Lessons I learned.
This post is about the lessons I learned about digital marketing. In today’s digital disruption era, digital presence is a must for enterprises. But, having a digital presence is not digital marketing. Also, digital marketing is a broad term.
I engaged a leading B2B content marketing company to help generate leads for an enterprise software product. The product had no meaningful digital presence. Also, this product served the needs of multiple industries. Therefore, the lessons I learned about digital marketing have a context.
The firm had to design the product website, enable social media presence, along with the creation of the right artifacts or content. Thereafter the content had to be promoted using inbound, outbound, organic, and paid methods. For email campaigns, a marketing automation tool was deployed.
We are now engaged for two years. I discuss five lessons I learned during this journey about digital marketing.
1. Understand the characteristics of your target industry
It is important to understand the characteristics of the industries the product services together with the kind of engagements they have with the digital world.
People from the manufacturing industry engage much less than those from the trading industry. The manufacturing industry is evolving in its digital adoption with IoT, AI, etc. accelerating the pace. Whereas the DNA of the trading industry requires constant engagement in the marketplace, both traditional & digital.
Likewise, the nature of engagements also varies by industry.
2. Understand the customers’ digital behaviors
The digital characteristics of the industry and customer profiles within that industry are not necessarily the same. For example, a trading industry customer in the Asia Pacific has different digital behavior than from other markets.
Because the software product has a large number of loyal customers across multiple markets, I was overconfident that social media handles will have a good number of users & followers.
Most of my focus will be on active digital engagements was my belief. Because I misread our customer’s digital behavioral characteristics, I was wrong. The customers were multi-lingual and spread across different continents.
Each market is in a different stage of their digital evolution. Digital etiquette in each market is different.
3. Define your target audience profiles at a granular level
A broad definition of your digital marketing program is not sufficient. To achieve reasonable results, define the target audience profiles at a granular level. Because of such fine definitions, techniques like personalized campaign marketing can be leveraged. Also, this facilitates the focus of your sales efforts. Thereby, giving a better return of investments from your marketing efforts. Thus, align and compliment your marketing campaigns with your sales efforts.
In the initial days, we were running many campaigns with no success. In the 2.0 version, we have refined our digital campaigns to focus on specific industries. And also complimented this with our non-digital marketing like PRs, print media articles, local events, etc.
4. Getting your employees & partners to engage digitally is not easy
The fastest way to get active digital engagements might appear to be from employees and partners. The reality is it is easier said than done. There are privacy aspects to be considered and the nature of engagements also vary.
It is also important to appreciate that personal motivations of individuals supersede all considerations.
5. Identify and cultivate champions
You need to have two types of champions to succeed. An internal or external person who understands the digital world to drive messaging using the content. And, the second who has deep knowledge of your product and its industries. One cannot succeed without the other.
And, despite having both, there is no guarantee of success.
Measuring success
Digital marketers describe outcomes using bounce rate, followers, page views, pay per click ads, etc. But, do not get swayed by this. And, stick to the tangibles that you understand.
My program objective was lead generation. Therefore, suspects, leads, and qualified leads mattered most to me.
To your sales efforts, digital marketing can be front-ending, supporting, or both. The nature of the markets and your offerings decide. Digital marketing is continuous, evolving, and a slow process, oftentimes, excruciatingly slow.
It has been two years and we continue to evolve.