SolarWhen experience matters
Having worked with hundreds of businesses over the last 10 years I have learned dozens of digital strategies that work and don’t work for various industries, products and services. Many graduates or newcomers to digital marketing are full of great innovative ideas that are very impressive, however they soon face harsh realities after spending your marketing budget, that not all strategies will work no matter how logical it seems. It takes a dragons den approach to shoot down what you know will be a bad investment and this often only comes with years of experience, not simply theory and knowledge.
Having started my career as a stock market technical analyst and owning my own options and FX advisory firm, I understand the duty of care that comes with managing other people’s money. I needed a license and regular compliance audits in order to make financial decisions for people, but in marketing there is no compliance or licensing, yet you are doing the exact same thing, managing other people’s money.
I find this somewhat disturbing, but all the same I still trust a digital wiz kid to innovate better ways to outsmart my competitors, but under the guidance of someone with trusted experience in digital strategy.
What is your digital strategy
Developing your digital strategy starts with putting yourself in the shoes of a consumer. Remember the last time you purchased an item online or researched for a product or service online. Did you make a decision on the first website you visited? Did you get distracted or overloaded with information that you put it off until you had more time? You may have visited a few websites and now you’re being followed around the internet by the same brands with various image banners. Those who are not following you with Remarketing are likely out of contention for your business. If a special offer or something of high interest did not recapture your attention and compell you to take action, you are at least now familiar with some of the more annoying banners that keep following you. Let’s face it, no one likes repetitive advertising and we all complain about it, yet when you’re ready to transition into the decision phase of your consumer journey, it is more often the brands you remember that end up with your money. Your brain has been conditioned to trust brands that you see most often, so when you visit Facebook, Youtube, Blogs, News Websites or looking up your favourite recipe online, chances are something you recently researched or even purchased is going to display to you. The journey taken by your potential customers expands many digital channels all integrated by Google analytics to track which adveritsing touch points are attributing value to your final marketing objective. Every business requires a unique digital blueprint that is researched, planned and implemented according to the search behaviours and trends of your target audience.
Understanding your customers
There are hundreds of possible ways a client could eventually make a purchase with you and it requires using the latest technology to identify clear trends on how most clients interact with your brand in the lead up to a purchase. We call it path to purchase and it is best measured using Google Analytics multi-channel attribution modelling and UTM tracked marketing.
There are also some important considerations in the path to purchase model, including Pre-purchase and Post-purchase trends which are often not factored into the marketing of most businesses. Post purchase strategies will help to increase order frequency, up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, measure brand loyalty and positive word of mouth on social channels. This should include emails, remarketing, customer surveys and VIP loyalty programs.
You will also find that audiences in different phases of the buying cycle will interact with your advertising over different periods of time and through multiple advertising channels.
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