Digital Marketing To Connect, Engage And Serve Customers - Part II

By Mohammad Anas Wahaj; MBA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000, USA; BS in Mechanical Engineering, Aligarh Muslim University, 1993, India
Dated: 10 December 2022

BENEFITS OF DIGITAL MARKETING

Online is a medium that is advantageous to all - sellers and buyers. Digital marketing not only brings benefits to the businesses that implement the strategies but also to the consumers who shop and buy from them. Traditional marketing practices in the technologically advance world fall short on many counts when dealing with customers that are becoming more and more tech savvy and are looking for ease, comfort and satisfaction during their purchase experience.

Digital marketing adds and enhances the marketing practices. It expands marketing's reach to the global level at an affordable cost. Digital marketing provides businesses capabilities to effectively measure marketing investments and efforts. With digital marketing companies can precisely reach their target audience and also dynamically shift strategies in response to the changes in markets. Digital marketing not only provide instant connections with target audience and customers but also assists in having continuous interactions and build long term relaionships.

Even small firms with low budgets of marketing can challenge and outperform larger firms by utilizing digital marketing methods. Internet has vast reach and with proper tools and strategies firms can reach larger audience effectively at low cost.

The following are some benefits of digital marketing for businesses -

(1) Large and Specific Audience Reach: Internet's global reach provides digital marketing access to a large audience. But on the other hand it is also very flexible to reach out to niche and targeted audience.
(2) Cost Effectiveness: By utilizing web and other related technology tools, organizations with low marketing budgets can effectively create marketing campaigns that are a fraction of the cost of traditional mass media marketing.
(3) Ease of Measure: Digital marketing has the capability to measure effectively the impact and value by utilizing analytics. Data can by easily collected, stored and analyzed. Customer behavior can be understood more precisely and campaigns can be modified accordingly.
(4) Variety of Content: Businesses can utilize content in different formats to reach their audience and this content can be easily updated and modified whenever required.
(5) Always On Availability: Digital marketing has the capability to work 24/7 as the content is available as long as needed. Consumers have access to the digital content at all times.
(6) Empowers Small Businesses: Small businesses can become more capable to challenge bigger players by utilizing digital marketing tools. They can reach out to larger audience even with low marketing budgets.

As consumers are becoming more tech savvy, their behavior is evolving. They want ease in getting information and transacting with businesses. Digital marketing helps them achieve it.

The following are the digital marketing benefits to customers -

(1) Continuously Updated and Clear Information: Consumers can access information about products and services anytime and anywhere. They are aware of the happenings in businesses as and when needed.
(2) More and Efficient Engagement: Digital marketing provide better engagement capability to consumers. Not only they get information through digital but they can also interact and provide feedback. They can buy products and engage with company representatives online.
(3) Ease of Comparison: Consumers can compare different products and services offered by competing businesses. It provides them with better decision making before they finally make a purchase.
(4) Always Available Shopping: For customers the buying process is just a click away. Most businesses have ecommerce websites that are available all the time.
(5) Ability to Share: Consumers can share information about businesses and their products and services with others with ease through various digital channels.
(6) Transparent Pricing: Digital marketing channels provide consumers with clear pricing information. All discounts and offers are apparent and customers can avail them.
(7) Instant Purchase: Through digital marketing customers can do a purchase once they decide to do so. There is no time delay between getting the information and buying a product.

DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES AND IMPLEMENTATION

Digital marketing involves a combined set of processes that need to be strategically designed to achieve desired results. Digital marketing strategy includes - Online Advertising; Search Engine Optimization (SEO); Search Engine Marketing (SEM); Content Development and Management; Influencer Marketing and more.

Even though digital marketing strategies are different for different businesses and need to be customized as per requirement, but there are some common processes and frameworks that can be applied and implemented to ensure the effectiveness of the campaign - Identify Marketing Goals; Solidify Sales Process; Identify and Separately Group Target Customers; Select Marketing Channels; Set Clear Benchmarks and Measure Progress; Provide Relevant Content At Each Stage of Buyer Journey; Adjust and Adapt The Strategy When Needed.

Today's marketers should incorporate omnichannel approach to marketing. Moreover, digital marketing should include all proccesses across the customer lifecycle. Use of a combination of paid and free digital marketing tools and practices is an effective approach. In digital marketing just knowing customers is not enough, it is important to use data to develop deeper insights and understand consumer behavior and their preferences to build lasting relationships and serve them better. Deeper the understanding of customers better will be the engagement and valuable interactions with them. Managing customer relationships across various channels, responding and initiating dynamic customer interactions and extracting value by using big data for faster and effective decision making are some of the key elements of successful digital marketing.

Creating relevant and effective content is an essential component of digital marketing interaction with customers. Creating buyer personas to identify audience needs and challenges is beginning of the content development process. Providing content at each stage of customer journey and interaction, and solve their information requirements is the key to better engagement with customer. Content mapping gives organizations capability to target content according to the characteristics of the person who consumes it. Different types of content is needed at different buyer lifecycle stage. At awareness stage use blog posts, inforgrapnics, short videos. At considertation stage use ebooks, research reports, webinars. At decision stage use case studies, testimonials etc.

The authors of 'Digital Marketing Excellence: Planning, Optimizing and Integrating Online Marketing', Dave Chaffey and PR Smith explain that digital marketing can be used to support following aims -

(1) Identifying: The internet can be used for marketing research to find out customers' needs and wants.
(2) Anticipating: The Internet provides an additional channel by which customers can access information and make purchases – evaluating this demand is key to governing resource allocation.
(3) Satisfying: A key success factor is achieving customer satisfaction through the appropriate channel, which raises issues such as - is the site easy to use, does it perform adequately, what is the standard of associated customer service and how are physical products dispatched?.

Modern marketing, that aggressively incorporates digital marketing, in addition to utilizing digital channels, empowers companies to harness their full capabilities and provide best experience at every stage of the customer journey. According to a McKinsey survey, 83% of global CEOs said they look to marketing to be a major driver for most or all of a company's growth agenda. Modern marketing requires a new approach by the marketing department that provides them with speed, collaboration and customer focus. To embark on a modern marketing journey requires three mindset shifts to bring successful change - (1) Unifier mindset that helps to work with a collaborative approach with other departments of the organization. (2) Customer-centric mindset is required to not just know about the customer but also to understand their behavior more closely and assist them at every stage of interaction with the organization. (3) Return on investment (ROI) mindset brings accountability in spending through the use of data, analytics and measurement of efforts more effectively and create most value.

According the 2016 Managing Digital Marketing Report, 47% of marketers are doing digital marketing with no defined strategy. Thus it becomes very important to measure and analyze digital marketing efforts for success and the capability to reevaluate those efforts that are not providing desired results. According to Lon Safko (2009), for digital marketing success organizations should have clear goals, what results they need to achieve and should measure these goals. Knowing key performance indicators (KPI) and the goals for each provide the understanding of digital marketing campaign ROI. KPI's include - general performance (traffic, leads, reach); channel based (website, blog, social networks, search engines); source based performance (direct traffic, organic search, referrals, email, pay-per-click (PPC); campaign based performance (lead generation, click through, conversions, conversion rates.

MOVING TOWARDS THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING

As digital marketing is driven by technology and consumer preferences, it continues to evolve. Marketers who want to stay at the top adapt effectively to changes in technologies and consumer behavior. Events like Covid-19 pandemic also bring shifts in business processes and customer needs, and marketers that can handle the change do much better then those who don't. According to the 2021 Gartner State of marketing budget report, marketing budgets have fallen to their lowest recorded level, dropping to 6.4% of company revenue in 2021 from 11% in 2020. According to Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2021, CMOs have shifted spending commitments across their channels and programs, with the digital channels accounting for 72.2% of the total marketing budget. Marketing technology (Martech) continues to be important, taking up 26.6% of the total budget.

Utilizing data to better understand customers and serve their needs is one of the key component of digital marketing. As importance of cookies reduces and data clean rooms (distributed data environments where digital pioneers like Google, Facebook and Amazon share aggregated data and not customer-level data) become more relevant, use of data is redefined and digital marketing moves forward into innovative ways to engage with customers and create meaningful experiences. Brands will own the first-party data and thus will invest in their own data capability resulting in more collaboration between in-house data teams and agency partners. This will reduce dependency on platforms and digital marketers now will need to have better understanding of their main audiences, client's strategic requirements and traditional marketing concepts.

Collaboration between digitals and creatives will become more prominent due to rising customer expectations, changing media habits and data privacy issues. Creativces will need to be more performance oriented. Live shopping trends on platforms like Instagram, TikTok etc is enhancing demand for creatives that are more agile and engage with customers in real-time.

Collaboration between digitals and creatives will become more prominent due to rising customer expectations, changing media habits and data privacy issues. Creativces will need to be more performance oriented. Live shopping trends on platforms like Instagram, TikTok etc is enhancing demand for creatives that are more agile and engage with customers in real-time.

Customer-first approach will continue to remain at the forefront of overall digital marketing strategy. Studies suggest that as brands are becoming more proactive and their connection and engagement with consumers is becoming more close, their support for social issues can influence consumers' buying behavior.

Digial marketing process recommendations would include - Reach: Increasing awareness through digital marketing medias ; Act: Increasing digital marketing interactions through digital experiences and content; ENGAGE : Improve customer communications to increase loyalty and advocacy.

Marketers can continue to be innovative by applying the 70:20:10 rule of marketing focus. Avinash Kaushik, digital marketing evangelist at Google, explained the benefits of this rule - 70% of the time we're going to focus on things that we know that are very core to our business. 20% is where we're trying to push the boundaries. You get into the known unknowns. And the last 10% is a true crazy experimental stuff. Trying to figure out how to do uncomfortable things that we're going to fail at more than we will succeed at. But with every success, you build a competitive advantage.

Some of the main marketing themes that will be significant in the realm of digital marketing going forward will include - Multichannel Marketing Hubs; Conversational Marketing; Personalization Engine; Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning; Consumer Privacy and Consent.

Covid-19 pandemic has brought changes both in business processes and consumer behavior that is now redefining how marketing is to be approached for success. Hybrid events, that combine in-person and virtual components are becoming the new normal and will continue into the future. Artificial intelligence and machine learning has been there in digital marketing, but now will be more prevalent and there will be more process automation like use of conversational AI and robotic process automation.

Select Digital Marketing Quotes - Part II

'Data beats opinions.' – Unknown

'The future of business is social.' – Barry Libert

'Content is fire; social media is gasoline.' – Jay Baer

'Create something people want to share.' - John Jantsch

'Maybe stories are just data with a soul.' – Brené Brown

'Make the customer the hero of your story.' – Ann Handley

'What makes content engaging is relevancy.' - Gail Goodman

'This is the era of less is more with SEO.' - Adam Audette

'Instead of interrupting, work on attracting.' - Dharmesh Shah

'Without facts and principles, data is useless.' – Bob Hoffman

'Boring will put you out of business in 2019 - Billy Gene Shaw

'Master the topic, the message, and the delivery.' - Steve Jobs

'The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing.' - Tom Fishburne

'Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.' – Jon Buscall

'In the 21st century, the database is the marketplace.' – Stan Rapp

'Empower your readers with social sharing buttons.' - Mike Stelzner

'Content is the reason search began in the first place.' – Lee Odden

'Marketing is really just about sharing your passion.' - Michael Hyatt

'The currency of blogging is authenticity and trust.' - Jason Calacanis

'My rule of thumb is build a site for a user, not a spider.' - Dave Naylor

'The person who gives the value first has the leverage.' - Gary Vaynerchuk

'You can't push your sales messages on your fans too often.' - Andrea Vahl

'I don't want to go viral, I want to set hearts on fire.' - Coco J. Ginger

'Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.' – Wendy Piersall

'Just because you are the loudest, doesn't make you right.' - Brian Halligan

'A blog is only as interesting as the interest shown in others.' - Lee Odden

'Content is anything that adds value to the reader's life.' – Avinash Kaushik

'Sell-sell-sell sales methods simply do not work on social media.' – Kim Garst

'Your goal should be to own quality time in your customer's inbox.' – Drew Davis

'Don't use social media to impress people; use it to impact people.' - Dave Willis

'What you do after you create your content is what truly counts.' - Gary Vaynerchuk

'Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.' – Brian Solis

'Never forget social media is for reach but email is for revenue.' – Bryan Eisenberg

'Tell a story. Make it true. Make it compelling. And make it relevant.' – Rand Fishkin

'Without strategy, content is just stuff, and the world has enough stuff.' – Arjun Basu

'Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you'll do well.' - Derek Sivers

'In the time it took you to read this sentence 20m emails have been sent.' – John Watton

'Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers.' - Seth Godin

'Write good content about stuff that you love. Readers will find you.' - Michael Arrington

'Traditional marketing talks at people. Content marketing talks with them.' – Doug Kessler

'Personalisation - it is not about first/last name. It's about relevant content.' – Dan Jak

'Getting the Like is easy. It's a light action. Anything else requires trust.' - Jon Loomer

'Everything you do has to drive content, and the rest takes care of itself.' - Chris Bennett

'Content is the key, because it's how a website creates an online experience.' - Adam Audette

'90% trust peers on social networks (even strangers); only 15–18% trust brands.' – Danny Brown

'Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.' - Benjamin Franklin

'We must move from numbers keeping score to numbers that drive better actions.' – David Walmsley

'Good content isn't about good storytelling. It's about telling a true story well.' - Ann Handley

'Content Marketing has become the catalyst that fuels search and social media activity.' - Jim Yu

'When it comes to content, the best marketers know that self-promotion is good!' - Kieran Flanagan

'The internet affords a level of relationship with consumers hitherto unfathomable.' - Lucas Donat

'Signing up is a powerful signal of intent to buy. Send them email until they do.' – Jordie van Rijn

'Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.'– Andrew Davis

'Blogging and traditional media work together. Twitter complements traditional media.' - Evan Williams

'Smart marketers will create 'authentic-looking' videos in triggered re-marketing sequences. - Dennis Yu

'Running with the herd is not always a great idea; be unique, and the links will come.' - Debra Mastaler

'Authenticity, honesty, and personal voice underlie much of what's successful on the Web.' - Rick Levine

'SEO is not something you do anymore, it's what happens when you do everything else right' – Chad Pollitt

'Content is not king, but a president elected by the votes of those whom it aims to rule.' – Raheel Farooq

'Email has an ability many channels don't: creating valuable, personal touches – at scale.' – David Newman

'If you want to continually grow your blog, you need to learn to blog on a consistent basis.' - Neil Patel

'Rmember, advertising is all about placing the right message in fron of the right audience.' - Molly Pittman

'Today it's not about 'get the traffic' - it's about 'get the targeted and relevant traffic'.' - Adam Audette

'The paradox is the more info you give away, the more people will buy what you have to give...' - Brian Clark

'Content marketing is the gap between what brands produce and what consumers actually want.' - Michael Brenner

'A click-worthy title is actually worth a lot more than just perfectly keyword-targeted title.' - Rand Fishkin

'The next time you hear a social media myth, question it. Ask for the proof, and ask out loud.' - Dan Zarrella

'Part of why you love your parents is because they loved you first, brands need to do that.' - Gary Vaynerchuk

'Successful blogging is not about one time hits. It's about building a loyal following over time.' - David Aston

'The secret to getting results from your social networking is to act like a member, not a marketer.' – Mari Smith

'Our job is not to create content. Our job is to change the world of the people who consume it.' – Andrea Fryrear

'Integrating your search and social efforts brings better brand visibility and higher conversion rates.' - Jim Yu

'I want to do business with a company that treats emailing me as a privilege, not a transaction.' – Andrea Mignolo

'Does your content lead readers on a journey, or does it merely stuff them as leads into a pipeline?' – Ann Handley

'It's a good idea to understand how to work [Bing and Google] for maximum SEO and ranking benefit.' - Debra Mastaler

'Blogging is good for your career. A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field.' - Penelope Trunk

'It's a good idea to understand how to work [Bing and Google] for maximum SEO and ranking benefit.' - Debra Mastaler

'There's a problem with the word 'social'. Social is not just Twitter, FB, etc. Social is a language.' – Andrew Grill

'My theory is that in the age of the internet, it's what you write, not where you write it, that matters.' – Dan Lyons

'When you are writing keep asking yourself 'so what' until you are sure what is in it for the customer.' – Ann Handley

'Marketing is telling the world you're a rock star. Content Marketing is showing the world you are one.' - Robert Rose

'SEO gets the visitor to the door. It's up to your site's content to welcome and retain that visitor.' - John Jerkovic

'What separates good content from great content is a willingness to take risks and push the envelope.' - Brian Halligan

'There are tons of different factors that go into ranking well, but the biggest is high-quality content.' - David Sinick

'The only way to win at content marketing is for the reader to say, 'This was written specifically for me.' – Jamie Turner

'The great thing about digital marketing ingenuity and creativity can always win over big marketing budgets.' - Ann Smarty

'Every email is a customer survey of your target market, by testing they vote on what resonates best with them.' – Kath Pay

'Mobile is no longer about what you can do on your cell phone. Mobile is all about doing more, all of the time.' – Mitch Joel

'You can't fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people once unfooled, talk about the experience.' – Seth Godin

'One of the best ways to sabotage your content is to not tie it to your goals. Know why you're creating content.' – Ellen Gomes

'Your top of the funnel content must be intellectually divorced from your product but emotionally wed to it.' - Joe Chernov

'It's important to be where your audience of potential customers is today, and where they might be tomorrow.' - Andrew Delaney

'For LinkedIn, the smart move is tailoring your ads to get prospects into a higher-leverage opportunity sooner.' - Josh Turner

'Creating good chatbot copy is an art designed to create a participatory adventure for the subscriber.' - Mary Kathryn Johnson

'The future of SEO is here: understanding and marketing to specific and defined audiences through search engines.' - Adam Audette

'Twitter is a great place to tell the world what you're thinking before you've had a chance to think about it.' – Chris Pirillo

'In 2004, good SEO made you remarkable on the web. In 2014, good SEO is a result of being remarkable on the web.' – Rand Fishkin

'There are three objectives for content marketing: reach, engagement, conversion. Define key metrics for each.' - Michael Brenner

'A small list that wants exactly what you're offering is better than a bigger list that isn't committed.' – Ramsay Leimenstoll 'Incorporate easy email marketing strategies with your Facebook efforts to see bigger results (aka profits!).' - Amy Porterfield

'I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper, and strategic compass for all of our online business ventures.' - Paul Barron

'We embed social media inside our processes. Let's look at our processes and see how we can enhance them with social.' – Sandy Carter

'Marketing is about telling good stories. Social media marketing is about getting your customers to tell them for you.' – Corey Eridon

'Social media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide you.' - Matt Goulart

'Search engine optimization plays a major role in the language of the World Wide Web as a noun, verb and adjective.' - Todd Malicoat

'Here's everything you need to know about creating killer content in 3 simple words: Clear. Concise. Compelling.' – Demian Farnworth

'Not enough talk about the importance of brand in email. Customers don't sign up for email – they sign up for your brand.' – Bob Frady

Eventually, the day will come when it's common practice to buy products and services directly inside a social platform.' - Ralph Burns

'Word of mouth can be as important, if not more important, for neighborhood businesses as traditional advertising.' - Ekaterina Walter

'A blog with a business backend (i.e. products to sell and a method to sell them) is the key to a six-figure income as a blogger.' - David Risley

'The three essential elements of an effective SEO are effective communication, useful information and high quality backlinks.' - SEO Refugee

'Where the Internet is about availability of information, blogging is about making information creation available to anyone.' - George Siemens

'Making money from blogging requires you to do only two things: drive a lot of traffic, then maximize the income from that traffic.' - John Chow

'I think there's two ways to make money online. One way is by selling other people's stuff, the other way is by selling your stuff.' - Jeff Walker

'Selling stuff is easy. All you gotta do is give away stuff that makes people happy …and then sell stuff that makes 'em even happier.' - Frank Kern

'Companies are rushing headlong into content today, and rightly so. It's a battle to get noticed online amidst the noise and crowds.' - Adam Audette

'The first thing you need to decide when you build your blog is what you want to accomplish with it, and what it can do if successful.' - Ron Dawson

'Focus on the core problem your business solves and put out lots of content and enthusiasm and ideas about how to solve that problem.' - Laura Fitton

'Online is old news. Online in social media is today's news … Social media is not a subset of the internet. Social media is the internet.' - Sean Case

'Social marketing eliminates the middlemen, providing brands the unique opportunity to have a direct relationship with their customers.' - Bryan Weiner

'The success of social media design is built on your ability to create a highly engaged community focused on the co-creation of your brand.' – Unknown

'Good SEO work only gets better over time. It's only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change.' – Jill Whalen

'Build it, and they will come only works in the movies.' Social media is a 'build it, nurture it, engage them, and they may come and stay.' – Seth Godin

'It is essential that marketers dig deeper into search, social, local mobile data to understand how they all work in tandem to impact ranking.' - Jim Yu

'Just as you don't need to be on every single TV channel, I don't believe a brand needs to be on every single social media one in a big way.' - Shiv Singh

'Quality content means content that is packed with clear utility and is brimming with inspiration, and it has relentless empathy for the audience.' - Ann Handley

'Going viral is not an outcome; it's a happening. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it doesn't. Just remember, fans are vanity and sales are sanity.' – Lori Taylor

'A marketing person should always ask one key question when beginning to develop a social media strategy: How much chaos can this organization handle?' – Gary Stein

'Organizations who can't match up in content creation and promotion may find themselves losing out to content marketers who learn the basics of SEO.' - Rand Fishkin

'The social media web is a very noisy one indeed and making sure that you are heard requires you to shout more effectively, rather than louder.' - David Amerland

'Going viral is not an outcome; it's a happening. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it doesn't. Just remember, fans are vanity and sales are sanity.' - Lori R. Taylor

'Here's the thing: the term 'content marketing' is just a rebranding of what good digital marketers already know and have been acting on for years.' - Marshall Simmonds

'You need to woo your audience. You want them to trust you, and you do that by posting relevant content that speaks to them, about them and for them.' - Rachel Miller

'Integrating your online marketing efforts is all about breaking down silos and delivering amazing results. Social and SEO marketers are a big part of this.' - Jim Yu

'Since people tend to share links (content) that affect them emotionally, it's more important than ever to understand the demographic you're selling to.' - Debra Mastaler

'Stay focused on creating engaging content experiences and impress visitors with thoughtful usability, making their job (answering their question) easier.' - Duane Forrester

'Content marketing is more than a buzzword. It is the hottest trend in marketing because it is the biggest gap between what buyers want and brands produce.' - Michael Brenner

'Opportunities in social media marketing seem boundless; the best do not seek to disrupt conversations but to integrate - to add something useful and compelling.' - Nuri Djavit

'AI is all about prediction...our job as humans will be to add judgment and creativity to the mix to help guide all of this machine learning in a productive direction.' - Mike Rhodes

'If you make the customer unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6000 friends.' – Jeff Bezos

'It is no coincidence that the increasing focus on content marketing closely follows the significant Google algorithmic changes aiming to give users a better search experience.' - Jim Yu

'The days of SEO being a game outsmarting algorithms are over. Today content strategy and valuable, sustainable strategies are essential, not just tricks and links.' - Adam Audette

'Unfortunately, blogging generally requires a lot of work! Gaining a large readership for your business blog requires much of your attention and a big dose of patience'. - Chadrack Irobogo

'Think of your customers on one side of a ledge and your product on a nearby ledge. The only way for your customers to get from their ledge to your products' ledge is a bridge.' - Ben Griffin

'Many more decisions will be based on predictive elements vs. gut instincts. Even in the most scientifically oriented fields, decisions are still being made on anchoring biases.' – Ginni Romety

'Data is omnipotent. Acting upon data is the only effective way to make informed marketing decisions. If you know and understand your data you can adjust your marketing accordingly.' - Larry Kim

'This is what most marketers get wrong. They focus all their efforts on building email lists and almost no effort at how they are going to make money from that list once they have it.' - Ryan Deiss

'Social media marketing is about creating content that brings your audience together as a community and inspiring authentic conversations while increasing your brand's awareness.' - Krystal Wu

'Quit counting fans, followers, and blog subscribers like bottle caps.Think instead about what you're hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you're doing.' – Amber Naslund

'Don't get intimidated by the giants of our industry who host events that attract thousands of people. You can still make a big impact in your business (and your bank account) by adding live events.' - Oli Billson

'Search engine optimizers are the future's most successful real estate tycoons. Our formidable capabilities have provided us with an incredible opportunity to gather great viewers at an inexpensive cost.' - Brian Provost

'Create a link through which you can market your dream products. Create a blog or a website of your own depending on what you want to be recognized for. Share your experiences through these media.' - Israelmore Ayivor

'Blogging is definitely a long term grind and probably the slowest and most painstaking way to make money online. Of course without it any business will struggle to build a presence and momentum (online).' - Alex Whalley

'In some ways, Facebook levels the playing field of friendship stratification. In the real world, you have very close friends and then there are those you just say 'Hi' to when you pass them on the street.' – Jason Kaufman

'Content comes in many forms; we tend to think of written content when the term is used, but the reality is, video and image content can be more useful when it comes to influencing search and social results.' - Debra Mastaler

'To continue winning the internet marketing game, your content has to be more that just brilliant, it has to give the people consuming that content the ability to become a better version of themselves.' – Michelle Stinson Ross

'A company that builds a loyal social following has a built-in army to promote their content, day in and day out. That content will get shared, get links, send social signals…all of which can't be a bad thing.' - Will Reynolds

'You need to be relevant. Don't get entrenched in the way you've always done things. Your audience is changing. You need to be aware of social and technological trends that are behind these changes - and adapt.' - Kathryn Aragon

'We should be thinking about social and search as channels that need a unified approach, because the best content should appeal to both channels and the cross-over benefits/economies of scale are potentially huge.' - Will Critchlow

'YouTube, unlike other platforms, has a massive advantage when it comes to attention. Instead of a 'scroll' mentality, viewers make time in their schedule to sit down and watch their favorite channels on YouTube.' - Sunny Lenarduzzi

'People will come to your site because you have good compelling content. You need to hit it from all angles: blog posts, articles, graphs, data, infographics, interactive content - even short pictures when you tweet.' - Chris Bennett

'Content marketing needs to be at the heart of your SEO efforts. It has always been that way, but is even more so now because Google is so much more effective at understanding the context of content and how it is shared, etc.' - Chris Bennett

'Social is the way our work gets discovered. Content that is truly exceptional, unique, and useful can earn tremendous awareness through social media, and that social amplification often leads to great links, which leads to great rankings.' - Rand Fishkin

'We're still in the process of picking ourselves up off the floor after witnessing firsthand the fact that a 18 year-old Youtuber can deliver us three times the traffic in a couple of days that some excellent traditional media coverage had over five months.' – Michael Fox

'A healthy combination of paid and organic posts - paired with a consistent posting schedule, a healthy content mix, and a bit of data analysis - is the key to a successful modern-day social media strategy that grows your audience and drives people back to your site.' - Garrett Holmes

'Businesses used to have a small suggestion box near the door that mostly housed dust bunnies and the occasional piece of gum. Rarely would someone get back to you. But people can now make a post from an iPhone or a Blackberry while they're sitting in your restaurant.' – Charles Nelson

'Social media requires that business leaders start thinking like small-town shop owners. This means taking the long view and avoiding short-term benchmarks to gauge progress. It means allowing the personality, heart, and soul of the people who run all levels of the business to show.' - Gary Vaynerchuk

'Even the best SEOs are not magicians. They can't simply place a site at the top of the engines when there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others that offer basically the same thing, and provide basically the same information. If they could, you'd see a whole lot more millionaire SEOs.' - Jill Whalen

'It doesn't matter how sophisticated your funnel is - people simply aren't going to convert if you don't spend the time to create something people want, explain it to them in a way that's clear and compelling, and do it all through the delivery of an experience that your prospects and customers will connect with.' - Brad Martineau

'When people ask me what's the ROI of Social, I ask them… what's the ROI of Trust, and what's the ROI of Loyalty. The answer, when used to build relationships the results will be...longer lifetime value of a customer, larger average order value, and increased frequency of purchase. All measurable and all lead to increased sales and profits.' – Ted Rubin

List Of References

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5. Digital Marketing - What it is & why it matters | SAS Insights, 06 dec 2021
6. 25 Digital Marketing Quotes | Hafiz Muhammad Ali, hafizmuhammadali.com, 06 dec 2021
7. 5 important marketing trends to watch out for in 2022 | The Drum, 02 dec 2021
8. Digital marketing 3.0 - The golden age of advertising | Cameron Bryant, AdNews.com.au, 29 nov 2021
9. Digital Marketing | Adam Barone, Margaret James, Yarilet Perez, Investopedia, 21 nov 2021
10. 2021 - 2022 digital marketing trends: 25 practical recommendations to implement | Dave Chaffey, Smart Insights, 18 nov 2021
11. Five Digital Marketing Predictions For 2022 | Indre Raviv, Forbes, 09 nov 2021
12. What is digital marketing? Tools and templates to define the scope of digital today | Dave Chaffey, Smart Insights, 12 oct 2021
13. About three-in-ten U.S. adults say they are 'almost constantly' online | Andrew Perrin, Sara Atske, Pew Research Center, 26 mar 2021
14. The Who, What, Why, & How of Digital Marketing | Lucy Alexander, HubSpot Blog, 16 mar 2021
15. Modern marketing: What it is, what it isn't, and how to do it | Sarah Armstrong, Dianne Esber, Jason Heller, Björn Timelin, McKinsey, 02 mar 2020
16. Using Digital Marketing to Reach Your Customers | Daniel Hopper, Business 2 Community, 11 feb 2021
17. 60 Digital Marketing Quotes to Get You Excited About Your Next Online Campaign | Finch Grace, ActiveCampaign, 10 jan 2021
18. What are the 7 Types of Digital Marketing? | Susan Bogle, Mark Hobson, Jessica Rogers, Southern New Hampshire University Newsroom, 12 feb 2020
19. 30 Digital Marketing Quotes to Inspire You in the New Year | Beth Osborne, BIGDROP, 08 jan 2020
20. 20 of the Best Digital Marketing Quotes to Inspire the Modern Marketer | DigitalMarketer, 31 jul 2019
21. The Ultimate List of Marketing Quotes for Digital Inspiration | Kristen Baker, HubSpot Blog, 12 apr 2019
22. Approaches to the Modern Concept of Digital Marketing | Gheorghe Minculete, Polixenia Olar, ResearchGate, June 2018
23. A Critical Review of Digital Marketing | Madhu Bala, Deepak Verma, SSRN, 2018
24. 100 Inspirational Online Marketing Quotes for Marketers | Get Found Online, 02 nov 2017
25. 121 Digital Marketing Quotes Every Marketer Should Know | Granit Doshlaku, Manaferra, nov 2017
26. 20 Digital Marketing Quotes For Inspiration | synthesio, 19 October 2016
27. Blending traditional and digital marketing | Raluca Dania Todor, Transilvania University of Brasov, 2016
28. Digital marketing and social media: Why bother? | Maria Teresa Pinheiro Melo Borges Tiago, José Manuel Cristóvão Veríssimo, Science Direct, 2014

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