The Journey of a Digital Marketer

"If you want to understand how a lion hunts don't go to the zoo. Go to jungle." - Jim Stengel, CMO of P&G.

Absolutely right if you want to see how any industry works. You have to dive in to explore new dimensions.

No doubt, the digital industry is massive and encompasses unlimited opportunities. In this market, we already have many seasoned players, whom we often refer to as the “influencers”, with millions of followers. There are hundreds of startups with funding worth millions coming in from Silicon Valley. To survive in this industry, apart from being smart, you need to be passionate about your work, you need motivation in order to succeed and courage to accept the new challenges. So what is the challenge here? Is it finding hidden opportunities and unexplored gaps in the market or what? It’s a digital world my friends and here, every step creates a new opportunity. So it’s up to you, how creative you are and how do you make your way through, so buckle up!

“You need the kind of objectivity that makes you forget everything you’ve heard, clear the table, and do a factual study like a scientist would.” – Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder, Apple.

As a marketer, the digital industry has and always will be challenging for me. With continuous struggle and passion, I managed to not only survive in this world but also achieved a lot, in the form of amazing feats. The first thing I did was to get connected with influencers and all the other amazing people who belong to this industry from around the world. I was invited for LinkedIn’s official online training program (thanks to a LinkedIn friend Yumi Wilson, Corporate Communications manager at LinkedIn) and was also awarded a year’s worth of premium LinkedIn account which opened the floodgates towards a lot more than just contacts. While exploring and conducting fanatical experiments in digital industry, I ended up working for one of the top European PaaS providers, Cloudways.

Here are some highlights for the major trends of digital world 2014.

1. Connections - Relationship Building

Your Network is your net worth – you might have heard this phrase before. That’s the very first step that every digital marketer has to take and understand its true meaning. Today’s social media is not just for making new online friends or chatting with them or an easy way to get traffic on to your website. It’s more than that, so move on with that dilemma and don’t be one of the left outs. It’s a platform to create great relationships in your industry, yes, but also to engage with the influencers and relevant audience who are wandering about in this world. The more you engage yourself with the relevant people, the more you become the center of attention. Stay focused on growing your network, which is also your net worth and watch it grow accordingly.

I have learned this from a very close friend of mine, Muhammad Saad Khan who has not only succeeded in building strong connections with influencers, but made great friends as well.

2. Content Marketing

" Before you create any more “great content,” figure out how you are going to market it first." - Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett, Authors of Get Content Get Customers

You have already heard the term ‘content marketing’, and some of you might be thinking how it’s different from what you were already doing for your brand. You were already doing blogs, videos and engaged in the so called social media dilemma, then what is it about this new term; content marketing? Does it mean creating stellar headlines, actionable landing pages and conversion driving emails?

In actual it’s a combination of all these things that work together as a smart online marketing strategy. Instead of pushing promotional strategies, it tends to focus on customized solutions that create long term brand loyalty. It’s all about telling stories and providing solutions to the right audience.

I hope now you can ask your boss or clients about:

What’s their story?

Why would the audience who hear this story, believe in it?

Is it really true? - The most important part, be careful when you ask this question ;-)

3. Being Creative

Content is the King! There is no doubt in that but why only TEXT?

You can also generate content that has the ability to communicate with multiple senses. It creates unique experiences and help to trigger that “what’s that” special sense for your audience. Visual content attract more audience. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Therefore, it gets better returns in terms of readers, social shares, leads and customers.

Publishers who use infographics tend to attract on average 12% more traffic than those who don't. (Source: AnsonAlex)

I have seen fantastic results in website traffic after a simple ‘WordPress Infographic’ that we published on Cloudways. You can see the results here.

http://www.cloudways.com/blog/wordpress-3-9-features-infographic/

You want to learn more about visual content? Here’s a useful resource, by Hubspot, about creating interactive visual content. http://offers.hubspot.com/marketers-crash-course-in-visual-content-creation

4. Growth Hacking

Is it a new must-have weapon for a digital marketer or just another buzzword?

The concept runs around today’s business model especially for startups. It means that in competitive markets, a good product might not always deliver enormous sales. Sorry, but that’s the fact nowadays. Some things just aren’t meant to attract, even they are useful but still they don’t have that “fatal attraction” in them. For some things, you need to make the first move, whether or not you want to.

Growth hacking is an art of advocacy and creating awareness in order to boost the growth for startups in terms of sales and clients. Every step, strategy, decision, and initiative taken by a growth hacker is focused on pure growth of the business.

Sean Ellis the first guy, who used the term “growth hacking”, was responsible for turbo-charging Dropbox’s growth. He said, “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth”.

There is still a lot to share about digital marketing but I would like to leave it open for your reviews and of course, imagination as well as your personal experiences as a Digital Marketer!

Remember that it’s a beautiful world out there that hasn’t been fully tapped, and needs seeds like you and I, to help propel it into the galaxy of “what’s new & happening”. Stay focused and imagine what would you want in it, then apply it, as far as I’m concerned, this is one field where trying and testing isn’t a bad thing, at all.

I look forward to see your comments on this post. You are also welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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About Adnan Fasih:

He's a digital marketing strategist with significant experience in inbound marketing and business strategies.

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