Marketers Marry Traditional and Digital Marketing Strategy to Accelerate Sales.

Business 2 Community

Marketers Marry Traditional and Digital

Marketing Strategy to Accelerate Sales.

DIGITAL MARKETING

By Mary Conley Eggert, Published October 10, 2013

In real estate, it’s always been about “location, location, location.” For today’s marketer, it’s “digital, digital, digital.”

But where do you start your digital marketing efforts? In contrast to traditional marketing—which involves a subjective mix of advertising, events, PR, and direct marketing—digital marketing is objective. The numbers don’t lie. Today’s digital content allows you to identify where audiences are congregating and what they’re searching on and then to sprinkle content where it can work like a trail of bread crumbs to lead prospects back to you.

Atlanta, Hotbed of Digital Marketing and Technology

I had the pleasure of connecting with a number of tech savvy marketers, including MENG members, on a recent trip to Atlanta. Atlanta has become a hotbed for the development of marketing technology, housing such firms as Pardot, LoopFuse, MailChimp, SalesFusion, BrightWhistle, the Pedowitz Group, and more. Thus, it was no surprise that marketers attending the Tech Breakfast Club at the “W” Hotel in Buckhead shared very specific and measurable digital marketing strategies being used to accelerate visibility and sales. I captured a few of their digital marketing examples here, and hope these might fuel your thinking and your revenues!

(1) Establish a Unique Point of View.

If you want to get the attention of a target audience, you need a unique point of view, says Stephen Loudermilk, Director of Media and Industry Analyst Relations, LexisNexis Risk Solutions. This is nothing new to traditional marketers, but today’s digital marketing landscape enables marketers to identify trending topics and to position their organizations as experts on those topics. Now in its 5th year, LexisNexis’s “True Cost of Fraud” Study, conducted with Javelin Strategy & Research, continues to place LexisNexis at the top of the search engines and at the center of “cost-of-fraud” conversations with digital influencers who reach LexisNexis customers.

(2) Structure and Optimize Content for Search.

With so many people searching the Web, it’s commonly suggested that content is king.

The reality is that content that doesn’t paint a complete picture of your organization can dilute your brand. For example, a digital signage company that only promotes its success with a casino client looks more like a casino software company than a digital signage company, meaning it could potentially be overlooked by universities, hospitals, and other industries it can serve. Similarly, a training or certification company focused on advancing IT professionals missed the lions’ share of its audience by optimizing its content for “IT careers” rather than “IT Jobs,” the term that is searched by five times more Internet users (9,900 for “IT Jobs” vs. 1,900 for “IT Careers”).

(3) Think in Terms of Your Customer.

“Today’s content needs to be customer focused and easily digestible,” says Michelle Hopkins, Marketing Program Director at PTC. “People love to learn about customers’ experiences and that is the type of content they will gravitate toward first. In our marketing program for Service Lifecycle Management at PTC, we are focused on creating content in an educational format that relates to our customer’s challenges and areas of improvement. Creating short video stories has been a key component of this strategy.”

Hopkins team optimizes its video content for search and arranges for it to be distributed by passionate advocates of the brand on social and traditional channels. Microsites, such as “People and Parts Linked Together to Solve Customer Issues” are used to measure the success of campaigns.

(4) Align Sales and Marketing.

While today’s digital marketing leader is able to track every customer interaction, that doesn’t guarantee a sale. The key to converting the right prospect into a customer is understanding the buying process. This necessitates that marketing be aligned with sales as both need to agree on the criteria for a lead, and they need to agree on the content essential to nurture a lead through the buying process.

When Internap’s sales and marketing teams came together, their assessment of the buying process and marketplace revealed sufficient content at the top of the funnel. Rather than flooding the market with more content, the team opted to introduce “bottom-of-the-funnel” content in the form of a buyer’s guide. This decision not only reduced costs but netted Internap more buyers at the decision stage. The success of the firm’s content marketing efforts also earned Internap a 2012 DemandGen Award.

(5) Convert.

“Every contact you make with the market should be an opportunity to convert,” says Debbie Qaqish, Chief Strategy Officer of the Pedowitz Group and Chancellor of Revenue Marketing University, whose book, Rise of the Revenue Marketer, is being released this month.

In her book and online Revenue Marketing University sessions, Qaqish profiles the journey of 22 marketers whom she has termed “revenue marketers” because of their ability to transform marketing from a cost center to a revenue center by creating predictable, repeatable, and sustainable streams of revenue. Her Revenue Marketing University is made available free of charge to all who register.

Qaqish’s team and clients have learned that the effectiveness of revenue marketing efforts has less to do with the technology than with the people. “Addressing the softer issues around change management and building advocacy for revenue marketing is where the rubber hits the road.”

What is your organization doing to grow predictable, repeatable, and sustainable streams of revenue? How are you managing the change?

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/marketers-marry-traditional-digital-marketing-strategy-accelerate-sales-0635433#1UOX4ywZ3oxuDX5H.99