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How Low-Level Thinking Hinders Digital Marketing Campaigns

Where are the results from my Digital Marketing???

It’s a few months into your digital marketing campaign, and you’re starting to get antsy. The time you’ve been spending reviewing blog posts, social media, email copy, and other deliverables is detracting from the essential tasks assigned to you by your Board of Directors, and you’re wondering when you’ll see some results from them.

You’ve started to take more time and effort into the revisions of your company’s digital marketing. Instead of approving the blog posts or social media posts with brevity, you’ve started to revise them on word choice, minor formatting details, and other non-essentials.

Let me explain why that is a bad idea.

Balancing Internal Focus with External Focus

Often the most overlooked characteristic of “low-level thinking” in digital marketing campaigns is the fact that they can get stuck in the mud with excessive rounds of revisions. While there is a need to be consistent with brand messaging guidelines and voice, as well as additional concerns based on the content of each article, these changes should be made with your ideal prospect in mind. Instead of focusing on revising a piece of content internally or sending it back for revisions, consider whether or not your site’s visitors will find the change significant.

Also, with too much focus on your content and what it should look like, marketers have a tendency to forget about their competitors. Competitors that write more blogs, publish more social media posts, generate more “likes,” or any combination of the above will slip past you on Google. DON’T LET THEM! Be sure to have a balance of internal focus when reviewing blogs, social media posts, and other deliverables, but don’t lose sight of your competition, or the bigger picture.

The digital marketing engine drives greater results for campaigns when they are fueled by fresh, compelling content. Without that content, your digital marketing campaign can be like a shiny, new car with no gasoline. Everything should be working, but there’s no way to tell because the primary fuel source that makes the car run is not there.

The Components of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing GearsNow that we understand how paralysis by analysis can occur and how it can be detrimental, let’s dive into the elements of digital marketing to get a better understanding of how they are related. In any digital marketing campaign, you can have any combination of blogging, site optimization, social media, email nurturing, SEO, and often more. Each of these has a few essential pieces that contribute to the campaign's overall success. These pieces are similar to the gears inside a complicated piece of machinery, in that if one gear isn't working properly, it could cause the entire machine to malfunction. (Please note that the bullets listed below purposely simplify digital marketing, and are not the only aspects of each strategy.)

Blogging

  • Utilize keywords in blog copy, meta description, and alt text
  • Include internal and external links
  • Add a call-to-action

On-Site Optimization

  • Utlize keywords in site copy, meta description and alt text
  • Prioritize site conversions
  • Ensure a positive user experience and design

Social Media

  • Share varied, fresh content from both your website and others
  • Thank people for sharing your content
  • Make sure posts contain an image

Email Marketing

  • Keep your message short and simple
  • Utilize an email suppression list
  • Identify key pieces of content that you can share with prospects

 

 

 

 

While the four strategies listed above aren’t in every single digital marketing campaign, when they are, they effectively work together. For example, if you publish four blog posts a month, with an emphasis on individual keywords and relevant hyperlinks (Our Senior SEO Analyst tells us to have two internal links to your website, and five external links), you will slowly start growing your search engine ranking which will increase your traffic volume. In a few months’ time, you’ll be able to see your website rank higher and higher, and due to a higher search engine rank, more people will be visiting your site. In addition to growing your SERP, blogging will also give you plenty of content to share on social media. It can allow insight into how many visitors read each blog post, which can help when you come up with topics for eBook or white paper. Once you create those gated eBooks or white papers, you can offer them for as resources to prospects in the sales cycle with a sound email marketing campaign.

Since your traffic levels are increasing, you also need to make sure your site has been optimized to minimize the number of SEO errors, and to have plenty of compelling conversion points that the right visitors need to indicate interest in your business. Those conversion points offer something valuable enough for people to provide their email address, and other pieces of contact information, which is all organic and doesn’t require any purchased lists.

Phew!

If you’re still with me, give yourself a pat on the back. It is quite difficult to explain how all of these components fit together, but this blog post does an excellent job.

You Get Out With What You Put In

There are best practices for SEO, blogging, content creation, social media, and all the other mechanisms that make up digital marketing, but these components are only a means to an end. Don’t let low-level thinking get in the way of a bigger picture strategy. If you do, your company’s digital marketing strategy will not drive the results that you desire.

Through a carefully planned and well-executed digital marketing strategy, we helped one Denver-based consulting firm increase organic search traffic by 325% over two years. See how we devised, implemented, and executed this high-level strategy for this client in this case study.