By Matt Royse
Director, Marketing Communications
Forsythe Technology
Google is more than just the most popular search engine.
In addition to searching Google for what you need, Google has tons of products and offers a lot of tools.
If you are a digital marketer, Google is a highly valuable resource. A lot of Google tools are free where you can access them with just one login or account.
As a marketer, you should take advantage of free Google tools to improve your digital marketing efforts and take your efforts to the next level.
There a lot of ways you can use Google to boost your digital marketing performance. Maybe you have used a couple of these tools but there a lot of them you may not be aware of.
Whether you are trying to improve your website performance, find a new digital marketing job, increase your conversion rates, tweak your user experience on desktop and/or mobile, manage your personal brand and your organization’s brand, learn more about your clients and prospects, create content based on trending keywords, prevent spam and abuse on your website, Google has a lot of tools to help you.
Here are 15 hand-picked Google tools that all digital marketers should be using. These are some of the best tools that Google offers.
1. Google Page Speed
Google Page Speed is a helpful tool to make sure your web pages are fast on all devices, either on desktop or mobile. Just enter your URL of your websites, Google analyzes it and you get action items for desktop and mobile versions of your websites.
It will give you recommendations about possible optimizations and optimizations that you already have made. It will give you a score and rating for mobile and desktop.
Once you see your score, you can see what categories you need to improve. Once you get a baseline of where you stand, you know where you need to concentrate on. Learn how to achieve a 100 out of 100.
2. Google Mobile-Friendly Test
More and more people are accessing the web on their mobile devices so designing your website(s) so it is mobile optimized is important for a great user experience on the diverse types of mobile devices.
This tool can show you how a visitor uses your webpages on a mobile device. You enter your URL and see how your page scores. Learn how to use mobile optimization as a competitive advantage.
3. Google AdWords
Google AdWords is pay-per-click (PPC) digital marketing for your brand. When people search for answers, your ads will show and you only pay when they click on your ad. There are options for display ads, YouTube video ads, text-based search ads or in-app mobile ads.
When you link Google AdWords to Google Analytics, you are able to see ad and site performance in Google Analytics, take advantage of enhanced Google remarketing capabilities and get richer data in Google Analytics.
With Google AdWords, you can test your ads and message to find out what is working and what is not working so you can make changes to see if they work better. Make sure you take advantage of these 4 actionable Google AdWords tips.
4. Google AdWords Keyword Planner
With Google AdWords Keyword Planner, you stay on top of keyword trends to refine your Google AdWords campaigns and make sure your content matches relevant keywords.
In this planner, you can discover new keywords, conduct keyword research and choose better keywords.
Google AdWords Keyword Planner helps you see how often keywords are searched, how the volume changes over time and how competitive keywords are so you can pick keywords that are less competitive so you can rank higher. Learn how to use Google AdWords Keyword Planner.
5. Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides your brand with the digital analytics tools so you can track, report and analyze website traffic.
This data will help you better understand your clients and prospects and provide a better user experience, produce better content and produce strong results from all digital touchpoints.
Google Analytics can help you focus your marketing efforts on your most profitable marketing channels. Find out the 10 reasons you should use Google Analytics.
6. Google Search Console
Google Search Console, formerly known as Google Webmaster Central and Google Webmaster Tools, helps you monitor website performance in the Google search index.
Google Search Console provides you with a collection of tools and resources such as which pages on your websites are the most popular, you can find and fix website errors, build and submit a sitemap and create a robots.txt file.
Google Search Console is useful in finding out information such as how many people are visiting your website and how they are finding it and whether more people are visiting your websites via mobile or desktop. Learn the three ways you can use search query data in Google Search Console.
7. Google Trends
Google Trends helps you see the latest trends, data, and visualizations. It shows you how often a search term is entered in Google to the search volume in your country or various regions of the world.
You can find out what is trending in your country or near you. You can explore topics and see how keywords compare to each other. And you can see how keywords develop in popularity over time. Learn how to use Google Trends for search engine optimization (SEO).
8. Google TAG Manager
Google Tag Manager helps digital marketers and outside agencies make tag management simple and easy. It helps you place, update and manage code snippets or tags in one place and integrates into existing systems.
Google Tag Manager can help you speed up the development of your website by deploying code/tags quickly without relying on a developer, make code/tag updates easily, work with outside agencies by using one account to manage multiple codes/tags, and cut and paste multiple tags on a single website. Find out the 10 reasons you start using Google Tag Manager.
9. Google Forms
Like SurveyMonkey, Google Forms can help you easily create and analyze surveys for free. With Google Forms, you can use your own photo or logo, choose the look and feel, including picking curated themes so you can set the tone of your surveys that match your branding guidelines and style guide.
Google Forms provides you with questions options such as multiple choice or drop-downs. You can add images and YouTube videos and show questions based on answers.
Google Forms provides real-time responses and charts. You can data with you by viewing it in Google Sheets. Discover five reasons why you should Google Forms.
10. Google reCAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA protects your website from spam and abuse while letting real people pass quickly without being annoying of typing in a word or figuring out what an image is. As Google says: reCAPTCHA is “tough on bots but easy on humans.”
ReCAPTCHA uses its advanced risk analysis engine to stay ahead of spam and abuse fighting trends and keep automated software from engaging in abusive activities on your websites. According to Google reCAPTCHA website, the advantage is its advanced security, ease of use and creates value. Find out how Google can tell if you are not a robot with just one click.
11. Google My Business
Google My Business is a tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence in Google, including Google Search and Google Maps. By verifying and editing your business information, you can ensure your listing appears right and attract the right customers. You can add photos of your business and office locations, update the hours you are open and respond to reviews.
Google My Business is important in boosting your search visibility, showing up in local search results and making sure Google has your correct information about your business and your different office or retail locations.
Google My Business is critical to setting up locations extensions in Google AdWords. Location extensions in Google AdWords show your address, provides a map to your location and provides the distance to your local business.
Learn why Google My Business is so important for local SEO and how to optimize your Google My Business listings.
12. Google Alerts
Google Alerts provide you with email updates on the latest and relevant Google search engine results on a topic you care about. It monitors web pages, media articles, blogs and even scientific research. Basically, anything that is on the web.
Depending on your needs, you can choose between “only the best results” or “everything” and how often you want to get the emails (daily or weekly). It is helpful to find out what is being said online about your personal brand, your company’s brand and your company’s products and services.
Google Alerts is a wonderful way to keep track of trends, interesting topics and anything that is new on the web. Learn the five reasons you should be using Google Alerts.
13. Google for Jobs
Searching for the right job can take time. It is a full-time job to find a good full-time job. Keeping up-to-date with the latest jobs can be challenging. Now you can stay in the loop on jobs near you with a simple Google search.
Just search “[type of job” near me” in Google and you will find something like this on your mobile device:
If you type of “marketing jobs near me” on your desktop, you get something this:
Google is working with organizations such as LinkedIn, Monster, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor and Facebook to provide you with a comprehensive listing of jobs.
Google is also publishing open documentation for all jobs providers, from third-party platforms to direct employers on how to make their job openings more discoverable in Google Search with this new tool. Companies just need to add structure data to the job posting web pages. Learn how to use Google for Jobs.
14. YouTube Trends Dashboard
YouTube Trends Dashboard helps you tap into YouTube and see what is trending such as the latest music videos, movie trailers, and comedy clips.
With YouTube Trends Dashboard, You can find out what is trending today and what is trending this week. It also highlights a YouTube creator on the rise. If you haven’t already, you should create YouTube channel for you or your brand.
15. Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a fast, free web browser for your desktop computer or mobile device.
What is nice about Chrome is it supports a wide variety of extensions such as Hootlet, Grammarly, StumbleUpon, Google Page Analytics, and Moz Rank to name a few. You may want to check out these 41 Chrome Extensions.
To learn more, please visit: https://knowledgeenthusiast.com/2017/08/21/15-best-free-google-tools-digital-marketers-should-be-using/
Matthew Royse is the director of marketing communications for Forsythe Technology, one of the largest independent IT integrators in North America. He has more than 15 years of experience in marketing and communications, working in many different industries, including financial services, technology, media and entertainment.
At Forsythe Technology, Matthew oversees all content marketing and social media initiatives internally and externally, across multiple platforms and formats to drive sales, engagement, retention, leads and positive behavior with clients, partners, analysts and employees.
By Debleena Majumdar
Co-Founder
Kahaniyah, Corporate and Educational Institutes
“Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” said Brené Brown. Do you agree?
The year was 1854. London had been reeling under the outbreak of
cholera and Doctor Charles Snow was one of the tireless doctors treating
an endless stream of patients even as he found himself asking questions
about the real reason behind the spread of the disease. His hypothesis
was that cholera could spread through contaminated water. The common
perception at that time was the cholera spread through air. But as Dr.
Snow mapped out cases of cholera on the map of London (each black dot in
the chart below is an incident of cholera in what is believed to be an
early usage of a histogram on a map), he found the cases converging
around one street, Broad Street. Investigations showed that that street
indeed had a septic water tank which led to a large outbreak. One single
chart conveyed what years of research had been trying to.
Was it data or was it a story?
The drama of data:
Many of us in the world of Analytics got introduced to the concept of data storytelling with this powerful video on population growth and climate change by Hans Rosling:
Using rapidly shifting bubble charts, he tells a powerful data story. A text-book introduction to the power of visualization of data. So much so that a lot of people now talk of data stories as just visualization. But can visualization alone tell the story?
My hypothesis - Hans Rosling and Charles Snow not only used data and visualization, but actually used stories that lie lurking beneath the data to get to that powerful visual. The visual was the output but without the story it had no insight. So can stories uncover insights?
Let’s look at at two examples to understand the journey from data to story-based insights more clearly.
Spotlight on Spotify:
The data: Spotify kicked off its largest-ever global campaign with a major, data-driven outdoor push in which it bade goodbye to 2016 with the sign-off, "Thanks 2016, it's been weird." Rolled out across more than 10 markets, it used hyperlocal data to create messages which are personalized and rang true with what people felt and listened, when the the world around them kept showing more signs of weirdness.
The story based insight: Spotify CMO, Seth Farbman, is reported to have said that the idea for this data-driven campaign originated with 2015's end-of-year "Year in Music" campaign, as data from listeners in different geographical areas provided some interesting insights. "That led to the idea of reflecting culture via listener behaviour."
"There has been some debate about whether big data is muting creativity in marketing, but we have turned that on its head," he added. "For us, data inspires and gives an insight into the emotion that people are expressing."
The result: With the campaign rolled out in November 2016, the real results will only be measured later. From early reviews, most people loved the creativity and the humor displayed in the ads. But there were a few questions around the moral code of data stories and concerns as to whether the personal data that the customers trusted Spotify with when they signed up was compromised in any way in developing ads like this.
No words to say the Last Words:
The data: Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPC) wanted to raise awareness about the lack of palliative (end-of-life) care that patients receive, robbing them, often, of dignity, at death. According to their studies, only one in 100 patients get access to any sort of palliative care with the result that most last words are heard, not by family, but by nurses. They had conducted interviews with over 200 retired and working nurses across India and had data and facts on this issue.
The story based insight: For Praful Akali, Founder & Managing Director of Medulla Healthcare Communications, the agency which conceptualized and created the awareness campaign for IAPC, the data was disturbing. It was a story that needed to be told to raise awareness about the importance of palliative care. But the true insight came from the words the nurses spoke, the real stories behind the data. And that insight led team Medulla to create the video #last words – the last words of dying patients, which were meant for family members, but instead, often heard by nurses and medical staff, when they passed away. Palliative care aims to change this type of end-of-life care, as the video describes, giving patients “every possible comfort during their last days, including letting them spend time with loved ones.” Imagine if Medulla just created an infographic that charted out all the data. Would it tell the story, so powerfully? They went beyond the data to the story to get the real insights.
The result: Not only has the video gone viral, sparking over 100 million conversations on social media while sending a powerful message on end-of-life care; at the Cannes Lions 2016, Medulla was awarded as the Healthcare Agency of the Year with "Last Words" bagging two gold medals. No wonder then that in Brand Equity’s “Best & Bekaar Advertising of 2016” it topped the list of Best Ads of 2016. For a small firm with limited budget that works in the area of Healthcare Advertising, which is not supposed to lend itself to very creative marketing, the results speak volumes about the power of the story based insight.
Not just in marketing but across all business functions; stories have the power to lead the journey from data to insights. And just like any narrative story arc, the insights-based-story too needs to have all the elements of a good story - the character, the conflict, the resolution and the authentic voice of the storyteller. Only then can insights shine.
“A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic,” Stalin is supposed to have said. Whether we are talking about life, death or music or cola, as data storytellers, we owe it to our data, and to ourselves, to tell the right stories - which use data correctly, convey the right insight and hopefully, drive decisions and change.
Would love to hear your stories.
I use storytelling to improve business and learning outcomes through workshops and projects. If you are looking to improve your teams’ understanding of your vision, trying to implement your data-driven strategy or just trying to enhance the way you listen to or sell to your customers, email me at debleena.majumdar@gmail.com to see how storytelling can sharpen your results.
Presented by: Matthew Preschern
Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
HCL Technologies
SESSION ABSTRACT
A company’s brand proposition and means of customer engagement have been transformed by the shift to digital, including the tremendous influx of data and a business environment that is mobile-first and always on. Customers expect personalized, experience-driven interactions for engagements that come at micro moments and require a brand to be nimble and active in encouraging next steps.
The key to using data to encode insights and deliver this level of customer experience can be found in account-based marketing. A well-conceptualized ABM plan when designed and executed in partnership with sales can be a strategic differentiat or and a trigger for exponential growth.
The true power of ABM lies in the programmatic choices, both in-person and in the digital space. Participants learned how the elements of an account based marketing approach can allow a powerful customer-to-brand connection and examined the ways in which account based marketing can bridge the analog and digital elements of marketing for a cohesive experience.
KEY TAKE-AWAYS
- A framework for account-based marketing
- An understanding of the elements of a successful ABM program, including customized customer experiences
- Insight on ABM as a means to trigger double-digit growth coupled with reinforced brand equity
- A guide for using the data collected to endear customers and drive brand awareness
OVERVIEW
- Client challenges: Message clutter, lack of personalization, lack of trust in other companies
- Marketing challenges: Micro moments, individual to individual, mobile first, connect emotionally, always on, multi-channel, experience driven
- The world is moving towards more personalization in the purchasing process
Account Based Marketing: Augment business traction and be a “strategic partner” to the client, enable, up-sell and cross-sell, infuse thought leadership, and create and leverage loyalty
Key Question: How do you arm your sales team with this account based marketing information? How do you get them to allow you to get involved when sales tries to “own” the account planning process?
- Sales should own the execution of interaction with client, that’s a good thing
- Convince them to engage in a thoughtful manner while planning
- Accounts will grow if both are involved in the planning; however, relinquish power when it is time for the sales team to execute with the client
TAKE-AWAY
“Alice in Wonderland” lesson
- If you don’t know where you are going, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re running – don’t deploy everything
- Utilize best marketing tactics in concerted effort, deploy some technology, research accounts, and take your time so you know you’re making the right decision
- Don’t waste time and money because you didn’t research accounts or clients fully
IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES
What to consider in account selection:
- Current competition landscape
- Account maturity – right engagement ecosystem of sales, delivery and marketing
- Do you have a coach or advocate in the account you are serving?
- Business potential – wallet share versus potential wallet share
- What specific accounts are you going to target, and why should you go after those particular accounts?
- Very strategic – who are the decision makers in the other companies?
- Are you getting a large part of their wallet share – are they buying just one of your products-or more?
BEST PRACTICE
Map marketing activities into three buckets
- Demand generation
- Brand awareness
- Thought leadership
- Determine tactics and information shared in order to “move down the funnel”
- Create a custom plan and utilize what works as you get more involved with a client
- Identify target accounts and prospects
- Identify digital channels –> optimize –> measure
ACTION ITEM
You need a framework for how you will act on each account:
- Client engagement framework
- Craft an account level campaign plan
- Measure and monitor
- Utilize both relevance charts as well as organizational charts
- Plot an ecosystem chart of key external influencers
- Create a RAG map for all stakeholders
- Craft a plan specifically to expand new/unknown decision makers and influencers
- You need to combine relationship map with account selection
- Very quantitative analysis -- you need to know hard numbers and revenuestreams to fully understand what share of the client’s wallet you are receiving (i.e. is there the potential for more?)
FINAL THOUGHT
Move slowly at first, gain traction before diving “all in.”
By Spandana Lakkamraju
Global Omnichannel Manager
Digital Marketing
Cisco
Omnichannel is possibly the most misused term these days. No matter how you describe it though, you probably have at least one aspect of omnichannel down. It is also worth noting that the digital and physical worlds are colliding. We all live and breathe it today. Half the time we live on the internet and the other half in the physical world.
Information is at our fingertips today as it should be for us to keep progressing. So for the sake of this progression, we need to make brilliant transformations in marketing today. In order to deliver real transformation, it’s extremely important to make a true omnichannel strategy a part of your overall corporate marketing strategy. Here’s why:
1. Revenue: A Seat at the Table
Marketing is starting to take on bigger quotas and bookings goals. It’s evident that online research is where people start when they begin their buying journey. Omnichannel can help bridge the gap in terms of funnel conversion and aid in new avenues to generate revenue. Beyond that, if you are considering going direct with an e-commerce platform, having an omnichannel strategy with built-in, in-app notifications will significantly drive sales.
2. Real-Time Optimization
How many of you are having conversations around goals right now? The company sets its annual targets, and you are asked to create a road map for the rest of the year. Where do you start? If you have an existing inbound practice, you can base it on your current run rate and reverse waterfall. How do we bridge the gap if the two numbers don’t match? You guessed it!
In an omnichannel world, you can go into specifics. If you set up ‘always-on’ campaigns, you’ll know on an average how many leads you can bring in a week or a month. On top of that, you can set up growth rates and optimization goals to drive real time results.
3. Unified Goals and Cross-Team Collaboration
One of the best things about omnichannel,is that it gives the entire marketing organization unified goals. How many times have we set up a brand campaign with awareness goals and not been able to show conversions? In an organization focused on omnichannel, all teams work together to feed into each other’s goals. The customer journey becomes a relay match, the teams in the marketing organization work together to deliver a delightful customer experience.
4. Better Messaging to Drive a Seamless Customer Experience
As stated above, we live in a digital world. and our customers consume content in multiple places using multiple devices. So, we need to be sure our brand messaging is consistent across channels, and in real time. All organizations need a strategy to do so.
Omnichannel isn’t just about conveying the same message across all your channels. It’s about understanding the relevance of different platforms and presenting the right messages per channel. A blog post has no place on Instagram and a whitepaper has no place on Facebook. Take aspects of the whitepaper, however, and post an image of significant learnings from it on Instagram. Boom, instant conversions.
Omnichannel can be used to help get the story to flow from one channel to the next. It can help spread the right message, at the right time, in the right place to the relevant audience.
5. Capturing Customer Pain Points and insights
Customer experience goes beyond messaging; it also includes solving your customer’s pain points depending on where they are in their journey. In the omnichannel world, you’re not having multiple first date conversations with your customers, you’re honeymooning.
By presenting messages that are relevant to where they move on the internet, you let customers know that you’re listening to their needs. It also gives you the ability to capture valuable customer data and insights.
6. Improved Tech Stack Delivers Better ROI
As an omnichannel strategy requires multiple platforms to work together,it’s important to start making investments in tools that can work together but also build on each other. An integrated tech stack that’s essential for omnichannel delivers better ROI than fragmented tech investments.
7. Allow For Innovation: Play By Your Own Rules
Omnichannel allows for multiple opportunities to innovate and experiment. This is the most enticing reason to be part of an omnichannel organization, in my experience. Gamification of demos and experimenting with augmented and virtual reality and other interactive experiences are vital for creating customer moments that matter. Additionally, when proven successful, these innovations too can be scaled via an omnichannel plan across the board.
To sum up, a well-planned and executed omnichannel strategy allows for revenue growth, real time optimization, unified goals and cross-team collaboration. It helps you address customer pain points and gain insights, improve ROI and also allows room for innovation. Omnichannel arms you to become a successful, trans formative marketing organization!
As Global Omnichannel Manager, Digital Marketing, Cisco, Spandana Lakkamraju is responsible for driving an omnichannel strategy for key initiatives across Cisco’s business, and for scaling innovation such as “new digital experiences” created at Cisco. She partners with the BU, Brand, Content, Country/Regional, and other teams in the organization to establish coordination of message, touch points, and frequency across customer-facing channels. Previously, she was an Inbound and Revenue Marketing Specialist, Global Demand Center, for Cisco and a Technical Assistant for the Aerodynamics Department at NASA Ames Research Center.
By Chris Moloney
Chief Marketing Officer
TaxSlayer
Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), along with many other senior business leaders, exhaust a lot of energy discussing the critical importance of being strategy-driven. So, why do many leaders have difficulty creating enough time for strategic planning? We all know it is essential, but the magnetic forces within our companies are always pulling us toward more operational projects. I have found in my eleven years as a Chief Marketing Officer, that most organizations often stereotype the marketing role into advertising and communications production, with a campaign-centric approach. As a result, marketers must create a constant counter-balance to the daily pull toward tactics.
The Chief Marketing Officer is largely responsible for driving growth and profitability. However, it is increasingly essential that we serve as the “voice of the customer” by maintaining a regular pulse on customer trends, needs and behaviors. When I first became a CMO, there was no concept of an iPhone. I can recall people saying that they would never make calls from their “iPod”, assuming the iPhone was just that… an iPod with a phone. Ten years later, iPhones and other smart devices have radically changed the way consumers interact with companies and each other.
The change is more radical than we could have imagined, but there were a few leading indicators that gave some hints along the way. A few years before the iPhone, the CIO of Scottrade and I gave a keynote on how “widgets” and “gadgets” were likely to overtake web pages and further discussed how we should prepare. Subsequently, widgets became the immediate precursor to all apps. Without our strategic planning, we would have been caught off guard. This is one of many trends that reminds us we must think long-term and build plans that offer flexibility. As leaders, we must pull the organization out of the day-to-day operational mindset and strive to define and refine strategy regularly based on technology or market changes.
How often do you think about where you want to be in three years? While a three-year view (or even more, a five-year plan) can seem outrageous, you’d better have one! The future is truly unpredictable, but a strategic framework allows you to evaluate numerous outcomes. Some of these outcomes may be close to the truth, but if they are not—you still have the core framework to rely on to keep you confident in your path.
As things change, revise the plan, but review it often and keep it a living and breathing document. Even consider creating visuals around the plan that you can post and share with all levels of the organization. Your team wants to know where you are heading and they need to be fully invested to help you get there. Partner with your CEO and others to enthusiastically share and MARKET the plan internally.
All too often in the media, stories about marketing focus on celebrating a winning campaign or marketing tactic that worked well. When reading articles about marketing successes such as a campaign that took off or a product that exploded in season, there is an implication that the marketing organization, ad agency, or leader “got lucky.” These stories often mislead one to believe a slot machine moment drove success. In fact, behind the scenes, marketers are typically studying customer attitudes, needs, and trends to re-define their customer benefits. The journey of how customers find us and what they experience along the way is a changing ecosystem and marketing must be at the center of sharing these insights.
When a company delivers on a big success, some doubt that the leaders had a vision. Luck is easier to fathom. But, in my experience, great marketing successes are either the result of a long-term vision or good fortune that occurs as the result of being at the right place, at the right time. Luck and strategy together are the perfect cocktail. That said, there are great products that fail because of bad marketing, but there are also bad products that fail despite great marketing. This is not to sound aloof or arrogant. Quite the contrary, marketers must embrace their role as the voice of the brand and realize how important it is to get their jobs right each day.
After all, marketers are expected to keep the communications flowing, the ads running, the leads coming in, and other operational initiatives moving at a rapid pace. If we aren’t making our best effort to look forward with a long-term view of our customers’ needs, we are missing out on something very important.
Big and Small Companies Alike Struggle
Often, I find the strategic planning process just as difficult in the large and well-funded organizations as it is for the medium to small organizations. In a large organization, there are immense resources and several people who weigh in on a long-term vision. However, each year it seems more like a budget planning exercise when the final strategy is delivered. In a small to medium-sized organization, marketers must be bolder, especially if they represent a challenger brand. The mission and vision must break through the clutter of those who might have deeper pockets, abundant resources, or a bigger brand. There are fewer “committees” and often a clearer understanding of the budget as “investment” versus “expense.” Those two words alone seem to be emblematic of whether a company thinks long-term versus short-term.
Marketing is at the Top
Fundamentally, marketing is all things that make up our products, services and benefits—packaged together in a way that appeals to the overall marketplace. Marketing is a connection of who we are as a company and what we deliver to the overall marketplace. Stop thinking about marketing as a place where advertising is created. Stop thinking about marketing as a place where short-term goals, objectives, and quick wins are the benchmark for success. In today’s marketplace, the marketing leaders must look ahead and have a vision that is both inspirational and reasonably accurate. Chief marketers must execute the short-term strategy with a clear insight on how it affects the long-term strategy.
Marketing is a wild mix of being fun, incredibly challenging, yet extremely rewarding when you get it right. It reminds me of the game of golf where you have that moment when you hit the ball and many things come together at once to make the shot. It is important to remember there were many missed shots before the good one. As marketers, we should think of ourselves in some ways as golfers. No matter how many times you do it and no matter how good you get, there’s always room to learn more, take more lessons, and think about your long-term objective whether that is to have fun, win, or hand over your expertise to the next generation.
Chris Moloney is the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Partnerships for TaxSlayer, a leading provider of tax and financial services tools to U.S. consumers and financial professionals. TaxSlayer has been ranked #1 by the National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP) for many years. TaxSlayer is headquartered in beautiful Augusta, Georgia - home of The Masters Tournament.
His prior roles include roles at two digital leaders as Chief Marketing Officer of CAN Capital, Chief Executive Officer of Gremlin Social Media, and Chief Marketing Officer for three major brands (Wells Fargo Advisors, Experian, and Scottrade). Chris is a big believer in the power of marketing to drive business growth and his expertise lies in driving companies to be highly successful in their digital and social media presence with measurable results.
By Doyle Buehler
Chief Executive Officer
Senior Smarty Pants
The Digital Delusion
Defining your ‘why’ is actually about defining your digital strategy. Delivering your true value to your audience is the embodiment of your digital strategy.
When push comes to shove, those businesses with a solid digital strategy are better able to weather any storm that comes, and better maximize and leverage the opportunities when they arise as well. Whether it is from economic or political factors or other external or even internal factors, if you are prepared and understand the roadmap that you are on, then it can be easier - not only during troubled times, but also during times that you can take advantage of.
The challenge? Most businesses don’t have an overall strategy, nor even a digital specific one, either. This leads many businesses to the SOS or, “shiny object syndrome” - trying to leverage the newest and flashiest sparkly thing that comes along, only to see it fade away within months of launch. This costs you and your business time, money and resources.
So, what are the Top 10 things about digital strategy that you are probably missing out on?
- Develops your ‘why.’ If you don’t understand the ‘why’, do you think your customers will? Probably not. Not so much the “why you are doing this”, but also the “why do you provide value?”
- Gives you focus. How hard is it to figure out what you need to do every day as it is? What if this was already taken care of for you?
- Helps you understand your market. Have you spent the time to actually fully comprehend who your customer is and what they want to become?
- Creates improved competitive forces. Yes, you get better, faster and more efficient if you are thinking long-term. What will your competitors think when you surpass them?
- Gives you and your staff and customers something to think about. No, it’s not just about a single sales transaction. If it is, a strategy will not help you.
- Prioritizes how to tackle projects. Stuck with what to do, next? Having a strategy will help you clarify what is really important and what forms the essence of your business for projects to undertake.
- Creates comparisons for debriefs and reviews. If you have a strategy, you will actually be able to measure your success and failures.
- Expands your market. Now you can actually look at new projects, as well as entering new markets, as you can understand what resources are required to be effective.
- Improves your customer base. If your customer can understand the strategy or rather interpret it through your themes and values, then they can become a lifelong customer.
- Provides direction on what is next. Now you can decide when to launch a new product or improve your existing ones, and all with a better understanding of your customers and overall business value.
Digital is not an overnight success - it's the long game. It starts with planting your roots - your strategy. Only then can things really grow your business, otherwise you will eventually land out chasing your own tail - not being able to decide what to do, when, and more importantly, why.
Take what is best about your business, define your value, and create a compelling digital strategy that provides remarkable value to your perfect audience.
Easy, right? :)
What's your digital leadership quotient? Find out now: www.leadership.digital
Doyle Buehler, MBA, is a best-selling author, global entrepreneur, international speaker and digital business thought leader, specializing in strategic digital branding and marketing. He has mentored, coached, trained and inspired many in the areas of startups, digital leadership, digital innovation, disruption, transformation, online marketing, social media and entrepreneurship.
Doyle runs a worldwide strategic digital marketing agency for companies who want to create disruption in their industry. At the intersection of innovation and strategic marketing, he is best known for effectively connecting business leaders to their entire digital ecosystem, to help them build a remarkable business online. Doyle is the author of the best-selling book on digital strategy and digital leadership: The Digital Delusion: How To Overcome The Misguidance and Misinformation Online.
By Adam Kahn
Senior Director, Marketing Operations & Demand
Frost & Sullivan
The 18th Annual Digital Marketing: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange might have ended, but during my time at #FrostMar, I gathered seven key takeaways that marketers of all shapes and sizes will find useful.
The event took place in Nashville on July 17-19, where 150 marketing minds gathered to exchange ideas, build relationships and learn from leading organizations like RSA, GE Digital, TaxSlayer, Jet.com, Vanguard, MetLife and many others.
If you missed this outstanding event, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered with our Executive MindXchange Chronicles! You can benefit from videos of the keynotes and focused session summaries of the entire event, including key ideas and takeaways, plus guidelines for implementing these strategies at your own organization. The Executive MindXchange Chronicles are the next best thing for those unable to attend and those looking for best practices in the industry.
Without further ado, here are my top takeaways from the event:
1. Embrace Disruption for Growth
The companies that are actually disrupting are the ones that are making successful strategic digital marketing decisions based upon critical digital strategies. This is where the disruption starts. It’s not about the technology. It is about rethinking how you assemble your team and formulate your core digital strategies that affect disruption.
It’s critical that we create a disruption strategy that includes 5 critical steps:
- Define the Purpose
- Uncover Patterns
- Develop a Platform
- Create a Process
- Produce Results
Once we develop a disruptive strategy, we’re on our way to redefining our future. Status quo is NOT sustainable in the age of disruption.
2. Know Your Customer/Prospect Brain Types for More Effective Communication
When you market to “brain types” you can bypass personalities. This key point simplifies a communication plan into four key brain types: Controller + Manager, Innovator + Influencer, Nurturer + Harmonizer and Analyzer + Systemizer. Once we understand the dominate brain type of the audience we are marketing to, we can properly frame the communication in these easy steps:
- Identify your audience’s brain type
- Recognize what’s important to them
- Frame your message to get their attention
- Trigger emotion, use metaphor and story
- Sell the end result or absence of it
3. Data Is Still King
With marketing technology’s dramatic growth, data continues to drive our customer insight, engagement and conversion. We’re now starting to see emerging areas like AI, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and IoT as additional tools and resources that will continue to help us, as marketers, generate higher quality leads, retain existing customers and enhance relationships thru visualization, predictive modeling and trend assessment via unprecedented volumes of data we now have access to.
4. Quality Journalism Skills Are Imperative, but Challenging To Find
If Data is King, then Content is the Queen that drives community engagement. During the course of the event, we had countless conversations about content marketing strategy, campaigns and creation and I quickly recognized a theme – “marketers lack basic writing skills.” Much of the content creation tends to fall on young professionals who don’t possess proper journalism skills. Where do you find professionals who possess a strong editorial sensibility, as well as a solid foundation in journalism fundamentals? Regretfully, I wasn’t able to garner a specific answer, but the take-away is clear – when you interview prospective team members, don’t forget to ask for writing samples and review what they’ve posted online. Regretfully, strong writing skills are a necessity that many marketers do not possess.
5. We Must Continually Transform to Survive
As marketers, we want to be strategic, but tend to be reactionary. We must continually look for ways to improve engagement and transform our competencies to maximize efficiency and effectiveness for business growth. In order to transform our teams and organizations, we must be innovators, strategists and change agents. As Dave Sutton of TopRight stated, “To truly transform, marketing must get all 3S’s right: the right Story, the right Strategy, the right Systems, all measured through the lens of Simplicity, Clarity and Alignment.”
6. Org Charts Are Dangerous
As noted by Holly Rollo, CMO at RSA, “Your legacy is your team, not the situation.”
We can no longer operate in silos and effectively meet the needs of our customers and prospects. We must define workflow, not org charts, to place sales and marketing in the same boat to best serve our customers. To be truly customer facing, we have to go big or go home, the Band-Aid must be ripped off. No one said it would be easy, but pain = progress. If we set group values for change and create mechanisms to listen to each other we will succeed.
7. ROR (Return On Relationships) is Amazing!
The Executive MindXchange is really an extraordinary event model. The main emphasis of the event is to establish meaningful relationships with like-minded professionals and that objective was executed flawlessly. Throughout the course of the event, I was able to meet, engage and establish industry relationships that will serve me throughout my marketing career. The variety of networking and social activities was organized in a fun, yet meaningful way. I couldn’t be happier with the outcome – meaningful professional relationships I leverage for best practices and lessoned learned!
Adam Kahn serves as Senior Director, Marketing Operations and Demand at Frost Sullivan. He is a passionate event and digital marketing professional who has worked in the events industry since 1994 for both higher education and for-profit event organizers, including: ZDEvents/Key3Media, iMark Communications, IIR, Diversified Communications and Rising Media. Adam has successfully launched and managed events throughout the United States, Canada and India during the course of his 20+ year career.
Personally, Adam enjoys spending time with his family. He loves coaching his daughter’s basketball team and attending as many of his son’s high school football and basketball games as possible. He loves sports and is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles and Boston Celtics fan. He was born and raised in Philadelphia and has been in Boston since attending graduate school at Northeastern University in 1995. If he’s not attending one of his kids sporting events, you can bet he’s trying to carve out time on the golf course.
