I believe that if you work in digital marketing, you need a base understanding of all of the subcategories of digital marketing in order to excel in your specific area. As an Account Manager at a digital marketing agency, it’s easy for me to get wrapped up in the latest and greatest PPC updates. There are dozens of blog posts released every day about strategies, how-to’s, and general updates. However, I find myself talking to clients about their other digital marketing methods because they are so intertwined with my PPC efforts.
Admittedly, I’ve had to research digital marketing lingo after a client call to understand what my client was trying to explain about their non-PPC, digital marketing efforts. This made me realize that I need to pay better attention to all digital marketing mediums including email marketing, CRO, SEO, and more.
In this post, I’ve put together six tactics, strategies, and general concepts that I’ve recently learned from non-PPC presentations. Conveniently, Hanapin has just released a new blog post with 50 of the best digital marketing presentations to-date with speakers like Rand Fishkin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Oli Gardner. I made a point to read through or listen to at least one presentation from every category of digital marketing listed in the blog post. My takeaways are segmented by each of those categories. I hope you find this post to be a great starting point for diving into those 50 digital marketing presentations and learning more about the many facets of digital marketing. Most importantly, I hope you begin to investigate how these segments of digital marketing can work together within your company.
Content Marketing
This first presentation really stood out to me because our Hanapin marketing team has recently taken a similar approach to content marketing. Chris Keller, Vice President of Marketing at Health Catalyst, explains how the analytics company used non-gated content to more than double high-quality leads. One of the main challenges for his marketing team, which we can all relate to, was to drive more leads. Chris goes on to explain that, “the key to marketing leadership is aggressively educating while trusting prospects and monitoring behavior.” It seems counterintuitive to un-gate content when your main goal is to drive leads. However, it worked for Health Catalyst due to their focus on providing educational content to their audiences and trusting that when a prospect is ready to ask for help (or ready to convert) they’ll raise their hand. I highly recommend that you watch the full presentation for a new perspective on content marketing.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
I really enjoy dissecting marketing trends by asking “Why is this a trend?” That’s exactly what Michael Aagaard from Content Verve does in his slide deck called “You’re Making My Brain Hurt! The Psychology Behind Terrible Conversion Experiences”. In these slides, Michael breaks down the difference between intuitive and analytical thinking. Then, he shows how the different types of thinking cause either ease or stress on our brains. With that in mind, it’s easier to understand why the landing pages that require the least amount of analytical thinking become the highest-converting pages. Check out his deck for more ideas on how to create conversion paths with the least resistance!
SEO
Did you know that 44% of online shoppers begin their search for product information on Amazon? That’s more than the percentage of online shoppers who begin their product information searches on all of the other search engines combined (34%). I learned this from Benjamin Spiegel’s presentation called “SEO for Ecommerce – What You Need To Know.”
Benjamin then proceeds to explain how to “win on Amazon” by sticking to three main SEO principles. For someone that’s relatively inexperienced with SEO (but runs shopping campaigns for PPC), this presentation is full of practical advice for success on Amazon and all other e-retailers.
Email Marketing
When I’m trying to digest unfamiliar topics, I always appreciate overarching, short summaries or predictions from experts on the subject. That’s exactly what you get from this slide deck, Email Marketing in 2020 by Litmus. Two of the most common predictions for the future of email marketing from this presentation can be boiled down to “personalization” and “interactiveness”. In one quote, Jill Redo summarizes the most of the expert predictions. “By 2020, hyper-personalization in marketing will reach a significant level, along with rules-based triggers, assimilation of the mobile channel, and connecting data from other channels and platforms.”
PR (Public Relations)
Out of the six digital marketing topics I mention in this post, I’ve had the least amount of conversations with clients about their PR efforts. Maybe that’s because PR efforts overlap least with PPC efforts, compared to the other topics? Or maybe that’s because we just haven’t figured out how to effectively connect PR to PPC? At the end of the day, both want to drive leads or sales, so there has to be a connection. I now see an indirect connection between PPC and PR thanks to Kenneth Lim’s presentation “Convergence of PR and Content Marketing“. He shows how the content we are already creating (which we often use for lead generation PPC) can be used within PR efforts so that we are presenting a consistent message to our audiences through the most common, public mediums.
Social
As a social platform user (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter), I found this last presentation, by Jay Baer, incredibly interesting. While it’s not 200 slides of practical, social marketing tips, it does highlight one of the most important aspects of having a social presence: response time. The slide below really drives home the idea that consumers want answers and apologies and they want them immediately. This is so important to keep in mind because our other marketing platforms do not stand a chance if our company continually ignores consumers, generating a poor public reputation over time.
Let’s Tie It All Together
“Communication has shifted forever.” This was the simplest, and also the most complex, comment made by Gary Vaynerchuk during his keynote at Inbound 2016. The digital world has permanently changed marketing communications. That’s obvious. The complicated piece is that we have to manage millions of consumer impressions. How? We have to start by understanding each of our communication mediums. Then, we have to strategically combine those mediums for a complete digital marketing presence. It’s imperative for our companies’ success. So go ahead, check out more of the 50 Best Digital Marketing Presentations! Let the experts guide you towards a complete digital marketing strategy.
