Digital Marketing Conference – Digital Crush 2019

Digital Marketing Conference Keynote – Content Strategy

Come see my keynote on Content Strategy at Digital Crush 2019 – a digital marketing conference on Friday, October 11, 2019, at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Tri-Cities, Washington. It is – I’m stealing this directly from their website – “a full-packed, one-day conference for digital marketers and business professionals looking to grow their digital marketing skillset and toolbox. In a collaborative and inspiring atmosphere, participants will be able to learn, exchange ideas, network and establish relationships with others in the area.”

Content Strategy is arguably one of the most unglamorous parts of marketing, but also one of the most important. My experience (from a startup, to starting my own business) shows that great content requires a strategy, and that many stakeholders misunderstand marketing as simply tactics. We will go over the challenges marketers face everyday—from hurried requests to the approval process—and how a well-prepared content strategy will help you mitigate those issues. We will also discuss the philosophy behind your content strategy, how it can improve your marketing, and offer practical tips on designing it from start to finish. You will walk away with a better understanding of how to manage your marketing, control, and creativity to craft better, customer-focused marketing.

There is a great lineup of speakers. See who they are in the PR below. They will discuss a variety of marketing topics. It’s exciting to see!

So join us in the Tri-Cities on October 11. I hope to see you there!

Digital Crush link: https://thedigitalcrush.com/

Conference Schedule: https://thedigitalcrush.com/schedule/

From Digital Crush:

Digital Crush, the Inland Northwest’s First Digital Marketing Summit, Coming to Three Rivers Convention Center October 11

Digital Crush, the Inland Northwest’s first Digital Marketing Summit, will be held Friday, October 11, 2019, at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Tri-Cities, Washington.

Digital Crush is a full-day conference for digital marketers and business professionals looking to grow their digital marketing skillset and toolbox. Bringing together and educating digital marketers and small business members of the inland northwest on practical and important digital marketing practices, the goal is to drive increased market share, new customers, and profitability for regional businesses, through utilization of the newest and best practices in digital marketing.

the 2019 Digital Crush Summit Speaker Lineup:

Ali Schwanke, CEO Simple Strat, Lincoln, Nebraska – Keynote
Paul Warner, Marketing Campaign Manager Schweitzer Engineering, Pullman, WA – Keynote
Cindy Krum, CEO & Founder, MobileMoxie, Denver, CO – Keynote
Torey Azure, CEO BrandCraft, Tri-Cities, WA
Manny Rivas III, CMO Aimclear, Duluth, MN
Diane Mahan, Chief Digital Strategy Officer Klü Digital, Spokane, WA
Matt Johnston, CEO Guide Social, Philadelphia, PA
Spencer Haws, Blogger at NichePursuits.com + Founder LongTailPro.com & LinkWhisperer.com, Tri-Cities, WA
Chris Davis, Performance Marketing Manager ConnectYourCare, Tri-Cities, WA
Barrett Pryce, Director of Marketing Vivid Learning Systems, Tri-Cities, WA
Thomas Kratsch, President & CEO Activities & Tours Marketing by TRK Creative, Seattle, WA
Dee Boyle, Digital Marketing Strategist BrandCraft, Tri-Cities, WA
Travis Scott, Director of Marketing at ISM, Spokane, WA
Bethany Lee, Digital Marketing Manager Visit Tri-Cities, Tri-Cities, WA
Elsie Puig, Marketing Manager, Flex Rental Solutions, Tri-Cities, WA
Jordan Beilin, Director of Advanced Advertising Sales Spectrum Reach, Denver, CO

Speakers will share their expertise on digital marketing trends and topics including content strategy, search engine optimization, analytics insights, mobile and video digital marketing, B2B digital marketing, call tracking, and more.

Torey Azure, BrandCraft CEO and a member of the Digital Crush Planning Committee, said “we’re excited to bring a digital summit to the Inland Northwest, providing both an opportunity for the exchange of best practices and good ideas around digital marketing, and equipping regional business professionals and digital marketers with additional education opportunities and resources to help realize an even greater return on their digital marketing investments.”

While digital marketing summits are held around the country, this will be the first summit of its kind held in Eastern Washington. Tickets and more event info can be found at https://thedigitalcrush.com/.

Vision: “Our goal is to bring together and educate digital marketers and small business of the inland northwest on practical and important digital marketing practices. Through this we hope that your business is able to increase market share, customers and profit by utilizing the newest and best practices in digital marketing.”

Contact: info@thedigitalcrush.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedigitalcrush/

Free Marketing Tools

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Traditional Marketing and Advertising Doesn’t Work Anymore

The only pro traditional marketing articles proclaiming “No, really, print still works!” are penned by those selling it. This should be a red flag by itself, however, the fact that nobody can really measure it should be another reason to swear off of traditional media entirely.

Anyone who tries to tell you its working is selling you something. Be wary.

This article explains it well – read on:

4 Reasons Traditional Marketing and Advertising Doesn’t Work Anymore

Before you traditional media types email me with your tirades of “How traditional marketing isn’t dead”, and that “You have no idea what you’re talking about”, I should note that most of my background is in traditional marketing and media on the agency side. I’ve spent hours on end writing TV and radio scripts, mulling through Nielsen reports, calculating gross rating points, frequency, and an endless list of data points that attempted to provide the most value possible for my clients. Many of these clients invested quite a bit of their own money for me to provide these services for them, with little guarantee of return on investment. I sold these media with the promise that they would reach the most amount of people and eyeballs for each dollar spent. Looking back (hindsight is always 20/20 right?), my thought process was very flawed.

Sure, you could tag (insert traditional ad medium) with a promo code as a feeble attempt to track return, but at the end of it all with the media market as fragmented as it is, it becomes very difficult to firmly close the loop and determine what actually worked. The key performance indicator (KPI) generally becomes “Did I sell more?” or “Did I see a jump in phone calls?” With how complex market forces are, it’s almost impossible to track a jump in sales to traditional media spend without making some very broad assumptions, and who likes to make business decisions based on assumptions? Exactly.

It should be understood at this point that I’m a huge proponent of digital marketing, more specifically, inbound marketing. The 4 Reasons Traditional Advertising Doesn’t Work Anymore that are below will help explain why.

Read the rest of the post HERE. The author [Brad Larabell] covers four main points:

1. The consumer buying process has changed (A LOT!)

2. Traditional Media Is Interruptive in Nature

3. It Doesn’t Work on Millennial Buyers

4. Lack of Trackability of ROI

Business growth ideas: Grow your business

Business growth is always a priority

You land a few clients or customers (or more) and realize your service or product has value and potential. What’s the next step? No matter where you are in the process, business growth is always a challenge.

In 2009 I finished grad school. It was the Great Recession and there were zero jobs available. So I started an S-Corp for professional services. My first clients came from networking. My strategy was to connect with government organizations that didn’t have enough resources for a marketing team, and some small businesses that were still operating. I didn’t involve a clever social presence or website. In fact, I still do a terrible job of marketing myself, but that’s another story. I reached out to people and established myself while holding back fears and doubts about my networking skills. (Who doesn’t?)

Furthermore, I quickly learned I couldn’t rely on just one or two clients. As a result, I upped my outreach by launching a website, asking for referrals and spreading the word where I could; at networking events, online and face to face.

Most of all, no matter which tactics you employ, growing the business will most likely always be top of mind. It helps to begin with a goal in mind, a few objectives and a strategy. You will always be asking, “How can I get more clients or customers?

Let’s grow your business

First of all, this blog from a few years back has some great tips. Called 27 Low-Cost Ways To Grow Your Business, it has practical suggestions and a lot of them are the same I recommend to students and clients. If you need some more ideas, visit Marketing Resources and 5 strategies to start and grow a successful business with only $200.

In addition, the SBA is a great resource and here’s an article to get you started: 10 Tips to Help You Build and Grow a Stand-Out Small Business Brand thinking about whether your brand is ready for growth.

Finally, Reddit is another excellent resource – visit some of the subreddits: /r/entrepreneur, /r/growmybusiness and /r/startups

Buena suerte.

Marketing analytics: You need Neil Patel on your team

Marketing Analytics… and marketing in general

Here’s another recommendation for marketing analytics advice, and digital marketing in general.

Keep in mind that Neil Patel is an aggressive and effective marketer. He knows his way around analytics and digital marketing. You’ll notice a very different marketing approach from Avinash Kaushik when you visit his site. Whereas Mr. Kaushik takes a softer approach, Mr. Patel doesn’t hesitate to start marketing to you immediately. This is not a horrible thing, but you will get marketed to when you visit his site.

Get acquainted with Mr. Patel with a couple of helpful and informative blog posts:

How to Navigate Google Analytics Like a Pro (Way Beyond the Basics)

How to Get Actionable Data from Google Analytics in 10 Minutes

Don’t Lose Money: 5 Analytics Tools to Help You Fix Your Leaky Sales Funnel

Enjoy, and here’s to marketing with better metrics!

Digital marketing analytics: Avinash Kaushik

Digital marketing analytics on the web:

See how digital marketing analytics can better inform your work. Read Avinash Kaushik. His website/blog Occam’s Razor on analytics is excellent. Be sure to sign up for his newsletter in the lower right hand of his website.

Quotes:

“The interesting thing about averages is that they hide the truth very effectively.”

“Testing is the biggest no-brainer, and the killer of most stupid ideas… Testing is great because you can get the most important person’s opinion: the customer’s.”

“Web is perhaps the cheapest and most effective channel on the planet right now. No matter what you do you can do it cheaper, faster and more efficiently on the web.”

“Remember, a website is not a monolith that’s used by one type of people. Your job is to figure out what are all of the reasons that it exists for and find the best source to measure it.”

“The web is inherently complex, every bit of it… And it changes every day. The tool is not the answer, it’s the people. Buy the tool you want, but remember the 10/90 rule [$10k in software and invest $90k in great staff] and invest accordingly if you want to win.”

“On the web we all do a very poor job of understanding the customer needs and wants and thus their experience on our sites. …I am a fan of measuring Customer Satisfaction (were you satisfied with your experience on our site today), Primary Purpose (why are you here today) and Task Completion Rate (were you able to complete the task today).”

“If you want to have life-altering web site gains, those won’t happen because you have improved one page on your site or a set of single pages in a silo.”

“When you cross-breed a bunch of metrics to produce a hybrid ‘simple number’, the process, by design, hides insights, hinders the ability to understand performance, and almost never allows the management team to identify root-causes.”

“If you are not spending 30% of your time in 2013 with data, you’ll fail to achieve professional success.”

“Spend 95% of your time defining the problem and 5% of the time solving it.”

“We have so much data on the web, we dive into the the data ocean hoping that magically awesome things will follow. They never do.”

If you prefer the book:

Read Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

“I believe that most websites suck because HiPPOs create them. HiPPO is an acronym for the “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.”
― Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

Finally, for more on Avinash Kaushik and digital marketing analytics on this site:

Analytics? Let’s defer to Avinash Kaushik

Yep, it’s another Kaushik post