2023

Over time with experience, I have learned the importance of Communicating Wisely and Positive Feedback in Digital Marketing.  This is especially important when working with team members you spend a lot of time with.  I learned this from my mentors and my own experiences while managing projects. So the other day, I was speaking with my developer on the progress of one of the client’s website development. Initially, there were quite a few changes, but instead of saying, “I don’t like this,” I took a different approach. I started by expressing how impressed I was with the improvements, acknowledging that we were moving in the right direction. Recognizing the hard work and dedication that goes into these projects is crucial. What is even more exciting is the collaborative decision-making process.  I actively engaged the developer, throwing out ideas like, “What if we use this icon instead?” or “What if we skip the frame in that image?”  It is incredible how small changes can enhance the overall user experience for both parties involved. Expressing dissatisfaction and arguing was always the easy choice, but I have realized it doesn’t lead to anything good.  I have observed that even experienced professionals sometimes end up being impolite instead of solving problems by communicating wisely.  This leads to people quitting their jobs, being unhappy with the work environment, and lower productivity, which can ruin the work culture. A successful project is not just about the end result but the journey and collaboration that lead to it.

LinkedIn has been achieving positive outcomes for me at the bottom of the funnel.  Breaking it down into 3 simple steps.   Step 1: Get Noticed for Less Money Start by making people aware of your product or service on different platforms, but spend less money doing it. Push ads at the lowest CPCs/CPMs This gets more eyes on your stuff without breaking the bank.   Step 2: Keep People Interested Once you have their attention, focus on keeping them interested. Nurture the leads with personalized and educational content about your product or service. In certain instances, assign lead scores to prioritize them.   Step 3: Bring Them to LinkedIn Lastly, use LinkedIn Ads to remind the leads about what you are offering. Since these leads are already nurtured and know about your product or service, using the highest CPC rates is okay.   Tried & Tested! It Works in most of the cases.   3894th Day of Digital Marketing!  

No specific number of questions is right for a lead form.  What matters more is asking the right kind of questions.  Clients often complain about getting a lot of leads but lacking quality ones.  This happens when the lead form only asks for basics like name, email, phone, and an open-ended message. A good lead form should focus on the user’s problem.  It’s like a doctor asking a patient about their issues before making a diagnosis.  Ask about the problems your prospects are facing and that your business can solve. Inquire about when the problem started, how they prefer to communicate, and more. Encourage prospects to think while filling out the form. This may reduce the quantity of leads, but the goal is to have fewer, higher-quality leads.  Web browsers auto-fill details like name and email these days, but the key is to go beyond these basics to understand the prospect.

I once ran an inbound lead generation campaign. The campaign successfully generated around 59 leads in a week. This particular campaign focused on promoting a SaaS product, and I observed the leads appearing in my campaign analytics. The conversion rate was great, and everything seemed promising. However, during the weekly sales and marketing meeting, I discovered that none of those 59 leads received a callback from the sales team. Instead, these 59 leads were added to the waitlist of other cold leads that the sales team already had. Concerns were raised, and calling those leads was instantly scheduled. These 59 leads were warm leads. They showed interest in the product and wanted to learn more. Unfortunately, they did not receive any calls from the company. Only a few conversions were achieved when the sales team eventually started reaching out to these leads. Adding to the disappointment, some of the leads had already purchased a competitor’s product. Here are the lessons I learned since then: 1) Always follow up with the sales team, especially when running a lead generation campaign. 2) When using a call-to-action button for scheduling a demo or a free consultation call, ensure your team’s availability. If possible, mention that after submitting contact details, a call from the sales team can be expected within the next 24 hours. However, only make this commitment if you have someone ready to make those calls within that time frame, or avoid making such promises in your ad copy. 3) If you have a small team or are a solopreneur, it is advisable to include a preferred day and time field in the form, providing flexibility for scheduling. To become the best digital marketer, one must go beyond the ordinary. The role extends beyond acquiring leads; it involves understanding the fate of those leads. The quality of leads and their transformation into customers ultimately determine the actual ROI of your business.

I often get asked this question, particularly by newcomers: What is the best way for me to learn digital marketing? The easiest way to get good at digital marketing is by actually doing it. While courses and blogs can help, the fastest way to learn is by getting hands-on experience. There are four main ways to learn and do digital marketing, but there might be others. These are freelancing, working in a company, running your own blog, and working in a digital marketing agency.   Freelancing: Starting as a freelancer gives you freedom, but you have to rely on yourself.  It is a learn-as-you-go process, but your income depends on how well you do.  Mistakes can hurt your freelancing business, so it might not be the best choice for beginners.   In-House Positions in a Company: Getting a digital marketing job in a company is challenging for beginners because companies often want experienced people.  If a company has a digital marketing team willing to hire and teach beginners, it is a rare but great opportunity.   Running a Blog: Making a blog is a slow but low-risk way to learn.  Starting a blog is easy nowadays; you just need a good domain and hosting.  Use your blog to create content on your favorite topic and learn digital marketing along the way.  It might not make much money initially, but a successful blog can be rewarding in the long run.   Working in a Digital Marketing Agency: I am a product of Digital Marketing Agency myself. This is a good choice, especially for beginners.  It is recommended to spend a year or two working in a digital marketing agency, regardless of its size.  Even if the pay isn’t high, the experience is priceless.  Unlike in-house jobs or freelancing, agencies provide support when you need it and continuous learning opportunities.  Working with different clients exposes you to various industries, helping you grow quickly and become an expert. Starting your digital marketing journey in an agency increases your chances of getting good guidance and mentorship, putting you on the path to success.    Good luck on your journey!  

Many times, it becomes important to tweak the ad copy in your ad creatives for various reasons: – Ad fatigue has set in. – You want to test a new idea that popped during campaign optimization. – A recent market trend has started, and you want to capitalize on it. – Data analysis suggests a need for testing a new ad creative. I recall the frustration of having to wait in a queue for even a minor punctuation change, not blaming the designers—after all, they are busy with their work, and random requests disrupt their creative flow. However, as a performance marketer, this was a HUGE ISSUE for me because I was not ready to see extra monies go to waste on an underperforming ad. So, I took the matter into my own hands and started teaching myself some basics of DIY designing tools. After adopting this approach, my life as a performance marketer has become much smoother. The key is simple: request both the ad templates along with the final set of ad creatives from your designer. Ensure you have the necessary tools/software installed on your computer (unlike platforms like Canva, where being added as a team member suffices) That’s it! Create as many variants as needed for testing. I can’t emphasize enough how important A/B or multivariant testing is in performance marketing. I have witnessed campaigns failing before my eyes, knowing that a minor change in the ad creative copy could save the campaign. No more feeling powerless. Learning these DIY designing tools isn’t just an added advantage for a performance marketer. It is a necessity.

I have made a list of 50 common reasons why performance marketing campaigns FAIL. This comes after practicing performance marketing for almost a decade, working on a range of campaigns.  Each of these problems was personally faced by me during my career, and I have learned how to deal with them.  I am still working on improving my understanding of the 33rd, 49th, and 50th points. I also started using the 40th and 42nd points in the last few years, and it has brought me great results. Launch campaigns without planning or clear objectives. Optimize your campaigns every single day, leading to constant changes. Keep updating your budgets frequently, making it hard to maintain consistency. Change your offers daily, confusing your audience. Make your targeting too narrow, limiting your reach. Don’t set up alerts to monitor campaign performance. Test a campaign for just a day or two and draw premature conclusions. Focus exclusively on people actively searching to buy, ignoring other potential customers. Micromanaging, stifling creativity and innovation. Run ads on very selective placements, missing out on broader exposure. Advertise on too many channels, spreading your budget too thin. Refusing to adapt to the audience’s preferences. Neglect post-click activities and only focus on click-through rates. Run ads without a clear call-to-action (CTA). Blindly auto-apply platform recommendations without analysis. Only attribute conversions to the last click, ignoring other touchpoints. Fail to create a dashboard providing an overview of each campaign’s performance. Neglect A/B testing and rely on assumptions. Ignore audience segmentation and target everyone the same way. Neglect the mobile audience by not optimizing for mobile devices. Use poor quality or irrelevant creatives. Neglect landing page optimization. Use generic and uninformative ad copy. Ignore ad scheduling and run campaigns 24/7. Ignore the importance of ad position and visibility. Neglect seasonality and holidays in marketing strategy. Overcomplicate campaign structure with too many ad groups. Fail to utilize negative keywords. Use inconsistent messaging across different marketing channels. Disregard the competition and industry benchmarks. Don’t adapt to changing market trends and consumer behavior. Set unrealistic KPIs and objectives. Ignore the lifetime value of a customer. Don’t analyze and learn from past campaign performance. Use irrelevant keywords that don’t match user intent. Neglect geo-targeting, leading to ads being shown in irrelevant locations. Neglect the importance of ad extensions. Ignore social proof and customer testimonials in ad copy. Neglect the power of retargeting campaigns. Ignore the importance of remarketing to the organic traffic. Fail to leverage email marketing to nurture leads. Neglect video marketing in your strategy. Don’t use data analytics and tracking tools effectively. Neglect to test and optimize the page load speed of your website. Use outdated marketing channels that no longer reach your audience. Overload your campaigns with too many keywords. Neglect customer feedback and reviews. Ignore the impact of ad fatigue and ad blindness. Neglect to align your marketing with the sales team. Don’t leverage influencer marketing partnerships.  

Words like cheap, free, and discount are often used as negative keywords in Google Ads campaigns, especially when we’re promoting high-end products. This helps us save money on ads and target more relevant and intent-driven searches, ultimately leading to better results. However, sometimes, we unintentionally miss similar keywords. For instance, if we exclude ‘cheap,’ our ad might still show up for terms like affordable, sale, economical, and budget-friendly. This happens when Google Ads is given broad match liberty. To avoid this, here’s how I prevent close variants from triggering our ads: 1) Create a list of potential negative keywords manually. Spending some time on this is crucial because no tool can understand your audience better than a human brain. 2) Ask ChatGPT to suggest synonyms for those keywords you want to exclude. 3) Let ChatGPT work its magic. I remember the days when close variants weren’t a concern in tightly controlled keyword campaigns.  However, I definitely don’t miss the days of constantly managing close variants as negatives.

Constructing a house from scratch rather than renting a condominium offers the opportunity to gradually convert the house into a personalized condominium. The greatest advantage is the enduring ownership of the personalized condominium. When I decided to go all in and share my content on the Internet, I considered designating one social media channel as my primary content repository. However, the lack of control over my content made me reconsider. Essentially, I would be renting that space on social media. Also, Social Media websites may disappear, resulting in the loss of users’ content.  Frustrated with this, I made the decision to create my own website.  Although I acknowledge that there is an audience on those platforms, I always have the choice to promote or reshare my content on them.  Nevertheless, my pillar content will always reside on my website, which I consider home. Some may view this strategy as flawed, but I am uncertain about that. I firmly believe that this approach has the potential to yield the best long-term results. Fingers crossed! This strategy may present challenges, but it is certainly not impossible. As the saying goes, “No pain, no gain.” ☺

Spending 3652 days in Digital Marketing taught me an important lesson. Having dedicated a decade to digital marketing, I have realized that comprehending the audience for any digital marketing campaign is challenging.  Everything else pales in comparison. As a Digital Marketer, my greatest challenge was decoding what the audience truly desires. Understanding the audience is an art form, while the rest merely constitutes skills that can be acquired through online resources and practice. During my early days in Digital Marketing, I learned a valuable skill called keyword research. This involved understanding how customers perform searches on search engines.  My mentors played a vital role in teaching me this technique. They encouraged me to take a moment, imagine the keywords potential customers would use, and conduct extensive research based on those keywords. With time and experience, I learned that the effective way to understand the audience is to step into the customers’ shoes and immerse myself in their mindset. Much like actors who fully immerse themselves in their characters. Whenever I face challenges in creating an audience for a campaign, I follow these steps: Digital Marketing combines the power of data, science, and art. By integrating all these elements, I was able to achieve remarkable results for my clients. The past decade in Digital Marketing brought challenges and opportunities that contributed to my personal and professional growth.  I am excited to see what the next ten years hold, particularly with integrating Artificial Intelligence and Digital Marketing. Regardless of the advancements that may arise, one thing remains undeniable: The future of digital marketing looks incredibly promising.