Top digital marketing challenges in 2016
Every digital-savvy company faces different challenges along the way. However, most would share similar goals. Some companies and agencies are focusing on hiring top digital talent, while others might be having difficulties securing the latest technology and some are faced with business constraints, therefore, lacking the evolution of digital.
In my role as Digital Manager, I have faced similar challenges. Employsure has a rapidly shifting digital environment that continues to evolve with innovation and creation. Being adaptable and having the right strategy is key to overcoming those common challenges – irrespective of what organisation you work in or the technology you deal with.
Across my nine years of experience in the digital world, working across multiple agency and client roles, I have developed a strong understanding of managing those common digital challenges.
Social media management
Many brands I have worked with have not exactly figured out or can truly appreciate the benefits of social media. Common social media challenges both agencies and clients face include:
- What content should be produced?
- What should re-marketing content look like?
- How often and how much should be spent on paid social media vs organic social media?
- Who will do the work and is accountable for social media?
I have found, one agency might be good at paid social, while others are good at community management. A different agency might be good at brand reputation. So, when you have limited resources, how do you choose the best social media-savvy agency to support your business?
Getting value from SEO
The majority of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) success in this day and age is driven by strong brand management and awareness; therefore, even with a relatively decent SEO budget and investment, the big brands generally deliver strong SEO results. How do we differentiate between your SEO agency's values versus your brand agency?
From an SEO point of view, all the techniques that allow you to ‘game the system’ no longer work, and it is getting incredibly difficult to achieve and maintain SEO success, especially for top generic terms. You can be in the number one position on a term worth millions of dollars in SEO value today, but an update from Google next week could push you off page one.
SEO success is essential, but it is extra important to have more pillars to support your business and not rely on your SEO as a pure revenue stream.
Multi-device usage
New devices are introduced extremely regularly these days. From memory, it feels like yesterday when the smartphone and tablet were introduced. However, nowadays, we also have TVs, gaming consoles and several other new devices available. How do we genuinely track the path to conversions and success across devices?
To illustrate, a customer can research using their home desktop one day, follow up on that research on their phone later and ultimately purchase using their work computer. So, how do we track all those interactions and remarket accordingly to maximise the conversion rate?
The answer is multi-device tracking. However, it is more than just tracking traditional cookies; it is, more importantly, about the data.
Managing your website
Managing a website poses constant challenges, especially for small to medium-sized businesses and not-for-profit organisations with limited resources and budgets. In the early days of the web, all we needed to do was create a user-friendly website, and that could be sufficient to run a business. Nowadays, we need to consider multi-devices, multi-browser and user experience testing and ongoing web resources to manage potential bugs and enhancements.
Written by
Robert Grainge
