Full Stack Digital Marketing - any Shortcuts and you Fail
Successful digital marketing requires you to get it all right. Make a mistake at one level in the funnel and you fail. You need to be on top of the frontend performance of your website, track keyword and ultimately measure sales. Basically you need to be a full-stack digital marketer. For this post, I am considering digital marketing to deliver sustainable organic traffic, spiced by social.
Marketing Strategy Know your Target Audience
You need to be clear about who you are speaking with. You need to know your target personas and work strategically with the messaging towards them. It’s important to understand what channels to approach, as well as tone of voice for a more effective engagement.
For example, if you want to target developers but deliver high-level marketing you will fail.
Content Strategy to Deliver Real Value
Once you are clear about who you are speaking to, you need to create a plan for content that delivers true value for your target audience. A content strategy might include real insight, useful tools or perhaps open source code if you target developers. If you target end consumers you might want to go into howtos and tutorial videos or something similar.
Again, if you do not get your content strategy right you will fail.
Channel Strategy to Be Seen
You need to understand the behavior of your target audience. I usually always have organic search engine traffic as the baseline and add additional relevant channels depending on the target personas.
If your customers are on Twitter and you put all your effort into LinkedIn you will fail.
Editorial Calendar for Continuity
Digital marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to make sure that you execute your content strategy continuously. Keep the pace and have no gaps.
If you stop publishing content over a few weeks you lose momentum, drop in your Google ranking and fail.
Frontend Performance: Measure Continuously
Digital marketers have to care about and measure frontend performance. No, this is not an engineering topic that marketing should not worry about. Frontend performance is important for ecommerce SEO and of course also user experience and ultimately conversion. You need to make sure your website or webshop is super fast, measure it. It is a key component of your success.
If you are not on top of your frontend performance for both web and mobile you will fail.
Track Keywords for SEO
The execution of content strategy involves being on top of which target keywords you want to be ranked high in search engines on. You need to have keyword tracking as part of your weekly routine.
If you are not tracking keywords and making sure you continuously improve your SEO placement you fail.
Measure Inbound Traffic
All is well and you are driving inbound traffic with organic search traffic as the main vehicle spiced up with social traffic. But are you tracking how the visitors are behaving? Have you defined conversion funnels and measure them? Do you track eCommerce sales or inbound leads? You need to make sure you convert data into actionable insight you can use to improve.
If you do not track and use data to improve your inbound traffic conversion you will fail.
Measure Sales
As a digital marketer, you need to measure sales. You drive traffic, qualified leads or even direct eCommerce sales. But your success ultimately defined by conversion in sales.
If you are capturing leads but nobody is touching them you will fail.