3 Strategies to Segment Audiences and Personalize Digital Marketing

Recently I came across an article on the Social Times (http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/3-strategies-to-segment-audiences-and-personalize-digital-marketing/617284). Today’s consumers are not silent spectators or passive listeners. Instead, companies are dealing with an empowered audience — engaged in real-time social and mobile conversations, but fragmented across many digital platforms.

While digital marketers are well aware that they must segment their audience and deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time, many struggle with tactical yet effective ways to pinpoint audiences based on needs, expectations and behaviors.

Use Digital Platforms to Build Consumer Personas

Customers are more than just a gender, age, and location recorded in some database. Marketers need to also understand the behaviors and preferences of customers in order to provide them with the best possible experiences while simultaneously influencing their purchasing plans.

STA Travel, a youth-focused travel company, used an Offerpop quiz to better understand the interests of their audience and direct them to personalized travel options. The quiz placed participants into one of five personality-based “Travel Tribes:” Life & Soul, Thrill Seeker, A-Lister, Free Wheeler, and Live like a Local. The campaign yielded over 40,000 responses, providing a wealth of persona data that STA used to target offers to customers.

STA’s website traffic increased, sales grew and they gained more than 10,000 new potential customers using a fun and engaging campaign.

Persona building is a great way to avoid pitching irrelevant marketing content to consumers. For instance, travelers interested in yoga, meditation and soulful retreats most likely are not interested in VIP club access or weekend party yacht rentals. Being more targeted will ensure your content resonates with your customers.

Integrate unique experiences for real-time consumer journey insight

Forrester’s report on Competitive Strategy in the Age of the Consumer emphasizes going beyond consumer historical data, and expanding analysis to better understand “the next step a consumer may take.” Customers come into contact with brands at varying stages; some are ready to purchase, others are there to gather information, and it’s up to brands to offer experiences that cater to each specific situation, and move the consumer closer to conversion..

Brand-to-consumer experiences help brands gain a real-time understanding of where an individual is in the buying cycle, and how the brand can move them along the path to purchase.

Be generous with content and rewards by incorporating contests and discount offerings to consumers, but keep those offerings pertinent to the needs, wants, and desires of each audience segment.

Advocate Health Care, one of the largest hospital and health systems in the Midwest, launched a GoPro giveaway and integrated marketing campaign to promote local health and wellness. Grounded in a hashtag to collect and display user-generated content, and promoted around the city with billboards, TV ads, and digital advertising targeted at outdoors and fitness enthusiasts, #HealthiestLife aggregated more than 3,000 pieces of repurposable user-generated content. Advocate Health Care was able to collect opt-in permissions and deliver follow-up marketing initiatives relevant to the audiences activity. The well-catered messaging ultimately resulted in a 26 percent increase in physician appointments, not to mention a 126 percent jump in traffic to the user-generated content gallery on their website.

Identify new touch points for audience segments using an omni-channel approach

Different audiences open their doors to brands at varying stages of the sales cycle. By including utility-focused content and engagement tools into your strategies, you will find previously unknown avenues to interact with consumers. Tracking targeted content allows marketers to see when different audiences are activated — a great building point for future campaigns.

Following an incredibly successful user-generated content campaign, tote bag retailer SCOUT drove e-commerce sales by repurposing UGC in various touch points across their digital marketing channels.

The SCOUT marketing team discovered that featuring user-generated content in an online holiday gift guide and their email marketing resulted in a significant increase in web traffic from existing fans. Additionally, they experienced such a high volume of web visitors and social media fans visiting the gallery, that they replaced the ‘SALE’ tab in the header of emails with the #scoutbags user-generated content gallery, which effectively drove more consumers to in-season products. Finally, SCOUT included a print promotion for the campaign with every order to remind customers to continue sharing their SCOUT moments.

SCOUT tracked which content generates the most clicks and shares and used this information to optimize their visual marketing strategy and cater to their audiences needs and preferences. And it worked – sales from social traffic increased an average of 67.5 percent by the end of 2014.

Audience segmentation has gone real-time. Brands are building consumer profiles that are constantly tracking what you like, what you buy, how you buy it, and millions of other digital interactions on an ongoing basis. But the potential of this power is lost if marketers aren’t tracking, segmenting, and revamping their messaging to match their audience. Sending the wrong message to the wrong audience is not only wasted time — it can also harm your relationship with potential customers.

The Data-Driven Art Of Digital Marketing

Recently I came across an article on the Marketing Land (http://marketingland.com/data-driven-art-digital-marketing-121667). I love tech and data. In fact, there is nothing I like more than utilizing data to make informed decisions. Magnetic (my employer) has run at least a hundred thousand campaigns, and we are accountable for every last one of them. The metrics and analytics we see for each campaign flight provide a compelling view on how to best optimize each campaign for maximum ROI.

What makes the conversation interesting is that sitting right next to the science of marketing is her sister, the art of marketing. Figuring out how to best utilize all these data points is truly an art form. Let’s delve into some of the finer arts of digital marketing.

Multiple Devices Means More Data

As digital marketers, we’ve shifted from targeting a shared family computer to targeting a single person that uses multiple devices. The obvious impact of this evolution is that many companies now have more user profiles than there are consumers. In response, marketers must apply a cross device targeting strategy, giving advertisers the ability to measure for cross device attribution.

So far, so great; however, if you target across devices, but your attribution model can’t give credit for that mobile ad that drove a desktop conversion, then your campaign will appear to be performing poorly. This shortcoming makes it impossible to optimize campaigns properly.

We are huge advocates of fractional attribution, and marketers can work with external companies to achieve this. However, if it’s not possible for whatever reason, your results or return on ad spend (ROAS) will improve by turning off cross-device targeting and keeping your mobile and desktop campaigns siloed until your attribution problem is fixed.

The Most Important Metric: ROAS

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the most fundamental metric. It is also the one most open to artistic interpretation because you can’t calculate ROAS without making assumptions about attribution. Even if you use the most successful attribution system in the world, you still won’t achieve perfect results. This is because different campaigns perform differently during each stage of a consumer’s purchase journey.

For example, branding campaigns are not going to get the same result as a targeted, lower-funnel sales promotion designed to move goods immediately. Further, we commonly see campaigns use the wrong metric to measure the desired result.

Andy Frawley wrote an interesting article about how we should move away from simply measuring ROI. He proposes a new measurement: Return on Experience and Engagement. Broadly speaking, Frawley addresses how measurement metrics are often too narrow. For example, performance marketers hold their measures too tight, e.g. last click before purchase gets 100% credit, and awareness campaigns look at a set of digital metrics rather than a broader change in consumer intent.

Dynamic Creative Is Key for Personalized Ads

Almost any programmatic campaign today uses massive amounts of data and extraordinarily sophisticated algorithms to decide whether or not to deliver an ad. But, there are few campaigns outside of site retargeting that use data and apply it to ad customization. I suspect that much of this comes from industry inefficiencies: creative agencies are separated from media buying organizations.

That said, you don’t have to be a huge retailer with millions of products to use dynamic creative. Small to mid-sized retailers can also take advantage of data to help customize their creative messages, creating a more personalized marketing experience, which ultimately will lead to better results.

Don’t Rely Too Heavily On Click-Through Rate (CTR) As A Metric

If you ask an algorithm to optimize to a CTR goal, it will optimize to the consumers who click more often. This is just an arbitrary section of the general public, the same as people with brown hair, those that are 5’9’’, or people from Fargo, North Dakota. These people may or may not have anything in common with your best customers.

We’ve all talked about the collapse of the purchase funnel and how a consumer’s path-to-purchase has become fuzzy and difficult to follow. What has yet to happen is the widespread use of dynamic campaigns that run from awareness to purchase. The industry is still under the assumption that campaign strategies should be siloed: my awareness campaign will run here, my in-market campaign will run there, and I will use site retargeting to close the deal.

The future of our industry is combining these separate strategies into one. And technology will infer by the actions you take where you are in your decision making process. Many companies can do this for marketers today, but few actually take advantage of this.

We know that in our digital indulgent world, some consumers will take thirty minutes to make a decision while others will take thirty days. Some people will only shop online, while others prefer the in-store experience. Most people will be seen online and offline using multiple devices.

Data and device information can be used to figure out which ad to show and what the message should be. This can be fully automated from beginning to end, but you’ll always need a partner to make sure that the measurement, analysis, and messages make sense together, performing in harmony. That’s art.

REPORT: Key Players in Digital Marketing Are Shifting

Recently I came across an article on the Social Times (http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/emarketer-digital-marketing/617758). For many tech companies, like Google and Yahoo, digital advertising has become an important part of their business models. Companies that can capitalize on digital ads can push themselves to the top of the market, as Facebook has done in recent years. New data from eMarketer examines how digital marketing’s key players will shift positions in the coming years.

The revenue generated by digital marketing is growing every year, so it is no wonder that social companies would attempt to leverage their user bases to cash in. eMarketer predicts that the combined expenditure on U.S. digital display ads in 2015 will top  $27 billion, and that spending could increase to more than $37 billion by 2017.

Facebook is predicted to capture 25.2 percent of the revenue in the market this year, possibly a result of aggressive expansion. This represents growth of 1.4 percent compared to 2014; however, the growth of market share will increase revenue 29 percent to $6.82 billion, according to eMarketer’s predictions.

Twitter’s share of the market is predicted to increase its by 1.3 percent, with a revenue increase of more than 62 percent. Emarketer expects Amazon’s revenue to grow by more than 23 percent to $820 million, but there is no predicted growth in market share this year.

Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft are all predicted to lose market share and revenue in the coming years. According to eMarketer, Google’s market share is expected to shrink 3.3 percent between 2013 and 2017, while Yahoo will lose 3.7 percent, AOL will slip 1.1 percent and Microsoft will lose 2.7 percent.

During the period between 2014 and 2017 desktop ad revenues are projected to decline slightly while mobile revenues skyrocket. Desktop ad revenues are expected to fall from $12.56 billion to $11.67 billion, while mobile will increase from $9.65 billion to $25.69 billion — an increase of more than 266 percent.

Facebook is predicted to generate $4.91 billion this year, and $7.52 billion by 2017 — an increase of 50 percent. Google will grow at a slower rate, increasing from $1.47 billion to $2.37 billion, and Twitter will grow from $1.19 billion to $2.29 billion by 2017.

It seems companies that have invested in advertising, and especially in mobile advertising, will be dominating the market in the coming years. If Google hopes to maintain its position of dominance, and if the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft want to stay relevant, they’ll need to make a serious investment in mobile.

5 Ways To Optimize Your Digital Marketing Budget

Recently I came across an article on the Entrepreneur (http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243586) that shares 5ways to optimize your digital marketing budget.

Marketing budgets are usually tight. To maximize profitability, every dollar must be allocated effectively. Here are five strategies that can be implemented instantly to get the most out of marketing budgets.

1. Focus on what works best.

Set up goals in Google Analytics to effectively measure the source and quantity of leads or sales. By comparing sources such as paid campaigns, organic traffic and social media channels, you can apply the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule.

You are going to find out what sources generate the majority of sales to later tune up your budget allocation. Use the Pareto Principle and identify the top 20 percent of your traffic sources that generate 80 percent of good results. Focus your budget on that. Especially for smaller budgets, it is often times more effective to allocate it on the 10 percent that is generating 90 percent of results.

Related: The 80/20 Rule of Sales: How to Find Your Best Customers

2. Stay in control of budget and targeting.

Not all marketing solutions allow for full control of how much is spent and who is targeted. Instead of spreading your budget thin on a large variety of platforms, focus on the ones where you are in full control of both targeting and cost. Examples are the online advertising giants, Google, Bing and Facebook.

The more control you have on what you can spend your budget on, the more you will be able to get rid of what does not work and focus your limited resources on.

3. Don’t scale until it’s profitable.

Any marketing campaign, online or offline, should be started on a small scale with narrow targeting. Once it is profitable, the campaign can be scaled. Scaling can mean experimenting with different campaign types on the same platform as well as adding other platforms.

The reasoning behind starting small and waiting for the ROI to come in is two-fold: First of all, the profit from the initial campaign creates a buffer for potentially unprofitable additional campaigns or platforms. Secondly, business owners know now exactly what works well. They can base other marketing efforts on that, or simply put more budget into the initial campaign, without significantly increasing the risk of missing out on a return.

You should also consider the importance of having a statistical relevance in results before deciding on whether to scale up your investment or not. Always support your decision with enough data insights.

Related: 3 Social Media Marketing Plans for Every Startup Budget

4. Align marketing efforts across channels.

Every dollar and every minute spent on marketing should communicate the same message. That includes accounts that have never been used for paid campaigns such as Instagram or, in some cases, Pinterest and Twitter. In business time is money. Therefore, social media accounts and similar branding efforts are never free and should be seen similarly to paid marketing solutions, such as print collateral and paid online advertising campaigns.

5. Cross-channel remarketing.

Remarketing or retargeting means that you target website visitors who did not convert yet on the same platform they were targeted to begin with. For example, potential clients who clicked on an ad in Google but did not convert are targeted again on Google with the same or different ads. Cross-channel remarketing takes it up a notch by retargeting users on a different platform. For instance, potential clients who clicked on an ad in Google but did not convert are now seeing ads on Facebook and Twitter that are tailored to the pages they visited. Cross-channel remarketing will boost the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.

Why Most Digital Marketing Fails -- And How To Fix It

Recently I came across an article on the Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2015/02/03/why-most-digital-marketing-fails-and-how-to-fix-it/) that illustrates why most digital marketing fails.

If you’re looking for insights about the future of digital communications, it pays to ask someone who’s been there from the beginning. Social media strategist Sally Falkow has been a keen observer of online trends since the mid 1990s, and started her blog, The Proactive Report, in 2003. In 2014, she was named one of Cision’sTop 50 Social Media Influencers on Twitter. In a recent interview, she revealed four issues she sees with the current digital media landscape – and how smart companies can take advantage of the opportunity that presents.

Not Enough Companies Are Blogging. After more than a decade on the scene, you’d think that blogging would have become ubiquitous by now. Not so much. Falkow notes that a UMass-Dartmouth study showed that in 2008, 16% of the Fortune 500 had public-facing blogs. By 2014, that number had only climbed to 31%. She understands why companies aren’t jumping onboard. “Blogging is a commitment,” she says. “Once you start, you have to continue. A blog has a voracious appetite. You have to produce good content regularly, and that takes resources.” But she views this silence as a missed opportunity to communicate directly with stakeholders, share ideas, and stake out a position of thought leadership. Indeed, she says, “With digital, we have new tools. It’s easy to publish and you can use analytics to find out what content is resonating with your readers.” If your company makes the effort, you can speak to your customers in a very targeted and effective way.

Companies Still Don’t Understand ‘Social.’ We’ve heard it a million times: social media is like a cocktail party. Don’t be a jerk and talk about yourself all the time. Don’t try to make a sale before you get to know someone. And yet, Falkow still sees marketers doing this all the time. One particular pet peeve: the common practice of retweeting others’ praise of you. “If someone came up to you [with a compliment], you wouldn’t pull out a megaphone and yell to everyone else in the room, ‘Sally just said she likes my work!’”

Most Digital Communications Aren’t Visual Enough. The rise of platforms like Instagram and Pinterest has shown the hunger for visual communication online. Yet most marketers don’t take full advantage of the possibilities, says Falkow. That’s partly a function of their training. “Most PR folk are not designers and have not had graphics training,” she says. But that’s becoming a major handicap. “Every PR student should take a course in graphic design. Visual content is a must for social media success,” she says. There are no excuses anymore. “With the new digital tools, anyone can be trained to take amazing photos on their camera, or make a short video in less than an hour. You can use tools like Canva or Picmonkey to edit photos and make posters with text on them for Instagram or Pinterest. “

You Have to Mix Paid and Earned Media. Finally, Falkow advises companies to face facts: we live in Mark Zuckerberg’s world, and he wants to monetize. The days when companies could rely on organic reach to connect with customers on Facebook (or many other major social platforms) is long gone. “Distribution and amplification of your messages will need paid social advertising,” she says, and “the lines between paid, owned, and earned media will continue to blur. PR practitioners must master the art of using paid social media to support their content.”

More than a decade into the social era, most companies still don’t fully get it. That’s a competitive advantage for you, if you’re willing to immerse yourself in the unique possibilities online communication presents.

What does the rise of digital marketing mean for luxury brands?

Recently I came across an article on the guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/marketing-luxury-goods-feb-15/2015/feb/16/digital-marketing-luxury-brands) that highlighted the influence of emerging digital marketing on luxury brands.

The rise of digital marketing is changing the way luxury brands engage with customers, and traditional companies must embrace what is now possible in today’s connected and mobile world or be left behind. “The luxury industry is at a turning point,” said Chris Moody, creative director at brand consultant Wolff Olins, speaking at a seminar hosted by the Guardian and held in association with Harrods Media.

An invited audience joined industry experts to debate the risks and creative opportunities for luxury brands enabled by digital technology. Digital interaction was a feature of the event itself, as audience members participated through an iPad app, submitting questions and voting on which ones should be addressed by the panel.

The automotive industry is an example of the profound change wrought by digital, said Laura Schwab, marketing director at Jaguar Land Rover.

 “The amount of times people actually go to a car dealership has diminished. By the time they get to the door all they really want to do is test drive. All the research, everything, happens online.”

The implication for motoring brands is that winning that dealership visit requires engaging first with the customer online, and ensuring that compelling digital content is available. “We don’t do a lot of print,” said Schwab. “For Land Rover it is close to zero, and for Jaguar a small percentage of our budget.”

Print remains important in many sectors, but the trend is unmistakable. “Print and other media have still got high circulations,” said Harrods Media sales director Guy Cheston, “but that point will tip soon, particularly with the younger generation who haven’t grown up reading a glossy magazine every month.”

There were signs of scepticism in the audience over the merits of digital. One question submitted to the panel via the app quickly rose to the top as people voted for it to be discussed: “The return on investment (ROI) is not as big with digital, so why should we invest in digital advertising?”

The answer, according to the panel, is that digital marketing means a change of mind-set and not just a change of medium. You should look at return on interaction rather than return on investment, said Moody. The “ROI point” is no excuse for not moving forward and innovating.

“You are building a relationship with people who may continue to use your product for the next 25 years. Those interactions that you have, particularly through social streams that you can get through digital, are super valuable. It would be a shame not to invest in that.”

One of the benefits of digital media is that it generates data, enabling analytics that were previously impossible. “Digital media is more measurable than any other form of media we do. It is not just about huge reach numbers, it is about creating engagement, understanding our customers’ journey and then delivering relevant content along the way.”

Social media are hard to get right, but they are one of the most rewarding, the seminar was told. It starts with assembling the right team. Interacting on social media requires a level of knowledge and customer service that accords with the core values of that brand.

“When you decide you want to start engaging in conversation with your community, you’ve opened up the doors to create a two-way communication stream, you can’t decide ‘Oh, but we are a little tired and it’s Sunday’. You have got to be willing to step up to that,” said Schwab.

Social media are not marketing platforms, said Moody. Rather, “it is a way of starting a conversation. You can’t push out a broadcast message through a social stream because people will make negative comments.”

3 Digital Marketing Mistakes To Avoid In 2015

Recently I came across an article co-authored by Brent Gleeson and Jeffrey Baskin about the 3 Digital Marketing Mistakes To Avoid In 2015 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2015/01/13/3-digital-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid-in-2015/).

As we begin a new year in 2015, the writing is on the wall.  Digital marketing is not only here to stay but it is consistently becoming a larger part of most companies’ marketing budgets every year.  According to Emarketer.com, in 2010 companies spent twice as much on TV than they did on digital.  By the end of 2015, TV and digital spend will be just about equal.

So what does this mean for you?  Well if you don’t have your website up to date, aren’t engaging in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Content Marketing or some kind of Search Engine Marketing strategy you might want to make a business case for doing so.  It also means more and more companies are diving head first into digital marketing and buying into the hype of various buzz words they see online or on social media.  Yet many times they still lack true understanding of what they should expect from their digital marketing efforts or from a digital marketing agency.

Here are some tips to help you avoid what I would consider the 3 biggest mistakes companies make in digital marketing.

Mistake #1: Poor Planning

In the Navy we used to say “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.” When it comes to digital marketing this may be the biggest mistake companies make.  The lack of an organized cohesive strategy will lead to wasted time, money and opportunity.  Before you invest real dollars toward your digital marketing efforts you should have the following planned out.

Understand your marketplace. A brand needs to have a sound understanding of its competitors, geographical boundaries, customer demographics, existing distribution channels, and any information on trends in your markets (both demographic and product-related).

Perform a SWOT Analysis. Understand your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Define your marketing objectives. What do you want to achieve as a result of your marketing efforts and what goals and KPI’s are you using to measure success?

Have a budget. What can you afford to spend on this marketing effort as a whole and then how is it broken down by individual marketing channel?  You need to spend your money wisely especially if you are on a limited budget.  For example, if you need direct response for success, consider doing Pay Per Click instead of Social Media.

The “plan” is the key component to your marketing foundation and without it your chances of success are very limited.

Mistake #2: Unrealistic Expectations

While running a digital marketing agency, we see companies of all shapes, sizes, and budgets. And it never fails, whether the company is spending $5,000 a month or $500,000 a month on their digital marketing efforts they all have the same expectations of immediate results.  In most instances the ink isn’t even dry on the contract and our phones and emails are going crazy with questions like “Why aren’t we on page 1 for Google already” or “Why isn’t our Pay Per Click campaign hitting it’s Cost Per Acquisition goal?” Even when expectations have been clearly set. Or so you thought. The idea that digital equals instant results is one of the biggest misconceptions, especially for companies newer to this practice.  The fact is, even digital campaigns take time to be developed, optimized, and improved to where you are seeing the results you are hoping for.

Be patient and let the campaigns develop.  Just because you aren’t seeing results in weeks 1 and 2 doesn’t mean you need to panic and try to change your strategy.  Too many times companies hop around and never settle in to find out what really works and what doesn’t.

Mistake #3: Not Being Informed

Digital Marketing is no longer a cloud of smoke and mirrors where no one knows if the dollars spent are producing results.  With the advent of new analytics software, every dollar, every view, every click can be tracked and analyzed.  The question is do you have the right resources to perform true data science?

As a business owner, manager, or marketing staff member it is your responsibility to be informed about how your company is spending its marketing budget.  Even if you have hired an agency or invested in in-house staff, how do you know they are qualified or performing at optimal standards?

Even if a brand is working with a marketing agency, key stakeholders must be aware and take ownership of critical data points. For example, if you are running PPC campaigns, you should know how to log into Adwords and check the account history and be able to follow the modifications being made to the account.  This should be the same with any aspects of digital. Know the terms, the KPI’s and best practices.  The amount of free learning materials out there is endless.  If you don’t have the time then you should find someone who does. Hire a consultant to run audits every month and help weed out unqualified work. This will save you a lot of money in the long run.  It will also keep your primary marketing agency and staff on their toes if they know someone will be checking their work.

In conclusion, digital marketing, including mobile, will continue to grow and evolve well into the future and will eventually eclipse traditional TV, radio and print.  Now is the time to make sure that you are getting the most for your marketing spend. Be prepared to keep up with the times and have a scalable digital strategy that can adjust with the trends.

One Year in Digital Marketing: What I Learned

Recently I came across an article about a person’s self-reflection on his one year journey in digital marketing (http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/one-year-digital-marketing-learned-01117582).

The Lessons:

Marketing is sexy, but what I do is still pretty nerdy

I wanted to tell everyone I was the Don Draper of the Internet, or at least Elon Musk. Turns out SEO and PPC are about as sexy as Bill Gates. The more I can work on graphic heavy and creative campaigns in the digital space the more I feel like a real marketer and less like a developer.

SEO doesn’t exist in a vacuum

If you are still doing SEO without graphic design, social integration, solid web design, and at least some consideration of a PPC strategy, just stop! If you’re reading this piece you should know why. If not, look it up. It’s been known for longer than I’ve been in the industry. There is still an overwhelming amount of agencies whose strategies include two parts: link building and keyword stuffing.

Now days SEO isn’t about shortcuts, its about providing as much value to users as possible. You can t go wrong by providing a large amount of information that is well organized, grammatically correct and original. A lot of the traditional SEO items are still important but they are really just perquisites more than a strategic advantage.

The Internet refreshes every 2 years

We all know about Google’s constant changing algorithms. But the Internet as a whole is a changing at a wild pace. Every aspect of digital marketing has changed and will continue to change. The hot social network, browser capabilities, mobile data speeds, screen sizes and resolution, data granularity, audience targeting… You name it its going to be completely different in 2 years. So stay fresh, keep reading, learning, and evolving. Don’t get left behind.

Digital Marketing Takes A Small Village, or at Least A Super Squad

This goes back the Integrated SEO section again. If your social media guy is taking screen shots of a clients website to use as a cover photo on Facebook, it’s going to look like Bill Gates. Digital marketing needs continuity just like print marketing. Being involved in a sites architecture from the planning stage has helped me map out my keywords and topics across a site, as well as channel link equity to the desired locations. If you have everyone at the creative brief, no one can complain later that the site doesn’t help him or her do their job, whether it’s PPC, social media, SEO or the creative direction.  One of my favorite blog posts this year was by Rebecca Murtagh about the importance of having a whole team to design a website.

The Client ISN’T Always Right

In fact most the time they are wrong. Like I said earlier, most people don’t understand what it is I do, and this includes clients. The knowledge base of each client is drastically different. I’ve been asked by clients, “why aren’t we talking to mommy blogs to write about my drain cleaning?” Then I have to follow that with a ten minute explanation about why a link from The Mommy Magic Blog with a DA of 8 that typically talks about children’s crafts isn’t going to help them rank.

Most of my client meetings are spent educating, not selling or ever strategizing. If someone has paid for SEO before, chances are they had a bad experience. It’s our jobs to teach clients what white-hat quality work looks like and set realistic expectations with them up front, effectively finding the reset button to clear the brainwashing the last agency laid on them.  I believe it’s important to stand your ground and do what’s right for both you and the client. Don’t let your companies’ reputation be damaged by a stubborn client.

Macy's Restructures To Boost Digital Marketing, Mulls Off-Price Plans

Recently I came across an article on MeidaPost (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/241415/macys-restructures-to-boost-digital-marketing-mu.html) that highlighted Macy’s new digital marketing effort.  With the holiday selling season safely in the books — and gains at the higher end of its initial forecasts — Macy’s is shaking its strategy up. The retailer says it is restructuring its marketing and merchandising game by combining store and online operations, and that it is also exploring an off-price format for its flagship brand.

The Cincinnati-based retailer says the changes are meant to sharpen its focus on digital strategies. “Our business is rapidly evolving in response to changes in the way customers are shopping across stores, desktops, tablets and smartphones,” CEO Terry J. Lundgren says in its announcement. “We must continue to invest in our business to focus on where the customer is headed – to prepare for what’s next.”

While the changes include layoffs of some 2,200 people, it expects to keep its workforce at about 175,000 associates, as it creates a single, unified merchandising and marketing organization, which will be a hybrid of store and online shopping that “will support the entire Macy’s business to encourage both store and digital growth,” the announcement says. (The same is true for its Bloomingdale’s division.) And this year, it expects to add 150 people to its digital tech operations in San Francisco.

It also says it has put together a team to explore an off-price business for Macy’s. “The company believes that Macy’s omnichannel infrastructure and insight could lead to innovative ways to deliver value to additional segments of the customer marketplace,” it says.

For the combined period of November and December, Macy’s says comparable-sales climbed 2.7%, compared with the prior year.

It isn’t the only retailer bragging about the holiday: Target says its holiday period broke some records, including online sales for Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, up 40% from 2013; a 60% gain in mobile traffic through November and December; and double the number of Black Friday purchases made on mobile.

And Gap Inc. says it is “very pleased” with its Old Navy brand’s global performance, which saw sales rise 8% in December. But sales were flat at Banana Republic, and up just 1% at its flagship stores in the U.S. Sales at international Gap stores dropped 5%.

Men's fashions from Suitsupply generating buzz

I recently came across an interesting article on myfoxny.com about the Men's fashion online retailer, Suitsupply.

Suitsupply started in Amsterdam in 2000. Founder Fokke de Jong started the business by making suits in his dorm room to sell to his fellow students. Today Suitsupply has grown to 40 stories worldwide, with 15 in the U.S. Two of them are in New York City.

Never seen one? They can be hard to find. De Jong describes the locations as "destinations," often on the second floor of a building up a flight of stairs. It's one of the ways he is able to make great quality suits at more affordable prices. He pays less for rent, and his business is vertically integrated: he designs, manufactures, and sells everything directly from Suitsupply. No middlemen, no extra charges.

One of Suitsupply's most popular suits is the Sienna. The Wall Street Journal voted it No. 1 in a blind test. It starts at $639.

Tailoring remains a big focus at Suitsupply. The stores have in-house tailors who can alter suits while you wait. De Jong says a typical customer can shop, get fitted, and leave with a suit in under an hour.

Vice President Nish Gruiter loves Suitsupply's Travel Suit: a wool/mohair blend that's 100 percent natural and totally deconstructed. The suit has no lining and feels like a shirt. When you travel, you can roll up the suit, throw it in your carry-on bag or an overhead compartment and it comes out wrinkle-free.

Suitsupply prides itself on attention to detail. Its suits have working button holes, angled breast pockets, and are made with fine Italian fabrics. The stores have special hidden details, too, thanks to the discreet locations.

The Chicago shop even has a roof deck for parties.

De Jong says the "speakeasy" concept enables them to create a higher quality shopping environment without paying huge rents.