Digital Marketing: achieve more with digital marketing in your organization

• Marketing teams are using digital marketing to reach consumers with relevant communication.
• The successes with digital marketing are varying, still a lot of manual work is needed to process data and personalize communication.
• A good data infrastructure and automation of work is needed to benefit from digital marketing.

Digital marketing is high on the priority list of marketing teams, according to a recent poll on the LinkedIn page of Basedriver. But why is it so important? And how do you make sure you are successful with your marketing team? In this article, we provide answers with the pitfalls and success factors.

What is digital marketing
Objectives of marketing teams

The pitfalls of digital marketing

Successfully using digital marketing in your organization

Digital marketing with Basedriver

What is digital marketing

There is no official definition of digital marketing; it is a broad and widely used concept. We use the broadest definition: the use of digital (communication) resources and technology by marketing teams to acquire, captivate and retain customers.

Every marketing team meets this definition. However, there are many different forms:

• Obtaining and converting visitors to the website, for example via content marketing and SEO;
• Obtaining data from prospects, leads and customers, for example with inbound marketing;
• Approaching prospects and customers through e-mail campaigns and newsletters;
• Using digital means of communication, such as display advertising and search;
• Using data to reach the right people via offline media, such as telemarketing or direct mailings.

Objectives of marketing teams

Despite the fact that almost everyone is working on it, digital marketing is high on the agenda of many marketing teams. This has to do with the expectations of both the target group and the organization:

• Changing consumer behavior requires the use of new digital channels;
• Consumers expect an increasing degree of relevance and are critical;
• Organizations are critical on costs and expect a higher revenue;
• New technology offers opportunities for creative campaigns.

For now, the theme will not be taken off the agenda. The more digital the consumer, the greater the importance for marketers. The digitization of marketing often has (one of) the following objectives:

• Increasing personalization based on data;
• Creating distinctive and creative campaigns;
• Discovering new communication channels;
• Increasing the revenue of the marketing budget.

Discovering new markets at a lower cost with more creativity is a huge challenge for marketing teams.

The pitfalls of digital marketing

As a marketer, it sometimes seems as if all organizations are doing well, except the one where you work. But don’t worry, for most marketing teams, digital marketing is a huge challenge.

From our experience with small and large companies, we now know that marketers often encounter the following issues:

• New opportunities are increasing the number of tools and associated specialists required to run campaigns;
• A lot of manual work is needed to prepare data for campaigns;
• The number of campaigns and personalizations remains limited due to the lack of sufficient time and budget;
• The increasing focus on costs makes it difficult to try out new possibilities.

Successfully using digital marketing in your organization

We have noticed that there are a number of preconditions for successful marketing teams, including:

Provide an up-to-date and qualitative marketing database

Data quality is essential. From the start, it is important to ensure an up-to-date database, which is maintained automatically. This reduces the time to market and the required effort for campaigns.

It is important that the marketing database is linked to various online channels such as social media and the webshop, but also to back office systems such as CRM or ERP systems. This is the only way to create a complete customer image.

Limit the number of applications for marketers

The more different marketing tools and applications, the less likely it is that they will all be used properly. It is therefore wise to create a marketing architecture in advance that includes different systems.

A good marketing architecture prevents an overload of marketing tools and digital resources, which in turn leads to a more effective marketing team.

Reduce dependency on agencies and partners

McKinsey recently wrote it in an article about modern marketing: successful marketing teams are in control. They are able to independently run campaigns and assess the results.

In e-mail marketing, for example, marketing costs for agency support are often higher than the costs of the e-mail marketing software. The more budget is spent on campaigns (and the less on support), the better it is for the team.

Automate manual tasks

With an automatic campaign planning and an automatic content planning, it is possible to relieve marketers of a lot of manual work. The moment the campaign is sent can also be determined automatically based on history.

Automating work saves a lot of time, discussion and energy. The time saved can be used to develop new channels and ideas.

Ensure that insights become available automatically

An important part of digital marketing is insight based on data. You can only improve campaigns if you have gained insight into the result. The better this insight is available, the easier it is for marketers to adjust and improve campaigns.

Free up time and budget for testing

By reducing the number of applications, automating work and letting marketers do the work themselves, you save time and budget. This time can then be spent on developing creative digital concepts or testing channels.

In our opinion, testing is a precondition for successful digital marketing. By testing and learning, better campaigns can be created with more revenue.

Digital marketing with Basedriver

Basedriver connects content, data and campaigns in one online platform for marketing teams. With Basedriver, marketing teams can automatically plan campaigns, view histories and create personalized versions. This is all based on reliable and up-to-date marketing data from various source systems.

Would you like to know more about e-mail marketing with Basedriver? Please contact us for a personal demonstration.

This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch)