When you grow a personal social media community, you’ll face challenges as you try to expand your social networks. You’ll face difficulties in increasing Twitter followers, retweets, and Google Circle friends. Think of these as valuable lessons instead of impediments, because they are the same challenges you’ll encounter when you run a social media program for your company. Personal use allows you to gain a better understanding of the problems brands face constantly as you find solutions to overcome them. This enables you to strengthen your digital arsenal, gain more experience, stay current with new techniques, and ultimately become a more valuable, indispensable member of the marketing team.

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans” – Peter Drucker. Digital marketing is incredibly goal-driven. It requires marketers to implement programs with specific plans. For instance, if you want to achieve 15 sales leads in 12 months through content marketing, develop a customized content calendar. The content calendar should contain tailored topics for a particular audience so that you can prompt desirable actions. For example, if you’re a fashion retailer, you can create a calendar that schedules publishing photo-shoots of models wearing your apparels every Tuesday for the next 4 months. You can support the photo-shoots by writing a blog on the same dates about fashion trends to show how the outfits echo the latest runway designs. This allows you to maximize the effectiveness of your content, both for topic and distribution. 

According to Smartt’s P.A.C.E model, marketers must promote, analyze, convert, and engage in order to optimize digital marketing performance. This requires an integrated approach. They must promote their brand through social media marketing, bloggers outreach, or AdWords advertising. Moreover, they have to analyze web traffic with analytics and heat-mapping tools such as Google Analytics. Additionally, they need to use A/B testing platforms such as Optimizely to perform split tests to determine if their landing pages are optimized. Once they’ve increased traffic and optimized landing pages, they have to continuously engage with their customers through remarketing ads, newsletters, or social media management to transform buyers into advocates. Integration of digital marketing as well as integration of digital and traditional marketing makes best use of your resources while delivering better results than standalone initiative. Sound like a lot of work? Download our PACE eBook and start with just a few of these tactics. 

In addition to getting your hands on digital marketing, talking to seasoned professionals for tips is extremely beneficial; join professional networking organizations and ask experienced marketers what beginners should do to excel in the digital marketing space. You will gain more focus on the different skill sets you must develop, publications you should read, and possible impediments you may face.

 

Read books written by renowned business professionals to further expand your knowledge and skills. Books such as: Social Media ROI, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, and Advanced Google AdWords are written by marketing experts and contain invaluable knowledge that can help you thrive in the digital space.

 

Though many marketers want to enter the digital marketing landscape, they often face challenges in learning the skills they need to excel in this field. The four tips above give you a good start with different approaches for bolstering your digital marketing arsenal. If you want help with expanding digital marketing skills and knowledge, attend our 1-day Digital Marketing Training Workshop or contact us for specific needs.