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The need for digital marketing in business
Surefire Digital was founded by Rob Jones to provide trustworthy, unbiased advice for companies who wish to improve the performance of their websites. Specialising in the strategic planning of digital marketing campaigns, Rob connects businesses with specialists that he trusts and have proven to be reliable. We are delighted to partner with Surefire Digital in the provision of specialist SEO services.
In part two of our interview with Rob Jones, we discuss the reasons why businesses need digital marketing and what the potential benefits and pitfalls can be.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What is the ‘pain’ that drives organisations towards digital marketing?
Rob Jones (Surefire Digital): Quite simply they realise that their online presence isn’t doing anything to help their business. Sometimes they have no traffic going to their website, or the wrong kind of traffic, no conversions, no way to engage users and no leads or enquiries.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What are the benefits of creating and executing a digital marketing strategy?
Rob Jones (Surefire Digital): It avoids expensive mistakes. A good digital marketing strategy is like a path that gets a business from where it is to where it wants to be, and along it there are key milestones to execute and evaluate. These milestones are achieved by using techniques along the way that are measurable. That’s one of the main benefits of formulating a strategic path; it enables the business to see progress and growth, but also evaluate which techniques are working for them and adapt accordingly. Benchmarking is a key component, and different activities require different benchmarks.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What are the challenges faced by SMEs and enterprises in really engaging with digital marketing?
Rob Jones (Surefire Digital): I see this challenge as two-fold:
1. Discovering reputable suppliers and vendors in the areas they need help and support.
2. Discerning the right platforms, tools and techniques that actually pay dividends.
A business has got to get the right platforms in place. Even if you have a great message, if you’re not aware of the right tools and platforms your message will be wasted.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What are the priorities of digital marketing? e.g. conversions, leads, traffic, user experience, etc…
Rob Jones (Surefire Digital): All of these are important, but clearly a site has got to have traffic. Once a site has visitors, it has to convert, which is a blend of customer-centric design and user experience, leading to enquiries and then ultimately sales.
Of course, to be able to achieve those, a business has to be clear about who they are trying to attract in the first place. This then informs how to attract them, how to ensure they have a good user experience and how to increase the site’s conversion rate.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): How do you distinguish the ‘hype’ from the techniques that really give a return on investment? (Especially regarding social media)
Rob Jones (Surefire Digital): I think there are two points here: having the ability to see through hype, and also having the right expectations about return on investment from social media.
Regarding the first, having the ability to identify whether a social media technique is actually valuable, or just hype comes with experience. I’ve been online for 14 years, I live and breathe the internet and as a result I have good gut instincts. To be honest I rarely trust many things online, and when I suspect that something is too good to be true it often is.
With regards to the second aspect; having the right expectations regarding the return on investment that social media can provide, I think people should instead look at it as a return on engagement. There’s no quick way for social media to be measured in terms of traditional business ROI, it has to be looked at in the long term because it’s about building relationships with new and established customers.
The usual outcome from that kind of engagement is that the public, or target audience, sees the company as transparent, a leader in its field and other positive aspects of brand building. Obviously, the hope is that as a result sales will go up, but often not within the time scales that a business would normally accept for a sales growth activity.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What other ways can social media provide benefits to a company?
Rob Jones (Surefire Digital): I’ve seen some companies, in particular software companies, use social media platforms such as Twitter for customer service and satisfaction. If a business does this well, they are immediately building a brand based on helpfulness, customer service and transparency, and it’s a very public way to solve a problem. People will talk about it, on that same platform, and so that can spread the word in a very positive way.
Dell does very well on Twitter, but not all brands can use it as well as they do.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): Do you have an example of a great social media success story?
Rob Jones (Surefire Digital): I haven’t seen that many success stories from Twitter and Facebook – lots of people use social media to be social, lots of businesses think it’s the next gold nugget. It’s not there yet. Some businesses are doing well out of using social media, but they are very much in the minority. If a company can participate with their target audience in the right place, that’s half the battle. But some businesses try to force that, and it doesn’t work so well.
That being said, I do have one customer who has been having great success with Facebook. It’s a company that offers sailing holidays in Croatia, and their Facebook page has a big following in the London area from Australian and New Zealanders who are in Europe to travel.
Twice a year, the owner creates a competition, for example, he asks for votes for a favourite photo to win a free holiday. It’s not difficult strategy, it’s executed well and it works.
That’s the key to all social media activities: make sure you’re talking to the right people in the right place. If a company has got the right audience on Facebook, as this example does, it can work brilliantly. Even such a simple promotional recipe like that one can work well.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): Do you have any ‘horror stories’ resulting from things going awry in the digital marketing balance?
Rob Jones (Surefire Digital): This comes down to transparency, if a company screws up, everybody sees it – it’s so public.
This scares larger companies a great deal, for example, stories about employees discussing customers in negative ways and it being picked up. But this has always happened, it’s just that now in the age of social media it spreads faster and is in a more public space. In these cases people forget that the social media environment is public.
It is going to get harder and harder for these companies to keep social media access locked down in the way have managed in the last few years. I foresee it will become more pervasive as we adopt social media through mobile devices. It will be interesting to see what happens as a result.