It’s very easy to confuse Digital Marketing with its peers like Developing, Designing or even (frustratingly), IT Support – but you’ll always be forgiven because digital marketing intercepts those things a fair bit.
In digital, it’s not uncommon to be branding, analysing, proof-reading and strategising in a single morning.
It’s true that Digital has pretty much consumed the modern-day; Banks have tellers » Digital has ATMs. Supermarkets have cashiers » Digital has the self-checkout. Your doctor has a Stethoscope » Digital has a Fitbit. But what else does it have? Let’s see:
Copy-writing
DMs don’t need to pass the baton when it comes to being creative.
Being technical doesn’t mean being uncreative; the two must live in harmony. Further, the best digital marketers will design the banner and write the tagline, choose the palette and tweak the content, design the email and A/B test the subject line, one can, but shouldn’t exist without the other…
Conversions
These kinds of c-words aren’t confined to email sign-ups or purchases.
To the DM, conversions are anything a user actually does that will give insights into how to get them to do what we want them to do. As a DM, I care about all the peripherals: button clicks, video views, baskets, enquiries, exit pages, site search keywords and etc. If the only conversions you validate are the ones when you get what you want, you’re probably getting less of it…
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Faffing about with a call-to-action isn’t “doing CRO” – Optimising for conversions involves more than that.
Actual CRO includes looking at heat-spots and how many people are hovering over specific areas of a website. It’s checking what channel the % of new users is related to. It’s deciding on whether to create custom landing pages per channel and advanced remarketing lists based on behavioural activity…
Client-facing
If you can interpret statistics but cannot clearly convey them to a client, did the tree in the proverbial forest, even fall?
Trailing off a list of clicks and impressions is all well and good, but then what? DMs know that reporting on conversion rates is standard information in any lead-gen or eCommerce campaign, they also know that without digging further to provide concise analysis, it’s useless…
Collaboration
Digital marketing doesn’t mean loan-soldiering. A DM isn’t some phantom being huddled in a corner, spewing out numbers like Rain-man.
So, who should be BFF’s with a DM? Content folk, because of SEO. Campaign folk, because of CRO. Developers, because of tracking. Designers because of messaging. Stakeholders, because of reporting. And more…
Channels
Digital marketing isn’t just PPC. PPC isn’t just ‘Adwords’. Adwords isn’t just ‘Remarketing’. The internet isn’t just ‘Google’.
Haemorrhaging money into a cost per click model because your competitors are, is silly. However pretty their ads, you can’t see their stats, you don’t know their budget and you didn’t write their strategy. Never partake in ‘monkey see, monkey do’ – strong conversions will come from studying your channels, both online and offline, and deciding where best your money is spent…
Content Management Systems
Gone are the days of relying on a WordPress’ plug-in allowing you to stuff in all of the SEO keywords relevant to your business.
When there is no packaged CMS to fall back on, delving into the back-end of the site is essential, whether adding images into the source code or adding tracking to a confirmation page. Digital marketing includes writing the meta-data, tweaking dynamic pages, condensing image sizes and adjusting thumbnails…
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Martina
Martina is a Digital Marketing consultant, developing cross-channel techniques since 2010. This blog explores industry developments with real-life application.
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