5 Big Fundamentals of Digital Marketing Transformation
Transforming a marketing organization to embrace digital marketing requires change. Some companies seem to make this transition seamlessly, and other are struggling.
The dream of agile marketing operations, 1-1 marketing, digital customer experience, intelligent marketing technology and digital customer journeys seem to be impossible to reach.
What are some of the big fundamentals driving digital marketing transformation?
In this blog post I discuss 5 critical “must-do’s” to get organized for Digital Marketing Transformation.
But organizing for digital marketing transformation is not without its challenges…
Organizing for the Digital Customer Journey
Organizations in B2B and B2C increasingly need to organize for the digital customer journey.
It’s no secret that the buying behavior of customers is increasingly influenced through digital content consumption and digital interactions using smartphone apps, tablets, social media and now als wearables.
Baby boomers, generation X and millennial spend more time consuming content, up to 20% hours a week, according to a new study “The Generational Content Gap”, in which Fractal and Buzzstream surveyed over 1200 people about digital content consumption.
Companies need to respond by understanding this digital behavior, and rethink the organization. Internally, and externally. From a marketing perspective this requires a different type of marketing.
I usually call it modern marketing these days, because it’s difficult to cover this subject in a couple buzzwords.
But it boils down to:
- applying modern digital marketing tactics,
- a culture of digital optimization,
- building a digital marketing technology backbone, and finally…
- a new type of organization with new digital roles in the marketing department.
That’s a lot of change. Where do you start?
What is the initial spark that sets this change in motion?
What is Quality Content that Really Works?
“We buy our blog posts 500 EUR a piece” he told me the other day. “What kind of blog post are that?” I asked. He was buying 10 of these blog post a month, on average 500 words per blog post.
Aaargh.
That’s probably the worst approach this marketing manager could take towards content. The output he gets by aiming for 500 words articles is just horrible. It’s usually a “one-pager”, with one single meaningless graphic, pulled from a stock-photo website. Others might tell you that you need 1500 word articles, because these are going to make you end-up higher in search-engines.
I say, that’s crap. Don’t believe them.
Blog Post Summary
In a world filled with content, and decreasing user attention, this kind of simple approach to content is just not going to cut it.
With this post I want to show you, “once and for all”:
- what content quality really is about,
- how Google treats good and bad content quality,
- how consumers and customer in general spot quality content,
- how long quality content should be,
- and finally how you can get organized for content quality.
Now let’s get started, and explore the world of quality content…
(oh, this starts to feel like a rant, but don’t worry, this is not going to be a rant!)
What are new tasks of salespeople in the digital world?
The digital evolution has changed how organizations conduct business. There’s a lot of change happening: customers now have new ways of communicating using social media, forums and product reviews. They gather real-time information on products and services, and engage with brands in real-time, using mobile phones and more.
The rise of real-time messaging applications like Snapchat, Vine, Instagram and others signal a new era where customers increasingly expect personal experiences and instant real-time interactions. Instant shipping of products in ever shorter times provide instant gratification to buyers that live in the moment of today.
More access to information also means buyers increasingly research products, even for low involvement products like FMCG, fashion, computer software, multimedia products or home decoration. More and more of the buying process is happening online, where buyers today need to be served more and more by the content that marketers provide them.
The abundance of online content and channels is shifting the power from the seller to the buyer. Today buyers are more informed then ever, in which they don’t need salespeople anymore to help them buy. Or, salespeople get invited to conversations much later these days because of online content, in which they are confronted with very educated customers.
What is the impact of all of these changes on the role of salespeople within the buying process? Read more 
Building the Best E-Commerce Content Marketing Strategy
What do panda’s have to do with content marketing and e-commerce?
How to survive in a digital world that allows shoppers to compare pricing, find excellent advice on products, and where Google is calling the shots?
Predictive search and search technology is advancing, with Google and all major social media networks are becoming more and more sophisticated in banning low quality content and classic SEO tactics.
Buyer behavior is changing rapidly. Shoppers consult more and more sources before buying, and they become more educated in how to do that.
How do you make the difference to your buyers?
This blog post will run you through some eye opening facts and examples from multiple industries, on how content marketing plays a role in e-commerce strategy today. And it will provide you with some practical insight on how to start building the best e-Commerce Content Marketing Strategy. Read more
Organizing for Content: A Detailed Overview
Organizing for content can be complex, very much similar to controlling a complex swarm-system, just like the swarm of birds in the picture.
Luckily you can get organized to control the complexity of content marketing.
In this blog post I want share in detail, using examples and best practices, how small, medium and large organization can get organized on different levels for content marketing:
- Strategy
- Organization
- People
- Processes
8 Steps Always Found in the Best Content Marketing Strategies
If you are a “newbie” to content marketing, this article is for you.
I’ve had the privilege to be part of multiple content marketing implementations in small companies, medium companies, and super-large companies.
But the basics always remain the same.
Today I want to share with you what those basics are.
Today, I want to share with you what really matters when developing your content marketing strategy.
How to Unlock Content Marketing Value in Complex Markets?
Content marketing in a multi-market, multi-product business can become very complicated.
In this blog post I offer some insight on how to solve that complexity, using pain based segmentation and simplification of your content marketing strategy.
The classic buying journey
Customer centric content is what attracts, engages and eventually helps to make the sale.
But when customers move through their relationship with a brand, their focus changes. They constantly go through a changing state-of-mind, depending on a lot of different factors. Read more
Social Business Strategy – The Law of the Squeezing Social Media Networks
What happened in 2014 in the field of digital marketing can best be compared with the Law of Bernoulli.
This law is very simple to understand: put your foot on a water hose and turn on the tap. What happens next, in my imagination, is a bubble of water that appears in the hose, just like in the Tom & Jerry cartoons from my childhood. On one side of the bubble, the pressure is higher. And on the other side, at the far end, only a little bit of water comes out. Take your foot of the water hose, and “voilà”, there is again plenty of water. Agreed, Bernoulli’s law is more complex than that, but this is supposed to be Bernoulli’s law “for dummies”.
In 2014, we’ve seen that Facebook started putting both feet firmly on our social media water hoses. Where we used to enjoy delicious free organic reach for our content, with “Facebook Zero” that organic reach came to a standstill. If we want to reach our Facebook friends as a brand, an hose them down with our updates, we’ll have to pay “please-get-your-foot-of-the-water-hose”-money to Facebook.
What is less known is that not only Facebook is doing this. Other titans like Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn are taking steps in this direction.
Why do they do that? Obviously it comes down to money.
But it’s about more than just money … Read more
A step-by-step guide to Content Marketing Excellence
When digging into the world of content marketing, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the 17 million hits on Google with best practices.
People are definitely searching for help, and they are overloaded with data and best practices. But still, we are starving for insight.
Where do you start?
A simple search in “Soovle” reveals the top search topics on content marketing in the major search engines.
