Danielle Morgan Marketing

My first step into learning the ins and outs of Digital Marketing has lead me to a book written for ‘Dummies’. Teaching something to oneself can be tricky and having confidence that I should understand what I am about to read is reassuring!

Starting at the beginning, (best course of action usually) I have now read the first chapter. I had expected to be overwhelmed trying to train myself in a bemusing alien language- but so much resonated with things I had enjoyed learning during my University days twenty years ago. My tiny marketing modules I had assumed must be wildly outdated still stand in some aspects. Recognising the importance of ‘knowing your market’, positioning your brand, creating repeat customers- it all seems so obvious. I suppose where the new stuff comes in it’s the social media, the A.I. and the data types and volumes used for measuring success.

Understanding (and misunderstanding) the Digital Marketing Strategy

So, what have I learned from this first step? Working from home is not easy during the school holidays. True but irrelevant. Learning is harder when you are older. Maybe true (I’m sticking with this excuse) and also off subject. So lets get down to it. The 6’C’s of a Digital Marketing strategy are as follows:

• Company strategy
• Customer experience
• Content creation
• Channel promotions
• Check-back analysis
• And Connect with A.I.

Each of these areas work with one another to help the company achieve it’s main aim: satisfying their overall strategic goals. This is a basic outline and much more in-depth information on each of these separate yet interlinked subjects is promised by the gigantic tome I’m reading. Simply understanding what is meant by these phrases has been the basis of this chapter and it has been genuinely helpful. Connecting with A.I. for example put me in mind of futuristic shops with robotic arms serving customers. No, Danielle… not that. It refers to the use of A.I. tools to deal with large volumes of data for easier analysis of sales and customer information, mainly. There also seems to be mention of Chatbots and A.I. generated written content (bleuch!), but I may choose to skim that part!

Going forward…

Excited as I am to explore all of these sections (and relay my experiences in regular posts), there are a couple that pique my interest more than others. Content creation sounds fun yet difficult. It’s always hard to unleash your writing to a panel of critics, isn’t it? How hard readers might be cringing at my efforts is foremost in mind at times. Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) appear more intriguing the longer I think about them. Large quantities of data, extracted from channels that didn’t exist only a few years ago using A.I. tools to do the work in minutes sounds suspiciously like witchcraft. This area is covered by both the use of A.I. as well as Check-back analysis.

Other areas have an ‘old-school’ feel to me. Not in a bad way, just that they are familiar. Getting quite in depth into the customer profile, identifying opportunities in markets waiting to be discovered, and responding to change have been aspects of marketing since before I studied and remain just as relevant today. Revising these topics will be as pleasurable as learning something entirely new, I’m sure.