Digital Marketing 101 – What YOU Need to Know for 2014

Matt Travers is a Campaign Manager at Reload Media, Sunny Media’s digital marketing partner. Reload and QA work together to ensure that clients have an integrated marketing strategy across traditional and digital mediums. If you find this article useful, please share on your preferred social channel.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

What do you need to know about digital marketing in 2014? Well, there definitely is a world marketplace for more than 5 computers; in fact by the end of 2014 the number of personal computers in use is expected to topple 2 billion.

Take in to account the number of internet connected smart phones, tablets, watches and toasters (I wouldn’t be surprised) and you get yourself a great deal of consumer touch points if you’re a marketer.

In order to establish what you need to know about digital marketing in 2014, we need to take a step down Google lane and see how the industry has evolved so far.

Major milestones include the extreme growth of Google AdWords, display advertising and the uprising of mobile internet use.

So what can we expect this year?

Content marketing has already taken shape as one of the most important activities that your site/brand should be undertaking.

2014 will see content marketing not as an add-on to your digital marketing activity, but a necessity. If the Google search results were a mountain and your website a car, you better hope your filling the fuel tank with the premium unleaded 98 version of content; that provides value and helps your target market. Once your fuel tank is full, it’s all about how you drive it to ensure you reach the top of the mountain.

Mobile continues to grow rapidly, with search advertising on mobile devices expected to grow by 76% in 2014 and mobile banner advertising expected to grow by 100%. Mobile is a piece of the digital marketing pie (it’s a big pie) that you can’t ignore!

Social media is another hot topic when it comes to digital marketing. From a recent survey, 100% of business decision makers use social media for work purposes, 79% of marketers have integrated social media into their traditional marketing activities, and 33% of consumers cite social networks as a way they discover new brands, products or services. Social media is proving to be a great introduction piece to your marketing. Is your business utilising social to it’s full potential?

Driving a well-planned content, mobile and social strategy is all well and good…from a micro perspective. Making sure you look at the bigger picture and try and gain as much leverage off each channel is really what 2014 is going to be all about. Marketers will be looking to gain as much leverage as possible from offline channels to the online world, which, as proven by Google, is where the majority of consumer research is undertaken when looking for a product or service.

So don’t be surprised if more and more TV/radio ads plug specific URLs instead of a phone number or if a newspaper offer is redeemable purely online rather than in store.

So in short, what you need to know is leverage, leverage, and leverage. Visualise your marketing plan on a cork board and connect the dots if you have to, because chances are that there are consumer touch points you are missing out on due to placing your marketing activity in silos.

Remember, if you found this article useful, feel free to tip the author by sharing this article on your preferred social channel.

Matt Travers, Campaign Manager, Reload Media

Matt Travers, Campaign Manager, Reload Media

 

 


Traditional and digital media proving to be good partners

Traditional media still has an important place in advertising campaigns as long as its understood how to leverage the benefits of an integrated digital campaign according to Sunny Media director Roger Delaney.

“Two years ago it became quite clear to us that as a media advertising agency we needed to embrace and lead the way in the digital space for all our clients. At that time we searched the country looking for a suitable partner who could help integrate traditional strategies with the brave new world of digital media and we eventually partnered with a Brisbane based digital marketing firm called Reload Media.

“Reload now works with our clients to boost their digital marketing performance and as one of the few Google accredited agencies in Australia we now work side by side on all media strategies.  We’ve seen firsthand how traditional and digital media can work together to help improve our client’s overall presence in the marketplace.

“We call it the ‘leaky bucket theory’ and that ensures our traditional advertising spend is not wasted when people go to find the business on the internet,” he said.

Rhys Furner from Reload Media says businesses may have recently seen their websites drop in the Google rankings and this is a result of its recent change of its algorithm, now called Hummingbird.

“Hummingbird is a new program which will better reward those businesses who have invested in producing great quality content and optimised websites. It is designed to give people better search results for their query.

“Essentially Google has become more efficient at determining what information a searcher wants to see and the key to improving a site’s Google ranking is to produce high quality, unique, genuinely helpful and shareable content on your website through a blog or resource section such as articles, infographics or videos.

“We are working with Sunny Media’s clients to improve their search presence and rankings so that Google will pick up on the themes around this content and begin to identify their relevance for particular search phrases.

“Google’s goal is to give people the information they want so when you align this with your website, you will reap the rewards from search engines, especially Google,” he said.

Roger Delaney, Managing Director Sunny Media

Roger Delaney, Managing Director at Sunny Media

Rhys_furner-28

Rhy Furner, Digital Strategist at Reload Media

Hello. Get in Touch.