Like Jim, you probably know that digital marketing can be a powerful tool to drive leads, but with so much technology and complexity involved, it can be tempting to throw up your hands and just hire an agency to do it all for you. Or worse, you'll hire an agency and not really understand what they are producing for you. By mastering these four strategies, you'll start to get the benefit of digital marketing sooner, and you'll understand the most important key performance indicators that will help you grow your business. You should also set up goal conversion tracking in Google Analytics so that you can see how many leads or sales are coming from each source. Focus on the goal -- traffic, leads or sales. There are many digital marketing techniques that can help you, like search engine optimization, website optimization and A/B testing, but if you are doing it yourself, focus on a simple goal such as driving more traffic and leads/sales. Test simple marketing campaigns. If you don't have a lot of resources, focus on simple campaigns that can drive traffic and leads. In my experience, the easiest campaigns to start are email campaigns, if you have a list, or simple ad campaigns using Google, LinkedIn and Facebook. By using these strategies Jim could keep his marketing hat on for a few more years until his revenue grew to allow him to hire a trained marketing leader and a digital marketing agency.
When Jim started his commercial painting business he did it all. Even though he wasn’t an expert, he dove into sales, marketing, operations, management and even jumped in to paint when the job required it. As the company grew to over $10 million in annual revenue, he matured as a CEO and hired leaders to manage operations, accounting, administration and sales. The last area he held onto was marketing. Since the company grew through direct sales, networking and word of mouth, marketing consisted of little more than a simple website, a nice logo and brochures.
Jim knew that eventually his network would not support his growth plan, and he’d need to generate real leads. He also knew that digital marketing was the best way to generate leads, but he was reluctant to hire a full-time chief marketing officer or an expensive downtown agency to manage the program.
Like Jim, you probably know that digital marketing can be a powerful tool to drive leads, but with so much technology and complexity involved, it can be tempting to throw up your hands and just hire an agency to do it all for you. The problem is if you can’t afford an agency, you might be tempted to just do nothing and wait too long use these powerful tools. Or worse, you’ll hire an agency and not really understand what they are producing for you.
In my experience working with hundreds of entrepreneurs on digital marketing campaigns, I’ve found that there are four things that most entrepreneurs can do themselves before they hire an agency. By mastering these four strategies, you’ll start to get the benefit of digital marketing sooner, and you’ll understand the most important key performance indicators that will help you grow your business. By doing it yourself, you’ll also get the benefit of knowing what you need when its finally time to hire outside resources.
1. Understand your own data.
Digital marketing systems produce a lot of data, and it can…
COMMENTS