Digital Marketing Blog

Digital marketing encompasses a multitude of subcategories. In order to excel in whatever niche you work in it is crucial to have a base understanding of all of them. As an account Manager at a PPC-only agency, it is easy to be drowned in all of the latest PPC strategies, how-to’s, and general updates that I hear or read about on a day-to-day basis. Because all digital marketing efforts are so intertwined with my PPC efforts, I commonly find myself discussing different kinds of approaches with my clients.

Admittedly, I’ve frequently had to go back and research digital marketing jargon after a call with a client to try and gain a more comprehensive understanding about their non-PPC digital marketing efforts. This opened my eyes to how pivotal it is to have a grasp on all digital marketing mediums, including email marketing, CRO, SEO, and more.

In order to gain a fuller perspective on these digital marketing mediums, i’ve put together six tactics, strategies, and general concepts that I’ve recently learned from non-PPC presentations. Conveniently, earlier this year, Hanapin released a landing page with 50 of the best digital marketing presentations to-date with speakers like Rand Fishkin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Oli Gardner. I made a point to read through or listen to at least one presentation from every category of digital marketing listed in the blog post. My takeaways are segmented by each of those categories. I hope you find this post to be a great starting point for diving into those 50 digital marketing presentations and learning more about the many facets of digital marketing. Most importantly, I hope you begin to investigate how these segments of digital marketing can work together within your company.

Content Marketing

This first presentation really stood out to me, because our Hanapin Marketing team has recently taken a similar approach to content marketing. Chris Keller, Vice President of Marketing at Health Catalyst, explains how the analytics company used non-gated content to more than double high-quality leads. One of the central challenges for his marketing team, a trial we can all relate to, was to drive more leads. Chris explains that, “the key to marketing leadership is aggressively educating while trusting prospects and monitoring behavior.” It seems counterintuitive to un-gate content when your main goal is to drive leads. However, this is precisely what worked for Health Catalyst. They had a focus on providing educational content to their audiences and trusted that when a prospect is ready to ask for help (or ready to convert); Health Catalyst would be at the front of their list, because of the reputation they had built from a history of providing un-gated and useful content. I strongly recommend watching the full presentation for a great perspective on content marketing.

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)

In the ever changing environment of digital marketing, it behooves people in the industry to stay on top of the latest trends. This is why I really appreciate dissecting new marketing trends and asking myself, “Why is this a trend?” This is exactly what Michael Aagaard from Content Verve does in his slide deck called “You’re Making My Brain Hurt! The Psychology Behind Terrible Conversion Experiences”. In these slides, Michael breaks down the difference between intuitive and analytical thinking. He goes on to show how the different types of thinking cause either “ease” or “stress” on our brains. While keeping this in mind, it becomes easier to fathom how landing pages that require the least amount of analytical thinking can become the highest-converting pages. For more ideas on how to create conversion paths with the least amount of resistance check out his deck.

SEO

A fascinating statistic I came across in Benjamin Spiegel’s presentation called “SEO for Ecommerce – What You Need To Know” was that 44% of online shoppers begin their search for product information on Amazon! That is– shockingly–more than the percentage of online shoppers beginning their product information searches on all of the other search engines combined (34%). Spiegel proceeds to explain how to “win on Amazon” by sticking to three main SEO principles. For someone, like me, who is relatively inexperienced with SEO (but runs shopping campaigns for PPC), this presentation contained tons of practical advice for achieving success on Amazon and other e-retailers alike. I recommend exploring deeper into Benjamin Spiegel’s presentation to learn more about SEO.

Email Marketing

When trying to digest unfamiliar topics, it can be extremely helpful to obtain overarching, short summaries or predictions from experts on the subject. That’s exactly what you get from this slide deck, Email Marketing in 2020 by Litmus. Two of the most common predictions for the future of email marketing from this presentation can be boiled down to “personalization” and “interactiveness”. According to Jill Redo, “By 2020, hyper-personalization in marketing will reach a significant level, along with rules-based triggers, assimilation of the mobile channel, and connecting data from other channels and platforms.”

PR (Public Relations)

Out of the six digital marketing topics I mention in this post, I’ve had the least amount of conversations with clients regarding their PR efforts. Maybe that’s because PR efforts overlap the least with PPC efforts, as compared to the other topics. Or maybe that’s because we just haven’t figured out how to effectively connect PR to PPC! At the end of the day, both want to drive leads or sales–so there has to be a connection. I now see more of an indirect connection between PPC and PR, thanks to Kenneth Lim’s presentation “Convergence of PR and Content Marketing“. He shows how the content we are already creating (which we often use for lead generation PPC) can be used within PR efforts, so that we are presenting a consistent message to our audiences via the most common, public mediums.

Social

As a social platform user (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter), I found this last presentation, by Jay Baer, incredibly interesting. One aspect of this presentation that I found extremely important, and is highlighted as being one of the most important features of having a social presence, was the criticalness of response time. The slide below shows that consumers don’t just want answers and apologies, but they want them both quickly–in fact, they want them immediately! This is so important to keep in mind, because our other marketing platforms do not stand a chance if our company continually ignores consumers–ultimately generating a poor public reputation over time.

Let’s Tie It All Together

“Communication has shifted forever.” This was the simplest, and also the most abstruse, comment made by Gary Vaynerchuk during his keynote at Inbound 2016. It has become blatantly apparent that the digital world has permanently changed the nature of marketing communications. This has created a more complicated landscape where we are obligated to manage millions of consumer impressions. But how do we do this? We have to start by understanding each of our communication mediums. Only then are we able to strategically combine those mediums to create an all-inclusive digital marketing presence that is imperative for a company’s success. So I strongly urge all marketers to go ahead and check out more of the 50 Best Digital Marketing Presentations, and let the experts guide you towards finding a complete digital marketing strategy that is tailored to your company’s specific needs!