12 Truths about Digital Marketing

We’ve penned these 12 truths to assist you in navigating the digital marketing maze.

Recent surveys show that Australian organisations are quickly moving to digital, yet one of the big barriers to entry to this exciting

world is the lack of understanding around what digital marketing is, and what you should do.

These 12 important topics are integral to consider in any digital marketing plan. We share these with you in the hope that they help you find clarity, and your organisation succeeds online.

Good luck!

Your audience has information overload.

Our phones, tablets, laptops, computers, televisions, billboards, newspapers, magazines and radios are all competing for our attention. Your audience are receiving social media updates, instant messages, phone calls, emails and texts. They’re rarely focussed only on one medium.

Technology is overwhelming your audience; everything electronic is competing for our attention, and attention spans are reducing accordingly.

For your message to reach your audience, it needs to be targeted, simple and powerful. Don’t bore us, don’t overwhelm us. Find that middle path that attracts us to engage with you.

The internet is rushing towards being personally relevant.

Only news items you’re interested in will be shown to you, only con-tacts you care about will surface on social media, only advertising you may react to will be shown to you. Everything else is irrelevant.

We see the evolution taking place right now; amongst social networks, search engines and advertising placements. Phone applications are becoming smarter with what you are actually interested in, not just what box you tick to say you have an interest.

To market in the future is to be relevant to your target audience. Building relevance and relationships is now more important than ever. Be a destination, not a roadblock.

Work hard to keep your social media content alive and up-to-date, and don’t forget your website content.

Your audience wants to see change, and this is important for search engines too.

Google has stated that up to 35% of search results have been reordered based on frequency of updates to a website.

Want to reach the pinnacle of page one in results? Spend less time reading reports and more time making changes. Add news, add relevant content. Above all, add engaging content your audience wants, regularly.

An out-of-date presence reflects badly. It becomes a virtual ghost town associated with your organisation.

In the golden era of the last decade, you could create a website and say that you’re ‘online’.

Those days are officially over. Nowadays, with billions of websites vying for consumer attention, we must migrate to where your audience has focussed their attention.

Understanding your audience and their online participation is the key to success. Spending budget and effort in chasing the wrong crowds in the wrong places may tick the ‘do digital marketing this year’ box, however will prove costly and ineffective.

Everything online is in competition with you for attention. Knowing how to engage within these spaces, and encourage attention and engagement is the goal.

Consumers have inbuilt mistrust towards traditional advertising now.

Recent global studies show 79% of consumers trust friends’ recommendations over other forms of communication.

Belief and trust are personal traits. Personal traits and emotions we have with people, not with typefaces or brand marks. Develop a personality with your communications. You are not a faceless organisation; you are a collective group of people. Let this show through your digital marketing.

We yearn to believe and trust our products, our suppliers and our relationships. Considering tone and voice is equally as important as considering visual elements.

The old adage a picture is worth a thousand words is no more evident than in branding.

Visual elements speak to your audience, regardless of your intent. Decisions are made within seconds based on visual cues, type and colour. Great text content and

well-thought strategy can be entirely discarded without consideration of the campaign or website aesthetics.

Studies show that the majority of your audience subconsciously consider visual design when making decisions around how they trust a brand or website. Cutting corners here negates the campaign purpose.

Your designers are solving communication problems, not making things look pretty.

There are rules, and then there are exceptions.

Those who create rules don’t have your audience; they don’t have your same exact offering. Creative marketing can break rules and have an impact. The only rule is to try what you believe works.

You are encouraged to break the rules. However you should avoid making the same mistakes. You shouldn’t be breaking rules for the sake of anarchy; rather you should consider rules irrelevant if breaking them improves results.

Learn from the data you are collecting. Did that work or flop? Accept failures and learn from them.

What’s in it for me is so much more powerful than what’s in it for you.

Your audience wants to know the benefits of working with you, or buying your product. They don’t care what you get out of the relationship.

All of your marketing should consider the audience first, and yourself second. What value are you offering them and how can you eloquently promote it?

Benefits resound with your audience better than features. Don’t just publish a wordy list of 30 great features. Explain how you will improve their lives or help them solve a problem they face.

Billions of unwanted emails are sent every day.

Email inboxes are inflating by the hour. Cutting through the noise and gaining attention using email marketing is part creative, part science. Email is used more frequently than the web. More people have access to email than general web surfing, the world over.

Whilst it is tempting and very cost effective to jump headlong in without great planning and consideration, the fallout from bad strategy can be large. You really don’t want to be considered a spammer.

Understand permission and how your emails are relevant to your audience. Personalise and segment your audience, and above all, write smart content that engages not broadcasts.

We are connecting more things to the internet than ever.

Once the realm of computers alone, now mobile phones, televisions, game consoles, laptops, small tablets, large tablets, interactive screens are all connected.

The future of ‘mobile first’ is steadily marching forward towards us. What works nicely on a large monitor may be ineffective on a small device.

We must consider situation as well as technical restraints. Even if we can display a large file of animated graphics on a small device, will your audience want this if they are on public transport, planes, between meetings, in cafes?

Marketing not tested is wasted marketing.

There are tools available to us that can accurately measure the engagement impact of each change in campaign, no matter how subtle. No other platform has the capability to be as precise or measurable as the digital space.

Effort in testing brings rewards. Understanding consumer drivers should never be a ‘gut feeling’. Science and mathematics are key to successful digital marketing. Make a change, watch the effect, analyse what happened. Make another change. Another review, another refinement.

Triple digit improvements can be made with simple of changes. The science is understanding what they are, and when to do or not do, them.

www.bam.com.au