Last night, we had a great turn out at our Digital Insights Summit with Google. The event was a chance to learn some valuable insights into the current state of Digital Marketing, explore successful content strategies and effective uses of social media. In case you missed the opportunity to come out and join us, we wanted to share a quick recap of the evening.
Bayshore Solutions CEO, Kevin Hourigan, started off the evening with a poll conducted this summer on the top goals of Digital Marketers. These goals consisted of brand awareness, increasing traffic, and selling more. The next logical question to ask is: How?
Think About the Big Picture
- It is projected that in 2015, $100B will be spent on Digital Advertising
- 50% on Search, while the remaining 50% is comprised of Social Media, Display Ads, and E-mail
- 63% of Marketers intend to spent more on content marketing next year
- Consumers are subjected to 2900 marketing messages a day (that’s a lot of noise)
With numbers like these, it is no mystery why a healthy online presence for your business is becoming more and more important. Keeping all of this in mind, there was an overarching thread that ran through the event that ties it all together: relevant content. No matter what platform you are utilizing, relevant content is the building block to driving relevant, converting traffic to your site.
The key component to developing relevant content is to know your audience. Understand who your audience is, how they use your site, the stages in which they need/ utilize your goods or services, what kind of device they use, and the list goes on and on. Start off with the big picture of your service or product offering, then hone that idea down to key characteristics of your audience. This will provide some left and right limits for developing your marketing tactics.
Leverage Social Media
- 23% of time spent online is through social media
- Mobile usage surpassed desktop usage in 2013
- Users spend 5+ hours consuming digital content per day
- 60% is through a smart phone. Despite this, only 4% of U.S. ad spend is on mobile
Social media is a great way to engage with your customers. There were some great insights presented in order to do this effectively. While social media is intended to reveal real time information, it’s never a bad idea to plan ahead and be proactive for what is to happen. Above all, develop a social media strategy, come up with a content calendar to organize your posts and think creatively on how you can repurpose those posts on different platforms. As one of Bayshore’s own put it, the reality is that “You’re wasting time (on social media), waste time with us.” With that said, give your followers a reason to stay on your channel. It is also important to reward the loyal followers through giveaways, or simple re-posts of their brand loyal content.
Tell Your Brand Story
Another big theme of the evening was centered around telling your brand story. How does your company want to resonate with your audience? Marketing your story delves into bringing together all of the components of your brand and how to build campaigns around it. You would want to think about your audience, the persona and voice of your brand and brainstorm themes that eventually become your campaigns.
The event offered up some great tips and techniques, only a few of which were touched upon here. We hope to see you next time! If you have any questions, or wish to talk further about a digital strategy to fit your business, contact Bayshore Solutions.
Featured Presenters:
Shelia Reed – Chief Marketing Officer | Aspire Financial Services
Shanda Lee – Director of Marketing | J.C. Newman Cigars
Mike More – Marketing Director | BioSpine Institute
Kevin Fields – Agency Development Manager | Google
Team Bayshore Presenters:
Kevin Hourigan – CEO | Bayshore Solutions
Martin McCauley – Director of Partner Development | Bayshore Solutions
Mark Teague – Digital Marketing Account Manager | Bayshore Solutions
Jenni Walsh – Director of Digital Marketing | Bayshore Solutions
Doug Pace – COO | Bayshore Solutions