Make Time For The Important Things

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Yesterday a friend and I were chatting about the perils of social media, binge watching television, and online gaming. Namely the demise of the community as a whole and how we have all become so isolated from each other. His son proclaims that he is more social than his dad could ever be with the myriad of ways to ‘stay in touch’. This got me thinking that the term ‘social’ has really changed from its original intent and that we as a society need to get back to that original meaning.

Stay Connected To Your Business

Life happens. Medical issues, moves, job losses, and the like happen on a day to day basis. We have to make time for the things that matter to our personal lives as well as our business lives. Staying connected to your business does not mean having Slack on 24/7 and anxiously checking your email notifications. Staying ‘connected’ means understanding the pulse of your business and ensuring that it is following the values and mission set forth by the leadership team. So how do you stay connected?

  • Vlogging: How about creating daily video blogs to motivate your teams and keep everyone up to date?
  • Stand Ups: Either remote or in-person, but is a way for the business to make sure everyone is paddling int he same direction.
  • Blogging: A few sentences, maybe some transparent data about the organization. Quick, easy to understand, and to the point.
  • Dashboards: Hold teams accountable to their goals by forward facing data points on a big screen.

Lastly, I will say that staying connected to your business shouldn’t take a lot of work outside of normal business hours. You must also make time for yourself and your relationships. In the last few weeks I’ve been told by friends that they don’t have time to workout, eat right, nor do they have 15-minutes to catch up with me. Remember that these are the most important things in life. So long as you are efficiently staying connected to your business your personal relationships will flourish!

Email; The Lazy Person’s Digital Marketing Tactic

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Think back to your early days of dating. You meet a great person and they happily provide their contact information in hopes of getting together soon. After you get home you call them. Then call again the next day. And the day after. And the day after. Wait, you shouldn’t do that! So why do so many companies think this is ok when we provide our contact information to them?

Email Marketing Is Great

Let us start with the good. There are few mediums out there where you have the ability to easily craft a specific message for a specific customer. Yes, display, text, social, and direct mail all have these capabilities, but email makes targeting easy. If you have obtained an email address it is typically because someone has given consent for you to contact them. Through tools such as MailChimp, Marketo, Constant Contact and others you can have emails sent automatically that are dynamically created to fit these customer’s specific needs. So the contact gave you consent and then you followed that by creating an email that matched their needs, reaching their direct inbox in seconds. Now that is powerful!

Stop Being Lazy Email Marketers!

Just this morning I received three emails from various arms of an organization I am intimately involved with. Yesterday I received just as many. None are connected. None speak to my specific interests of the organization. None get me excited about the brand. But I should not pick on a single brand. Recently I purchased furniture from a large online retailer. Since that purchase I have gone back to view other items that I may wish to purchase. As I browse the emails cometh at a rate of at least two per day. Again, no connection to me nor my browsing behavior other than simply reminding me that I browsed a product or category.

It’s Time To Do Better

Here are some keys to being a responsible email marketing guru;

  • Stop sending multiple emails per day; Send one that is a collection of the customer’s interests (and maybe only send 2-3 per week)
  • Make a connection; Put on your public relations hat and spark some emotion
  • Use retargeting less creepily; leverage other tactics to hammer the brand home, just don’t think that email is the only tool you have

Treat your email contact list just like that first phone number you received. You want to show you’re interested without being pushy. You want to remind them without smothering them. Be protective of your lists and remember that they receive tons of messages from others every day. In order to stand out be the one that communicates better than the rest!

Digital Marketing In A Recession

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We’re data analysts at heart, so when the numbers are telling us something we tend to listen. Many economists agree that a recession is on the horizon. The size and length of such an event is debatable, but regardless of its impact you must be ready. Digital media tactics are agile, allowing you to make quick pivots to your marketing dollars with the click of a mouse. So as the economy weather changes you can act fast and maximize your digital spend.

Marketing Mix In A Recession

It’s hard to pull a television or radio ad. It is nearly impossible to pull a print ad or billboard. While these tactics certainly have their place they are not as easy to adjust when things change economically. It is not always recommended to have a 100% digital marketing marketing mix. It is instead important to have tactics that can be adjusted on a dime when economic uncertainty hits. On the whole we see about a 60-70% mix of digital tactics for most of our clients. Your mix may differ, but shouldn’t be too far away from those percentages.

Web Analytics Are Key

First, make sure all of your digital tactics are properly tagged with campaign tracking variables. Second, review your analytics reports weekly to understand the tactics that are working best. Third, ensure that proper attribution is applied to all tactics in order to understand the full impact of each tactic. If you have offline conversions ensure that there is a tracking mechanism in place in order to properly attribute your tactics.

Optimizing Digital Tactics

As economic forces shift leverage your web analytics data to maximize your digital spend on the tactics with the greatest impact to conversion. Evaluate your attribution funnels, or a multi-channel funnel report in Google Analytics, to ensure your spend is driving results. Decrease spend on those tactics that drive little to no tangible value as economic signs start to weaken. While brand awareness may require some spend, a recession event may not be the best time to do so. Track every dollar spent and if it does not at least assist in a conversion it is time to pull back the reigns. Through these optimization tactics you’ll weather the economic downturn better than most and be ready to spend big once things start looking up.

Need help optimizing your digital marketing during a recession?

Use the form on this page to contact us or simply click here and we’ll be more than happy to help you navigate the choppy economic waters.