Category: Digital Marketing

Digital Advertising Performance Insights

Posted on by annaktaylor
digital network

 

Digital advertising is a dominant strategy to grow online sales, which is evident by over $65B annual ad spend on just Facebook and Google in the U.S.

The advertising landscape can be perplexing in its scope, channels, models, and tactics.

Along with value-based offers, compelling copy, resonating visuals, and relevancy for the audience, the most critical factors for creating ROI-driven campaigns include the following:

(1) Crafting strategies based upon extensive competitive analysis, keyword research, and use of business intelligence (BI).

(2) Machine learning for understanding trends and forecasting.

(3) Sufficient budget to gain key insights on consumer interactions with your ads.

(4) An iterative approach to each campaign to test ad effectiveness and to measure performance.

Programmatic advertising should be a primary component of your overall marketing automation strategy.  There are significant tools that support these efforts – some of the most popular are Salesforce, Marketo, Adobe’s Customer Experience platform, along with a host of other solutions on the market today.

Why a DMP?

A DMP (data management platform) aggregates data to develop customer profiles which are then utilized for targeted advertising.

Insights garnered from audience data are drivers for enhanced engagement and more personalized and relevant cross-channel experiences.

Continue reading “Digital Advertising Performance Insights” →

Impact – Shape Your Brand Narrative & Influence Customer Actions

Posted on by annaktaylor
drop-of-water-ripple

In the digital commerce space, impact is critical and relentlessly pursued. Attracting your target audience and converting visitors to consumers require far more than a hook and a pitch.

Impact is achieved through exceptional efforts that blend strategy, creativity, agility, and innovation. Whether problem-based, exploration-based, need-based, or interest-based, capturing ‘intent’ and motivating people are forms of marketing dexterity – weaving touch points and experiences that trigger actions and engagement.

Impact comes from tapping emotional, mental, spiritual, intellectual, societal, physical, and environmental factors.

Always start with specific objectives and a well-defined project plan.  Any endeavor worth doing begins with concept, scope, definitions, timelines, tasks, and measurable goals.

Leverage your organization’s expertise and acumen. Intellect drives trust and confidence, and should serve as the foundation of impact.

Share a wide spectrum of content, and assess where it most resonates with your audience.  Be mindful of the tone, voice, and style – each of these should have unique brand characteristics and a consistency across platforms.

Tell stories. Not about the brand, nor your products and services. Instead, create organic media about people – their journey, experiences, challenges, passion, pursuits, and insights.  Be purposeful in demonstrating a correlation between the story and the brand.

Tailor campaigns to narrowed segments of your customer-base to ensure the experiences offer value and provide benefit beyond a purchase.  When you penetrate the mind and motivators, impact is lingering… and lasting.

Continually fine-tune your approach until impact is evident. This will build your competitive edge.

Establish a pipeline of progress, continually fostering new ideas, driving the quality and ‘wow’ factor, and digging for hidden opportunities.

Be open and receptive to instances of  poor performance. Embrace when outcomes do not align with objectives- these are essential moments to learn and improve. Test, iterate, and be excited when incremental advancements are realized!

Impact isn’t always obvious, nor readily validated.  And yet, it is incredibly powerful. When achieved, compelling brand experiences are highly persuasive and will help you dominate in brand positioning and profitability.

Today’s Digital Marketing – Pointers and Priorities

Posted on by annaktaylor
digital marketing strategies

 

OKR. Objectives and Key Results must be a marketers ‘North Star’ at every stage, including research & planning, production, measuring and testing, and iterative experiments.

Have clearly defined targets (audience segments, metrics, messaging, experiences) and a singular focus (specific offer, incentive, product line promotion, etc.)

Create well-defined projects and apply agile methodology and fluid execution practices.

Relevancy and Value. Without it, you’re just noise.

There is a psychology to marketing. Pay attention to intent, context, triggers, and intrinsic motivation – from your audience, untapped markets, stakeholders, team members, executive leaders… even your competitors.

Continue reading “Today’s Digital Marketing – Pointers and Priorities” →

Performance Metrics in Digital Terms

Posted on by annaktaylor
performance-metrics-data

 

Often the data points capturing the most attention are sales, margins, opportunity win ratio, and inventory.

A deeper dive into a few other digital stats will help a business in its online position and performance.

CAC vs. CLV

Customer Acquisition Cost is a must, especially in comparison to the Customer Lifetime Value. Set those side by side on your reporting dashboard to closely monitor your investment in obtaining a new customer along with the long-term ROI. 

Visits and CR

Website traffic is appealing, yet only meaningful if you experience a steady rise in the Conversion Rate. The effectiveness of your brand’s online experience is reflected in conversions, which is directly impacted by messaging, usability, visual appeal, and triggers, all which must be compelling and actionable.

Continue reading “Performance Metrics in Digital Terms” →

Marketing Projects – Achieve Execution Excellence in 10 Steps

Posted on by annaktaylor
marketing-digital-projects

 

As with most aspects of business operations, marketing is evolving to align with shifting customer interests. New methods are becoming today’s best practice. Novel and disruptive ideas are resulting in innovative campaign concepts.

Following conventional paths will no longer yield the expected ROI nor build brand equity with the target audience. The adoption of digital tools and technologies is key to the advancement of performance. 

Here are critical steps to help you and your team perform projects that will have impact with customers and the bottom line.

Continue reading “Marketing Projects – Achieve Execution Excellence in 10 Steps” →

Digital Marketing for 2021 – Engagement

Posted on by annaktaylor
digital-engagement-tree

 

Every brand must craft their digital axiom of excellence. Marketing in 2021 demands transformation and overcoming blind spots. Marketers must take an agile approach and embrace center-points of change, best practices in process, and an open lens on audience behaviors.  

As you move into the new year, let’s polish your plan by setting profit-bearing objectives that will gain more attention, penetrate markets, incite actions, increase revenue, and leave your mark on the industry. This 2021 groundwork series starts with:

Engagement

Develop your road map from the following;

  • Breadth and Depth
  • Who, What, Where, How and Why

 

Continue reading “Digital Marketing for 2021 – Engagement” →

Cultivating Digital Relationships and Revenue

Posted on by annaktaylor
digital-marketing-touch points

 

 

Critical for digital commerce are a defined strategy and well-structured plan. Every component of the plan should have a clear objective. That gives all initiatives a North Star and the means to measure results.

Objectives & Key Results (known as OKRs) must be precise and individualized to a particular channel or campaign. Additionally, being quantifiable gives a basis for benchmarks, forecasting and validating performance.

Examples of measurable goals are:

  • New customer acquisition
  • Existing customer retention
  • Conversions
  • Revenue, profit margins or incremental sales
  • Search engine ranking and quality score
  • SEO performance and organic traffic volume
  • Market share, market penetration or new market entry
  • Brand awareness, equity or advocacy
  • Competitive advantage and positioning
  • Audience targeting and personalization
  • Customer journey and UX performance

Gaining attention and visibility online is just the start.  Lead activation, user engagement and triggered activations require an emphasis on brand image, tailored messaging, tactical design, intrinsic interface, and imperative solutions, all with the aim to improve the bottom line.

Continue reading “Cultivating Digital Relationships and Revenue” →

A Digital Runway

Posted on by annaktaylor
spool-of-purple-thread-needle-thimble

 

My love for digital commerce is much like a clothing designer’s passion for trendy wearables.

Outfitting a company for digital growth requires several garments such as data, business intelligence, automation, agile project execution, iterative campaigns, multi-device performance, interactive media and omnichannel experiences.

Like fashion itself, one’s digital ‘style’ says everything. Engagement, activation and triggered events occur when your presentation is undeniably attractive.

An effective digital strategy requires stitching together meaningful touch points, including social channels, editorial sources, search engines, web platforms, communication avenues, micro moments, and brand experiences.

Much like apparel that has a myriad of patterns, countless brands and endless fads, a target audience is wide-ranging with unique needs, interests, requisites and restrictions. Motivation to make a purchase is best understood by defining the persona of the buyer and tailoring your message to activate their reasoning and response.

In digital marketing, being vogue means knowing if the spectators have an appeal to bohemian, chic, grunge, casual, vintage, or couture. A sensory connection is critical, as well as having the brand’s value proposition sewn into the fabric. The aim is to be digitally distinctive.

The real catalyst for any consumer is believing your brand is the right fit. Generating enthusiasm and instigating a sale, service or subscription requires skillfully shaping an influential and value-driven experience.

To be optimally executed, digital initiatives rely on a foundation of tools, techniques and technologies. The past practice of threading together promotions, taglines and incentives won’t cut it.

Bottom-line, use this period of digital transformation to assess your IT wardrobe. Empty the closet and start re-assembling the technology stack piece-by-piece, maintaining a clear goal of raising efficiency, expanding capability, strengthening security, and reducing costs.

Be ambitious and a little audacious. Every Monday is the digital start of fashion week!