COVID-19 Insecurity? Get Back To Digital Marketing Basics

COVID-19 has triggered digital ad spend cuts, campaign pivots, and rapid changes in online consumer behaviors that data analysts are still working to digest. It’s only natural to feel a bit unsettled.

In today’s post, I thought it is useful to remind digital marketers that the basics of good digital marketing remain the same, no matter the context. Being stick to marketing best practices is key to developing an effective and rational digital strategy.

7 essential digital marketing values and COVID-19

We, the digital marketers are fully competent in navigating this unprecedented circumstance, we just have to get back to fundamentals -

1. Redefine the goals and KPIs

This will be different by industry. The goal may now be to stay afloat because demand is thwarting, so you want to reset the target number of conversions. Or maybe it’s time to shift to a brand-first approach to reassure shoppers cause trust is what matters most now.

2. Reset the budget

Do some research to find out how much and where your competitors are spending. The insight you gain now will give you an instant boost and advantage too when things stabilize. Profitability is no doubt the backbone of businesses, but you can probably now focus on building brand awareness organically which takes time and cutting ad spend for the time being for generating direct revenue, which usually means investing in more future revenue.

3. Redefine the audience

It’s worth analyzing, who the audience for brands. Whether they have disappeared or not? Maybe they’ve simply changed their habits and you’ll need advocates to help find them.

4. Redevelop your USP(s)

Many businesses are now offering free trials instead of pushing for purchase. For industries that have had to shift to digital offerings, promotion (both marketing and advertising) will help to adequately communicate new value to prospects.

5. Recheck your communication mediums

We know that customers are spending more and more time online because of social distancing guidelines. Usage is up across all social media platforms, streaming services, and news media consumption. No one is better placed than digital marketers to figure out how to reach them!

6. Recheck work process

Productivity is more important than ever. The more you can automate the repetitive work related to launching and optimizing campaigns, the more time your team has to spend on customer retention, campaign analysis, innovative work, and other ad hoc needs.

7. Reanalyze results

As your CEO scramble to understand how consumer behaviors have changed and where the opportunities lie, the information that can be garnered from digital advertising is more cherished than ever. Now is the chance for marketers like you to lead the way with data-backed insights.

Need a bit more inspiration? We invite you to browse this blog for some of the most popular articles that provide fresh digital marketing tips!

4 Truths About Client-Agency Relationship

Understandably, most clients want to shield their money from the money-sucking nature of agencies.

But if you never accept these truths, you’ll probably never be successful in an agency.

If you want to keep your clients really happy, you must know how the business world really works.

I’ve learned lots of these realities the hard way. I’ve lost friendships, gotten fired, went broke, and succumbed to addiction, destructive behaviors because I didn’t understand these facts. It wasn’t sweet.

But learning these lessons has made me more strong, confident, and positive than I’ve ever been -

1. It’s always about the client

Client care about the business.

They care if I could solve their problems by charging as little as possible.

That’s all that really mattered to them.

From this, I learned this lesson, if I want money from my client, had to provide real value to my client’s business.

Once I realized this truth - once I started working professionally for clients and solving their problems - my bank account exploded. I got more money and income than ever before.

2. More discipline brings more power

When I was young, my ultimate goal was to earn more money.

To me, a “successful life” meant one where I could buy anything. And I tried very hard to get that.

Now that I’m older, I’ve understood the real truth: more discipline actually gives you more freedom.

When you live an undisciplined life - then it actually increases your anxiety and stress.

Similarly, before creating a budget, running an ad campaign is a perfect recipe for huge anxiety for your client.

But, after I created a budget, and submitted it to my client for review and approval, I felt way more disciplined and the client felt relaxed with the money.

Anything works best in a system.

So make rules. Make a system. Enjoy a structured environment focused on helps your client grow.

The outcome again will be the same - your bank account exploded again.

3. What you want is what you become

The biggest turning point in my career - I started treating myself like a professional.

Before I called myself a “professional” but I didn’t act like one. So I spent years in mediocrity.

Then, after years of disappointment, I decided to start taking myself seriously.

I started considering myself as a real professional.

So what do professionals do? Believe in their own ability without arrogance. Clients always crave professionals. If you can’t take care of yourself, how you can take care of your client’s business? Realistically, no way.

4. Success and ethics can go hand-in-hand

Success isn’t about money or fame - this is one of another late realization of mine.

Success is about being the person you were actually meant to be.

It’s tough to honestly express yourself in today’s corporate world. It’s risky too. It takes a lot of courage.

This fear and unwillingness to do the work the way it should be executed are what keeps your client’s business at a mediocre level. It’s always easier to stay in an honest zone, even if it means giving up on a client account.

You can either do business with your client honestly or not. It’s easy to go with the flow but without ethics, you cannot bring long-lasting success to the client’s business.

In the end, your success will be determined by whether you did the work you needed to do to level up your client’s business. And sadly, most people simply doing it at expense of their ethics.

In conclusion

Not surprisingly, many people were aware of these lessons but they manipulate these truths purposefully. And declare them successful.

But if you want to be successful, you need to see your client not as an ATM, but with confidence and professionalism.

Help the client first, not yourself. More discipline makes you a better professional. Place yourself in a position to learn and grow ethically. Do the work.

Content Marketing During COVID-19

Hi,

Are you a content marketer and now looking at your content calendar with a baffled mind?

Yes, you are not alone. This is the situation of thousands of content marketers looking at their editorial calendars and thinking, "what I planned to write seems unrelated in today's COVID-19 world."

Agreed?

It's not that your followers won't care about the content you had planned to publish. But your readers have other things on their minds.

As do you. Think about, what type of content intensifying you nowadays? Are you reading common posts? Or consuming content that's serving you with what you need to know right now?

During this weird time all over the world, I would like to raise your spirits so you too must not deter from your content editorial calendars. Think about publishing even just once or twice a month - but please do.

Surely, not all of your content needs to be on and around COVID. But timely, suitable content always holds the key. Especially now.

After all, your readers have explicit questions about what they should do during these weird times. Why not be their reliable source and help them?

How do you engage readers?

This is easy.

Post on social media platforms where your readers are already surfing. Ask for comments in your newsletter. Check with your customer service folks and sales reps to learn what questions you're being asked right now.

And then, create and post relevant content that addresses real-world issues - and yes, optimize it, too!

Your readers will react positively to your effort!

Why am I bring this up?

Because as I look at my own content publishing plan, I realize that others may need something different too than what you planned 30 days ago.

So, I'd love to know what you're dealing with, and what's keeping you going.

If you work in-house like me, feel free to share your challenges and successes. If you freelance, let us know how it's going.

Let’s make sure as a content marketer, we’re providing the content our audience needs, when they need it, in which form they want it.

Do you have any ideas for me? On this blog?

Please do not hesitate to send your feedback. I promise to consider all your suggestions and take action accordingly.

Thank you in advance for helping me out.

Let’s fight coronavirus fear with a fact-based content marketing strategy, and together we shall overcome.

What do you think? Is your content marketing plan got shattered, or are you still trying to stick to it? Are you tired of analyzing content marketing trends that are not so helpful right now? Let us know!

Closing thoughts

Content marketing during COVID-19 is challenging. If you wonder if you should put your marketing effort on hold, please don’t. It's doesn’t make any sense. For me, the show must go on - it doesn't matter how hard the time is, you get on and do it. No matter how hard the past was, you can always begin again and change the future.

I'm seeing slow signs of improvement like marketing qualified lead’s (MQL) target is on track. The sales cycle may be a little longer, but the clients are out there and the sales-ready leads’ bucket is full.

Lastly, the journey through COVID-19 affected time with my loved ones was fun, challenging, AND educational!

Here's hoping you're safe, well, and happy.

Have a wonderful time and thanks for reading. Do content marketing as sensibly during and post COVID-19 times as ever.

Partha

Getting Started With CRO

I tend to think that people in marketing and sales jobs were cursed.

However, at college, I was in awe of my friends who took pre-festive season part-time marketing and sales jobs to earn pocket money for them with ease.

Likewise, when it came to public speaking or writing, I could only dream of having some of my friends’ ability to smartness and recall the essential stuff quickly and comprehensively - all without scratching heads in desperation.

Looking back, I have to admit that I was resentful to those friends. While I needed cash but hesitated to take any marketing or sales jobs, they found them easy. While I had to hide my shyness to pass my opportunities, they just surpassed me.

However, 10 years later, I am witnessing something strange. I become a marketer!

You may have experienced the same. I now no longer feel jealous of those smart friends, who had easily exceeded me at college and wishing them the best in their careers.

I was struggling with -

• Maintaining a positive attitude towards me and get easily influenced by others
• Stop challenging obstacles and achieve new things
• Nurturing illusion about own satisfaction and happiness

How did I overcome it?

Well, it took me a few years of exploration to find the solution. However, when I did, I found a simple route to success. That is the continual doing of conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Let me explain.

Individuals who claim certified in their field (namely digital marketing, SEO, etc.) are mostly driven by superfluous egos rather than their serving attitude.

To give you an example, picture yourself studying digital marketing at an institute (if you actually did this, then it will be easy to imagine).

Due to the ability of your faculties to teach things super quickly, you have no problems passing your coursework. In fact, you get a distinction in your batch.

Encouraged by this achievement, it only takes you a few weeks after collecting a certificate to find an entry-level SEO position at a prestigious company.

Things are going well.

Your success at the institute (in terms of being certified) led you to believe that digital marketing would be just as easy for you to surpass the final exam. However, being certified (or a short-term course) was not enough.

You soon (even if you have cleared the interviews somehow) found yourself in deep water. You not only struggle to manage tasks or add values to your organization but also lack the necessary people management skills to be an effective leader or team player.

While you hung onto your job, your dreams of climbing the career ladder were broken into pieces. In addition, you saw many of your juniors from the team progress their careers strongly - despite them not certified like you.

So, what went wrong for you?

You stopped optimizing conversion rate - means, learning new things, while others continued due to their thirst for knowledge.

It is true.

They may not have certificates with great scores from reputed institutes, but their nonstop desire to learn new things (continuous work on conversion rate optimization) eventually paid off. Hence, after several years, they found themselves overtaking you.

Looking at this from a different perspective, you could say that:

When experts stop learning, they start to fall behind.

And as I’ve talked about above, this is because other people will keep learning and improving. And, eventually, these people will get ahead.

Clearly, then, an essential component of success is to always be learning new skills and knowledge. Do this, and you’ll keep yourself enthused and your mind sharp!

Of course, they're a lot more to say on this topic. So please click through to read my recent posts, which explain why learning should never come to an end.

As a marketer, we know our work is important. But I want more than that. I want a seat and a voice at the big table. One way to do that is to understand and be able to articulate how you and your team are tying marketing initiatives to ROI. Sure, it’s fun to report a huge increase in web traffic to your company’s site. But what if all your visitors get to your site and do nothing? Conversion rate optimization (CRO) allows you to tie a dollar sign to each visitor.

You can use the concept of CRO in many ways. I use it in my marriage all the time - more on that later.

Let’s start by quickly defining the components of CRO.

Conversion

A conversion is when your website visitor accomplishes the goal you’ve set for them. Website goals can be anything that you deem important to your business. For example, it could be for your visitors to fill out a form, subscribe to your blog, complete a purchase, or engage with content on your site.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of your website visitors that successfully complete the goal you set for them. Generally, this is measured in a specific amount of time. The conversion rate is calculated by the number of visitors who completed the goal divided by the total number of visitors to that page.

For example, you have a landing page with a form that encourages visitors to download your latest e-book. One hundred people visited your landing page and 10 of them filled out the form. Your conversion rate for that page is 10%.

Optimization

Optimization is the process of improving your resources to have the desired result in the most efficient way possible.

So, conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the rate at which your website visitors accomplish the goal you have set for them in a specific amount of time.

CRO is NOT - I do want to quickly note what CRO is not.

The process and outcome of CRO are not to be confused with that of search engine optimization (SEO). While SEO is focused on increasing the likelihood of pushing organic traffic to your site, CRO is focused on increasing that traffic to act. In a perfect world of marketing, you’ll have a real plan for both!

In simple terms, the process of CRO includes the following:

• Determine the goal
• Set hypothesis
• Conduct testing
• Analyze the result
• And action!

Here’s an example,

I usually have a goal of getting my way without my wife knowing. So, I use the CRO method to help me determine how to best reach that goal.

1. Determine my goal

After moving to a new city - far away from our hometown, every Saturday, my wife and I with our little baby boy get out to explore the new city. My goal is for my wife and kid to get over loneliness and move on with our lives as quickly as possible.

2. Set my hypothesis

If I change my reaction to my family’s unfavorable behavior after the move, they will get over it faster.

3. Conduct A/B testing

Scenario A: City sightseeing with outdoor dining.
Scenario B: Weekend trips outside the city.

4. Analyze the data

Surely “Scenario B” has a higher acceptance rate (read conversion rate) to us moving on from being upset and towards our happiness.

Now, this is not an exact demonstration of CRO, but you get the idea.

Tired of increasing your marketing and advertising budget on a website only to find it doesn't deliver? Keep on reading -

How do I get a start on CRO?

There are several small things you can do before dig deep into CRO. Here’s a list of quick and easy things that you can try out on your website:

• Add explainer text to your forms: Set the expectation for the visitor as to what they will get if they fill out the form correctly
  
  
• Test your call to action buttons (CTAs): Try different size, contrast, and colors; tweak the text on the CTA (submit vs download now!); try links versus buttons
  
  
• Reduce form fields: Only include necessary fields for your potential customer to fill out to submit
  
  
• Change the position of your form: Test if your form performs better above or below the fold, right or left aligned, as a part of the hero image, as a sticky form, etc.
  
  
• Images: Try different images - stock versus real, people versus buildings/scenery, size versus shape, representational versus abstract
  
  
• Copy: Test headline copy as well as supporting description copy versions. A single word in a headline or the slightest change in the description could make all the difference!

It is essential to keep in mind that you only want to accomplish one thing at a time. This makes sure that you can track what exactly is influencing your conversion rates and how.

CRO is a never-ending process. People that are visiting your site are always varying, and your site should be, too! Getting started with CRO can be a fun learning experience, so give it a try and you’ll be controlling your data and regulate your campaigns’ budget before you realize it!

NB: Please don’t forward this blog post to my wife. My A/B tests will no longer be valid if she knows about them.

Enjoy!