How marketers can get the most out of their digital campaigns

media update’s Adam Wakefield spoke to Tanya Demmer, marketing manager at business incubator Raizcorp, about how brands can get the most out of their digital campaigns.

Many digital tools exist, as do metrics used to measure the success of those tools. How can brands make sure that they focus on the information a metric provides, instead of the metric itself?

I think it’s important to understand the outcome of what you want to achieve and, yes, numbers are important, but often they aren’t the true result. If a brand sends out a mailer for email marketing and 100 000 people open the mail, but no one signs up for their offer or took advantage of it, which number matters more?

The 100 000 who opened the mail or the fact that not one person took up the offer? Which metric is important to you as a brand? For me, it would be the people signing up and using the offer.

Most of the campaigns we build at Raizcorp are based on lead generation. So if 2 000 people click on our Facebook ad and only one person signs up, and that lead doesn’t convert, we have failed. We track these campaigns closely on a daily basis and have found that conversion is a good metric for us.

It took a while for us to find out which metric was a good indicator of success and have also found that different campaigns have different metrics of success – this we discovered after doing a lot of analysis and understanding of the data we have built up over the years.

Should marketers think about mobile as a primary screen, instead of a second screen compared to TV, laptops, tablets, or PCs for advertising purposes?

Absolutely, marketers should now think of mobile as the first screen and no longer the second screen. I use my phone to check my diary, look up news, chat to my team and family, and watch YouTube videos of channels I’m subscribed to. During the day, at the office, I work predominantly on a laptop but will use my cell phone to check social media, make a booking for a gym class, and message people – even though I can do that on my laptop too.

I carry my phone around in my hand all day, and that is definitely my predominant go-to. So if you wanted to advertise your product, you have to catch me on mobile. I don’t have TV so you won’t get me there, and I have even started listening to the radio less and less now and am instead listening to audio books while in traffic.

As a brand, you need to catch me on my mobile phone and on the channels I frequent.

How can brands who do not have the scale to launch a large campaign create personalised content that will attract enough customers to achieve good ROI?

You don’t need a massive budget to create personalised content and deliver it on your owned media – website, blog, social media, etc. Google Analytics and social analytics are free and provide you with a plethora of information on your readers, consumers, or followers.

You, as a brand, can also ask questions in your campaigns and get feedback from customers that will inform the types of content they want to read. Spend time going through that information and work out what interests your customer, and then create content that speaks to them. Also, keep in mind that an existing customer has a different need to a new one who is still learning about your brand.

If your content is engaging, interesting, and stands out from the rest, followers will engage and share it and increase your reach. Be aware of how you engage with them. A brand sent me a GIF response on Twitter in response to a Black Friday tweet I sent them about purchasing their coffee, and I loved the response.

That was a personalised response that made me smile, and I shared it with my customers. I want to see more brands engage with their customers like that. They’ll become brand loyal and will start creating earned media for you, which is authentic – and every brand would love more of that.

Can you ever be too late to do digital video marketing for your brand?

No, I don’t think you are too late. Video is still popular and people enjoy watching videos and sharing them – especially if they are funny and entertaining. I think the one thing that has changed is people are less likely to watch long videos and now prefer shorter ones that are a few seconds long.

I’ve personally found, lately, that if I start watching a video on YouTube or Facebook and it takes too long to get to the funny part or tell me a story, I close it and move on to the next piece of content.

As marketers, we need to be smarter about getting to the point quicker and keeping the viewer hooked. If a viewer enjoys the video they will share it with their network, which is something we want for increased reach.

For more information, visit www.raizcorp.com.

YouTube is one of the key platforms for digital video marketing, and just posting content without a viable plan is not a recipe for success. Read more in our article, Top tips for content creators on YouTube success.