5 Things our Digital Marketing Specialist Learned at SXSW

The Biggest Problem Isn’t Content – It’s Context

Right now businesses across the globe are struggling with content shock – the point at which the resources required to produce an ever increasing amount of content is greater than the return. The businesses excelling in digital marketing are learning that content marketing it is not simply a volume game, strategies must adapt to the platform they are intended to be consumed on. When businesses begin to develop content within the context of the platform their wins become greater and more frequent, which far outweighs the small wins produced in the volume game.

The Rise of The Chief Marketing Technologist

As marketing and advertising continues to shift to a data and technology driven practice, businesses are learning that there is an extreme shortage of top notch digital talent. It’s not easy to find talent that has depth of marketing knowledge, technology and the ability to speak fluently with clients, and this shortage has led to a decade of poaching high level talent rather than growing it internally. Now the pendulum is swinging the other direction. Businesses are now investing in growing their own top notch talent through ongoing training, development, patience and giving them the ability to learn along the way.

Develop a Distributed Media Network Strategy

For too long businesses have thought in terms of websites. Meaning the discussion goes something like this:

Business Owner: We need to drive more website traffic and leads. How do we do that?

Digital Marketer: Let’s place a bunch of PPC ads and work on our SEO.

Social Strategist: We’ll post great content on Facebook and Twitter to point back to our website!

Economies change, and the equity of a brands website needs to change along with it. It’s becoming increasingly important to go to where the users are instead of trying to bring the users to your website. This is done by producing native content with no explicit expectation that the user will convert to a customer.

People use social channels to be entertained. Keep them engaged while they’re there and they will reward you in social currency (likes, shares, reviews, word of mouth), which will inevitably result in an increase in leads and business.

Are You a Legacy Company or a Digital Company?

There’s an old saying that goes, “How many old railroad companies got into the airline business? Zero.” What that means is, even though railroad companies were in prime position to capitalize on this world changing technology, they were too busy protecting old territory to adapt.

Legacy companies are old and slow. They have a history of being great at what they do, but times are changing, and sooner rather than later they won’t be able to get out of their own way.

A digital company, on the other hand, lives at the intersection of marketing, technology and story telling. They’re agile and able to adapt to or adopt any opportunity before it becomes a threat.

The Value Proposition Is Time Saved

What is Uber really selling? AirBNB? Amazon? Lyft? Not products or services. They’re really selling the consumers their time back to them and time is the greatest currency of all.

This mentality is true for a lot of business owners. What is the true value proposition of utilizing an ad agency? Agencies might not have the same thorough understanding of your business or industry. They may not be as motivated as you are to see your business succeed. They may cost more. But what they are going to do is give you back a lot of your time which you can reinvest in other, more important areas of your business.

Dallas McLaughlin | Digital Marketing Specialist

Digital Marketing Specialist
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