client/customer. Gucci is a brand that has done this well with their new Dapper Dan collaboration. They were able to take a crisis and transform it into a win-win situation for the affected and his community.

Rachel Martin, Director of Digital Marketing and Publicity, Total Assault

Rachel started as a Digital Project Manager for entertainment/music clients at Total Assault about 4 years ago, where she worked her way up to Director of her department. She has lead successful release campaigns for Kiefer Sutherland, Dolly Parton, Shawn Mendes, Keke Palmer and more. She is an innovative, out of the box thinker, and has a passion for all things pop culture.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“- Content is KEY. With the internet and somewhat questionable platform algorithms, your audience’s attention span is getting smaller and smaller, so pushing out content on a regular basis is extremely important to stay relevant and keep people’s attention.

- Posting your product on social media isn’t enough. People want to feel like they know you — take the Kardashians for example. They put their entire lives out there for people to see, so much that their fans feel like they are friends with these girls. Kylie Jenner wouldn’t sell out lipsticks if she was just posting product shots regularly. You don’t have to be as open as the Kardashians, but being relatable and posting candid shots / behind the scenes content definitely helps!

- Hiring a marketing agency doesn’t solve all your problems! I was taught that when a client hires a marketing agency, that doesn’t mean you have less work to do, but you actually have more work to do! Your publicist/marketer can only help you as much as you help them. If you’re an entertainer — make yourself AVAILABLE . Conference calls, interviews, press days/junkets — all of it! It will only benefit you and your product. “

Heather Grabin, Founder, Splash Public Relations

Heather Grabin is a thriving PR powerhouse. Her fluent ability to network and create bonds is nothing short of impeccable. Time after time, her competitive inclination keeps her going.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

Listen to your clients! Sometimes the things you never thought would work blow you (and your client) away! If your customers are receptive to an offer, stick with it! Times changes and be open for change! Just because it worked 5 years ago doesn’t always mean it will work tomorrow! Don’t just focus on one thing! Use a little of this and a little of that so that everything is balancing out and working with each other! Keep your PR, Social Media & Advertising constantly going! Be creative! Make sure all of your content is coming from multiple sources! Everyone has a different eye or preference and it is good to curate your content from as many angles as possible! You never know who your next potential customer can be and you want to make sure you capture their attention!

Ayat, co-founder, Invesp a conversion rate optimization agency

Ayat is a recognized expert on marketing strategy and an in-demand speaker who has presented at marketing conferences throughout the world. With over 12 years of entrepreneurial and marketing experience, Ayat’s consulting company helps companies increase online sales including eBay, 3M, the Special Olympics, DISH Network, Discovery and many more.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

Digital marketing is like traditional marketing in that it requires the same set of information in order to better cater messaging and campaigns to the target customer. The advantage of course is the amount of behavioral data that can be extracted about the customers. Nonetheless, businesses are behind when it comes to implementing personalization and target testing methodologies to gauge the customer more effectively. When it comes to marketing technologies, there are now over 6000 different types of tools that can help you or your team become better digital marketers. 1. Figure out what tools you need, and use them. Let’s not beat around the bush here, you’re company is sitting on a goldmine of information about the visitors that come to your site. Even tools such as Google Analytics (which almost everyone has installed) aren’t used to their maximum benefit. Understanding what you need, and how you can use the tools that are at your fingertips to give you what you need will take your company to an entirely different level. 2. Don’t deploy without testing. Testing is becoming mainstream, as it should be. No marketing banner or change on the site should be made without testing it. At a minimum, you can measure and understand the impacts your changes have. The greater benefits are deciphering results to understand more about customer motivations and needs. 3. Back to the basics: know your customers. Reality is, people think they know, but do they really know. And it’s not just knowing general demographics, it’s knowing what makes the customers tick. There are tools that allow you to observe customer behaviors, conduct surveys, and even with Google analytics, create models based on customer intent. The wealth of information and methods that are lost on most companies is sometimes shocking. But it’s a new year, and a chance to have a different outlook about digital marketing in general.

Lisa Chau, COO, Alpha Vert Enterprises

Dartmouth alumna Lisa Chau is a digital strategist with global marketing and public relations experience. She has been published over 100 times in Forbes, US News & World Report as well as Huffington Post on TABLES: Technology — Academia — Business — Leadership — Entrepreneurship — Strategy. She was a featured guest on Midday Talk with Dan Roderick, speaking on millennials and digital strategy.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“1. Be engaging. There is nothing more powerful than an engaging digital marketer. The best way to do this is to know your customers, their needs & how to make them feel appreciated. Use your research to cater your marketing assets across all platforms in a way that is consistent but not identical.

2. Play the long-game. Don’t focus on the immediate sale, focus on building a sustainable community of brand ambassadors. If you support your customers, they will support you — Even in tough times because their positive reviews will cushion you if a crisis arises in the future. Welcome their valuable feedback and respond with care. Remember, you only exist if your customers are satisfied. There’s plenty of competition waiting to take your place.

3. Differentiate your product or service. There’s so much noise vying for a limited amount of dollars. You need to stand out from your competition. How does your business make life easier? How is it better than any other option? Make sure these points are deeply embedded in your messaging and consistent.”

Chris Van Dusen

Mr. Van Dusen is an entrepreneur and CEO of Parcon Media, a full service digital media planning and buying agency that focuses on companies in hyper growth mode. Services like conversion rate optimization and customer acquisition strategy round out the agencies data obsessed culture.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“Don’t assume anything — many marketers have preconceived notions on who a brands audience is. While they may be right, spending the time to understand who consumes and why they care is key to efficient and effective digital marketing. The strategy and media mix can change drastically depending on audience consumption habits.

Always be testing — digital allows us to measure efficacy more than other mediums.Setting up a proper testing environment is critical to understand what is working. Testing UVP (unique value proportions), hero images and other key feats can drastically increase the effectiveness of both paid and organic efforts. Create an environment that supports some level of failure — which means there are learnings.

Be nimble — reacting in real time and iterating is key in the current digital marketing environment. Without the need for pre-bought TV/radio spots or long print lead times, DIgital marketers can quickly react to hot topics and relevant stories. Be ready to capitalize on this. “

Olivia Mannix, Founder & CEO

“Olivia Mannix is the Founder and CEO of the worlds first cannabis marketing agency Cannabrand (cannabrand.us). It was launched in January 2014 when Adult Cannabis Use became legal in Denver, Colorado. It’s mission is to ‘rebrand cannabis’ and the agency is highly creative to market cannabis companies with all of the restrictions the industry has. The company has helped scores of companies and operates internationally.

Cannabrand has also developed the cannabis digital marketing and advertising platform Kushmoji (kushmoji.io) available in the Google Play and Apple Store. “

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“The 3 most powerful marketing tips are:

1. We are in the age of SKIM, keep you content short a sweet. Use info graphics OR quick bulleted copy to get your message across. (who likes to read anyways!)

2. VIDEO! Video…video… is the name of the game, again, short and sweet, you can really tell your brands story in a quick 15 second clip.

3. MOBILE or DIE! Everyone is on their darn phones these days. You need to make sure you are advertising through mobile devices. A clever idea is to check out the age of Emojis. Being in a restricted cannabis marketing space, we developed a cannabis emoji platform called Kushmoji. “

Jeremy Greenberg, Web Designer/Founder, 97 Switch

Chicago based Jeremy Greenberg founded 97 Switch based on the principle that high-quality digital service is necessary in today’s market. Through his experiences with small to large businesses, he learned how to derive solutions and adapt to current demands to enrich and maximize productivity. He loves the digital energy of today’s world and is always scouting out the latest trends and possibilities.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“Make Your Website Clean & Functional

When designing your website, you should make sure there’s a theme — one that’s simple, sleek, and aligned with your company’s voice and style. When there are too many things going on, it can make the pages look messy and disoriented, and this can cause your audience to disengage.

Instead, keep your website up-to-date with the latest features to drive efficiency and simplify the user experience, and remove any irrelevant or burdensome features that might slow your website down. These could be large images, flash graphics, and music or video features.

You should also have internal links, where people can jump from an about page to a contact page, as a CTA feature that can lead to sales. And, if you have a blog, link to other blogs within each blog post to prolong time spent on your website.

Quarterly Review Your Digital Marketing Strategy

By looking at various marketing campaigns and the numbers, you can see what’s been working and which areas need more attention or change. Luckily, in the digital world, things are constantly changing — where there are new ways to communicate with target markets and modernized tools, apps, and website features. By staying on top of updated technology and adapting your marketing strategy to better serve your clients and business, you’ll likely find your success rate and numerical achievements to increase, as well.

Craft Content Wisely

When creating content, be sure to make the voice and tone relatable and casual — remember, you’re a human, so communicate as you would naturally to another person. Instead of making up content as you see fit, have a direction and content strategy in place. You can create a content calendar so you’re prepared and know which hot buttons to discuss during specific time periods.”

Alicia Williams — Alicia Williams, Founder & CEO of Aliste Marketing, Inc.

Alicia is an award winning entrepreneur and author whose out of the box creative strategies have helped businesses expand their market reach by effectively using Social Media. As an accomplished public speaker, she has enlightened and entertained audiences at local and national conferences as well as on regional radio programs. Recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Women of Family Business Award Recipient, recognition as one of The Worcester Business Journal’s 40 Under Forty, and the honor of being the Spotlight Entrepreneur for Capital One Spark.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“Businesses are looking for the red easy button when it comes to online marketing…the fact is that button doesn’t exist! It is strategically hidden among a maze of agorithims and end users preferences on that day. It is up to the marketer and business to take a step back and put themselves in the shoes of the consumer “”what would I care about? What would make me take 5 minutes to read or watch a video? How will this impact my day? Will this give me instant pleasure?”” We are so used to creating content to just post and to busy to simply ask why.

1) My number one most powerful digital marketing tip is to take a breath and ask, “”Why””. Find the reason that consumers purchase your products and services and leverage that story. Take one of our clients, a fine gardening company, they have an active Instagram presence but it could be more powerful and influential. Through uncovering the “”Why”” each post has a purpose. For them the action to elicit a response in having viewers relate to their landscapes and build anticipation for the next design to be released.

2) Realize that you are not a professional photographer and realize it fast! With the luxury of our iPhones we can take images and post without second guessing the quality. As a visually driven society we as marketers have to tell a brand story in a compelling, visual and impactful way. Invest in a professional photographer that can make your products truly stand out from the noise that fills the online world.

3) Plan everything! Those beautiful Instagram profiles don’t just happen- they are meticulously planned, drafted and strategized for optimal visual impact. Utilize software such as Planoly to organize your images into a branded theme that will elicit an enjoyable viewer experience.

Always remember that the brands who succeed are those that think beyond the products and services they offer and strive to provide solutions and experiences throughout every stage of the buying journey.”

Stacy Poliseo, Chief Marketing Officer, Terra’s Kitchen

Stacy Poliseo is the Chief Marketing Officer at Terra’s Kitchen, the quickest, easiest, healthiest fresh food delivery service. Prior to Terra’s Kitchen, Poliseo worked at M&T Bank, Johns Hopkins Medicine, The Arc of the United States, and for a digital agency and her expertise includes e-commerce, UX design, search engine marketing, analytics, social media and SEO. She holds a Master’s in Interaction Design and Information Architecture.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“1. Don’t be short-sighted

It’s important to fully understand not only your audiences, but the various touch points they may have with your brand throughout their buying journey. In truly understanding the journey, you can align the message, creative and calls to action with how, where and when they are interacting with your brand. Even if you don’t have systems that are fully integrated with one another, high-end personalization engines or data capabilities, you can still be creating strong experiences from beginning to end.

2. Take the risk.

Ground yourself with data to help provide direction–but then jump. Run an A/B test with extreme differences from your control whether it’s a landing page, funnel step, social post, ad copy or video creative. Give your team the leeway to have at least a slight variance outside of brand guidelines so you can have the freedom to really test and learn. If you’re feeling uncomfortable, then you’re doing something right. Embrace it and keep learning from it.

3. Tap into the various networks available.

You don’t have to know it all and you shouldn’t try to recreate the wheel! There are so many great resources within platforms like LinkedIn and Slack (shoutout to Online Geniuses, a great marketing Slack group) where people are more than willing to answer questions, share successes and more.

Kean Graham, CEO, MonetizeMore

Kean is the CEO of MonetizeMore, an 8-figure ad tech company that is a Google Certified Partner with 90+ full-time team members remotely based across the planet. MonetizeMore was conceived in the mountains of Machu Picchu and has grown to $17M in revenues. Kean has traveled to over 70 countries during the 8 years that he has been growing MonetizeMore.

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“The digital marketing strategies that MonetizeMore has developed over the years has been a major competitive advantage. As a result, we have been able to achieve a stronger brand, more loyal audience and greater lead flow than our competitors. MonetizeMore has been able to achieve this by implementing the below digital marketing tactics:

Answer Questions: We answer ad optimization related questions on Google Product Forums, Quora, Twitter and Reddit. We have found that this enables positive interactivity with sub-communities, establishes MonetizeMore as authorities and drives many leads.

Round-up Posts: A well-executed round-up post based on trending topics in our industry has gotten a lot of views, shares and attention from the most influential players. The extra time it takes to create a round-up post has provided a much greater return versus normal blog posts and has established many as evergreen posts thanks to the consistent search traffic.

Social Spotlights: Every month, we feature a publisher and do a deep dive analysis of their programmatic ad setup. This involves looking at a publisher’s ad placements, using tools to analyze their live auction setup & demand partners and dive into their source code and JavaScript files to get a better understanding of their overall programmatic strategy.

This type of high-level analysis would cost thousands from a specialized consultant and is worth $10,000s — $100,000s in terms of the ad revenue increases they could realize. When we post the deep dive analysis, we find the publishers want to initiate a conversation with our sales teams of how they could make the recommended changes via MonetizeMore. Other publishers use this as a resource to analyze their own ad inventories since many publishers suffer the same programmatic ad issues and have the same optimization opportunities. This innovative new social media strategy has further established MonetizeMore as a thought leader in the programmatic ad industry and has gained us some new premium clients.”

Dimitar Savov, Head of Marketing, Startup Masters

“Dimitar has worked on over 200 digital businesses from around the world in the last 14 years.

He has digital marketing campaigns in 65 different countries and has spent more than $30 000 000 on digital advertising generating more than $225 000 000 in revenue.

He teaches Digital Marketing & Ecommerce in the Software University in Sofia and is considered among the top 5 digital marketers in Bulgaria.

He invented a digital performance marketing model that can be used to dramatically improve and grow any digital business. It is the secret behind all the success of his company startupmasters.eu

Here Are My Top 3 Digital Marketing Tips:

“1) Business Strategy & Marketing Strategy — Before doing marketing you should look at the strategic parts of a business and figure out the math. You need to know how much you can spend to get a customer. And how much is a customer worth to you. You can play with this at the strategic level. Never forget that. You can win the marketing game at the business strategy level.

2) As soon as a digital marketing campaign becomes ROI positive its budget becomes infinite. This is the golden rule of digital marketing. If you spend $5 on adwords and make $10 back you will put all your money so that you can make even more money. That holds true until you hit physical boundaries … like running out of people to market to. The key is to find as many profitable audiences as possible and hit them with the right message.

3) Because of the previous rule you should start small and try many things. Test many ideas quickly and cheaply. Try different messages to different audiences. Play around with your offer, your messaging and your targeting until you hit something that clicks with your customers. You will know it because it will make more money than you spend for it. When that happens bump up it’s budget and look for more. One of the best ways to nail messaging is to talk to customers and use the words that they use to describe what they like about your product in your marketing messages.”