For marketers,
It’s easy to get lost in day-to-day tasks. Whether we’re tweaking upcoming campaigns, reviewing reports, corresponding with clients, or working on one of the 563 other things that need to get done asap, sometimes the big picture of what we do becomes obscured – to our detriment.
Obviously,
You can’t neglect the everyday details of your work, no matter how mundane. The trick is to always remember that big success comes from big ideas. In digital marketing, this means taking a step back and ensuring that your overall goals are thoughtful and innovative.
If you’re stuck in autopilot or just want to catch up on meaningful industry trends, here are some big-picture objectives that every marketer should know.
Internal collaboration
Collaboration among your team is essential. You need to ensure that everyone works in tandem to create exceptional work, satisfy the client, and meet internal goals. And when it comes to creative, copy and design always benefit from other team members’ input.
But have you extended your collaboration beyond your own department?
In digital marketing, you have to depend on the performance of your website. So much of what you do is aimed at providing easy UX, but if your site fails to load fast enough or can’t support design elements, you’ll undercut your whole campaign.
Next time you’re set to make big changes with your website, app, or other digital assets, collaborate with the IT department. By familiarizing yourself with how it affects your work, you ensure that your ideas are technically possible.
You might even solicit IT’s creative input. In our experience, sometimes collaborating with unlikely sources yields successful ideas.
Cross-channel collaboration
Thanks to the possibilities for integration with digital marketing, cross-channel collaboration has become an effective and even money-saving objective.
For example, brands can easily include a catchy hashtag with their television campaign, thereby driving conversation across social media. Meanwhile, the blog on your website can provide fodder for Facebook posts, tweets, pins and more.
According to the reports,
80% of marketers increased their cross-channel collaboration, showing that interest in the possibilities of integration is only growing.
Integration also presents an opportunity for marketers to spend their budget more wisely. Rather than focusing on a specific channel, you can now create a package deal that utilizes the relationship of multiple channels to drive a single campaign.
Communicate with customers
We’ve all heard – and have been reminded of – the rise of Big Data. The term refers to the vast quantity of information about people’s transactions on and off line. Marketers are using Big Data for more enhanced reporting, which in turn influences strategy objectives.
However, data has its limitations. It doesn’t help you truly understand users’ motivations. Knowing what inspired someone to click or purchase online is perhaps more important than the resulting report.
For a more enhanced understanding of people’s motivations, interact with them online. Social media is a great way to directly engage with your followers. Encourage them to leave a comment or tweet directly to you, and hear what influenced them from the source.
Online surveys are another option for feedback and are especially relevant to eCommerce sites. Purchasing decisions are likely more complex than you think, but you’ll never fully understand them by viewing data alone.
Expand your digital marketing knowledge
Digital marketing campaigns rely on a variety of factors working together. A standard campaign might include social media, blog posts, and SEO. Professionals often dedicate their whole career to mastering just one of these facets. But if your job is to be a jack of all trades, you need to understand how each piece of the puzzle works.
Start by familiarizing yourself with the nuts and bolts. Consult with the members of your team who specialize in a particular area. Pick their brains about how they approach their task, and to really understand the process, try doing it yourself.
- Write a blog,
- Set up a PPC ad, or
- Try your hand at posts on Facebook (or Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest – whatever channels are relevant to your brand).
Most likely, you won’t master all of these, but by knowing how to do them, you can more successfully incorporate them into an overall strategy.
Establish yourself as an authority
Marketers who stand out online are generally known as experts in their field or thought leaders. These people generally maintain blogs and publish observations and insights into the industry.
For example, professionals like Seth Godin, Neil Patel, and Rand Fishkin all write content aimed at educating other marketers about how to manage and execute their strategies more successfully.
What’s your area of expertise?
Take the lessons you’ve learned and turned them into examples for others. If you have trouble getting started, focus on your own questions about the industry, and start a conversation online by inviting other people to offer their own insights.
Offering this kind of content will establish yourself as an authority (and ideally yield more business) while sharing information that will most likely provide value to other marketers.