Back to the basics- Digital Marketing 101

Digital Marketing is an ever evolving field. The moment you latch on to one thing, there are 10 newer, better ones to replace it. Case in point, Instagram and Snapchat. Instagram was  the place where all the cool people hung out, but it seems more and more of them are moving to Snapchat. Keeping up in this environment is an arduous task that has a lot of marketing & digital marketing managers running in circles.

Thankfully, help is at hand- and it is more familiar than you think. If you are just starting out, its true that digital marketing has rapidly grown in the past 7 years. Nevertheless, it is still marketing and hence standard rules still apply.

1. Content, content, content.

In this case, content IS king. Content is not a trend, it is essential to good digital experience. It is therefore essential to have a sound content strategy with adequate investment behind content creation. Remember, all the money you spend is wasted unless you have good content to share.

2.   Diversify

Audience fragmentation is very real. If you choose to put all your eggs in one place, you will be missing out a huge chunk of your audience. For example, Facebook is not the only social platform and Google is not the only search engine. Google started because people wanted an alternative and Instagram started because people wanted an alternative to Facebook. People are always looking for alternatives. But, instead of always chasing alternatives, identify a trend, identify what success looks like and develop a winning action plan. This will keep you from chasing trends or alternatives with no end in sight.  

 3. Measure

This is a tough one. You will have to spend good time coming up with ways to measure whether what you are doing is working or not. This can be excruciatingly difficult with new platforms. When in doubt, go back to the basics:  awareness and trial. Ask yourself "how is this medium driving my awareness and how can I measure it?" and "how am I driving trial and how can I measure it?". Often marketers fall in the trap of tapping into a trend without a game-plan for what to measure, how to measure and what is good. This is a slippery slope. You can easily spend all your money on a trend without ever impacting your business if you don't have a clear understanding or a game-plan.

4. Be mobile...your consumer already is

In today's mobile world, this seems like just common sense but it is more difficult than it looks. The key here is to again go back to basics and understand your consumer's behavior before spending any money. You should know what their activities are on mobile. Whether its more of social networking or video or search. If its social networking, which platform are they on and what do they do on the platform. The same goes for video and search. When you know this you will be able to target them better and tap into an existing behavior.  

5. Conversion

Yes, you guessed it, this is the same "conversion" y0u have known for years. Only difference is that now it is online conversion. Simply put, this is a measure of how many people buy you after being exposed to your content. So again, key is great content but it is also essential to show your consumers the way to the store. With online stores, it is easier than ever to do this. 

There you have it. Go out and give this a try. Experiment, but be cautious and be sure to set targets and measure so that you may learn and improve.