Technology is evolving at a rapid pace and that rate of change has filtered into digital marketing. We wrote a post on simplifying your digital marketing systems but some training, consulting, and professional coaching firms make the opposite mistake of not sufficiently automating their digital marketing. It’s important to review your processes to eliminate unnecessary manual processes because the repetition will suck up the time necessary to stay competitive as new digital marketing technologies become available.

Sometimes it can be difficult to know how complicated it is to automate a process and whether it is worth the time, money, and/or energy to do so. There is a simple way of judging if a marketing process should be automated or not. How much and how often is data being duplicated? If it’s a significant amount of data that is often manually manipulated, then an automated process will likely be well worth the effort.

This dilemma recently came up with a client’s new website platform. The platform updated the layout to a modern design but lacked many of the back-end marketing systems that had previously allowed for automation.

The initial plan was to use a varied mix of vendor automation tools. For instance, email newsletter registrations would link to a form on the email marketing platform. However, it became apparent that segmenting all the data to different platforms was going to make for a disjointed user experience and require manual compiling and reconciliation into a central data source. That was adding an administrative process with no value add to a marketing team that was already stretched. Instead we created a system of embedding the forms on the site so that they would populate the individual platforms but also be available in a central data source.

Sometimes automation isn’t as obvious. On this same website platform, a set of a few dozen calls to action were regularly used on any new content page or blog post. That process had always been manually added to the page but was identified as something that should be a clickable embedded item on the upgraded platform. So rather than setting the CTA up each time, the poster could select which CTA they wanted and it would appear on page.

Repetitive processes should be automated. They tend to add little value for improving digital marketing and are often a boring line item on someone’s task list. Remove that manual process and free yourself up to implement or explore new digital marketing tools and tactics that are now regularly becoming available.

Technology professionals have long been known for “tech speak”. We web and internet professionals have largely adopted that culture as the internet, software development, and system administration all form closer and closer ties. Many times these terms are useful because they serve as shorthand for best practices or efficiently discussing technically complicated principles. Unfortunately, a lack of discretion by web and internet professionals in using these terms has caused them to be misapplied or misunderstood outside of that technical sphere. The jargon and nuances of the internet continue to grow and it often overcomplicates launching, redesigning, or re-purposing a website.

During a project to re-configure a website to focus on marketing conversion, a client said, “Can I get the wire frames for our landing page?” A basic wireframe existed from the last template redesign but was not specifically laid out for the new landing pages. The landing pages were based off the overall site layout but rather than ask questions, we prepared a basic wireframe specific to the landing pages that filled in a bit more content than the basic site wireframe did. After receiving the wireframe, the client called and said, “This isn’t what I want. I want the document that shows how the pages interlink.” The client simply wanted a copy of the sitemap that had already been constructed and approved.

The fault was ours for not asking a clarifying question but it serves as a small example of the wasted effort cause by miscommunication on terms that are becoming more universal but not fully understood. Wireframes were not necessary for the scope of the project but were introduced because it’s something that “should” be done.

When planning a website project, use the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Map out what is really necessary for your project. If it’s a large web launch or a platform migration for a substantial existing site, then a full blown process of steering groups, UI testing, sitemaps, and wire frames is appropriate.

However it’s rare for most trainers, consultants and professional coaches to have a project of that scope. It’s likely that existing materials either online or offline have the core content to build out the website project. A sitemap is often advantageous to use as a checklist that you have included all your targeted content and ensure that navigation is clear. Depending on the scope of the project, additional resources might be unnecessary because live testing or initial builds will inform the optimization rather than dedicated resources beforehand.

Having a plan for your website is key but going overboard with the planning wastes time and resources that could be spent actually building out the web project.

Marketing and technology conferences can be a great place to get new ideas and stay abreast of best practices. It can also be a great place to be overwhelmed and try to implement initiatives that aren’t well suited to you or your organization. Digital marketing and technology are moving at a rapid pace so effective strategies are built from selectively targeting ideas that have the greatest impact to your business.

It’s not uncommon for trainers, consultants, and professional coaches to have dozens of ideas on how they’d like to go to market. As digital marketing becomes more and more pervasive, most of those ideas fall into their digital marketing initiatives. In a perfect world, all of these ideas could be rolled out. However, in the real world, there is finite time and resources. Selectively implementing digital marketing strategies allows for them to be properly launched, delivered, and tracked. Trying to cover every idea spreads resources paper thin and often leads to poor implementation.

As you encounter new ideas and technology, give some critical thought to how well it will serve your business. Of course, none of us has a crystal ball to say for sure what will work. But sometimes our excitement clouds our better judgment. Let a few days pass between being introduced to an idea and taking the first steps to adopt it. In that time, discuss how you foresee adopting the idea with someone that understands your business.

As you explore the idea think through how it would affect current marketing campaigns, administrative functions, or the business as a whole. If you foresee major changes or disruptions to any of these categories then the idea should have a big pay off as it will likely require additional time, people, and/or money.

No matter which digital marketing strategy you pick, from mobile apps to local SEO, it will need a proper implementation to really get results. Rather than scrambling to try and do everything, selectively do the things that are likely to get results. This prevents you from getting turned around with starts, stops, and restarts. Furthermore, proper implementation often leads to improvement on the original idea which allows you to create best practices rather than chase them.

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Big data is here and the amount of information that needs compiled, organized, and analyzed seems to grow exponentially every day. Digital marketing and web applications, even for small business, often have quite a bit of data that needs analyzed and communicated. For this reason, it’s wise to spend some time thinking through the data collection and the insights you intend to communicate. Typically the simplest way to effectively complete this process is by starting with the end dataset in mind and working backwards.

We were recently brought to a project that was well underway to compile and display the data collected from a particular market segment. The goal was to analyze the responses of the market segment to highlight industry trends and ultimately create a whitepaper report that would be used as a call to action in digital marketing campaigns.

The idea itself was great. The intention was to create charts and graphs illustrating the trends, provide some editorial insights on what those trends meant, and explain the likely impacts in the short and long term for this particular industry segment.

There was one major problem. The survey didn’t have any quantifiable questions. Instead everything was asked in a free form essay response style. While there were lots of insights and opinions in the data, there was no way to display it simply without making major inferences and assumptions.

The solution was a follow up set of questions that were easily quantifiable and made up the heart of the industry trends that could be charted and graphed. While this did get the information needed, the response rate was not nearly as high as the first survey request. With some forethought, the extra step would have been avoided and there would have likely been a more robust response to the quantifiable questions.

The end goal of most data collection, in digital marketing or elsewhere, is analysis and improved awareness. Start your data collection with an understanding of what information you want to pull and how it can best be displayed. A large portion of the data should be easily analyzed through avarages or trends with free form responses used only to clarify a particular opinion. Then craft your data collection from systems or people to meet those requirements. That forethought will save a lot of headaches and rework trying to make sense of data that is not well suited to the end goal.

There are countless tools that can be used for digital marketing. Just finding and selecting the right mix can be arduous, but to further complicate all of these options, many of the systems offer overlapping features which may or may not be useful. In planning a system for digital marketing, make a list of criteria and try to simplify the process to as few systems as possible that meet all those needs.

As was noted in the last blog post, there are a ton of third party apps that will specialize in any number of marketing verticals. These tend to be the bedrock of marketing systems for most trainers, consultants, and professional coaches.

In marketing these apps tend to fall in one of three categories:

• Data
• Communication
• Reporting

Set a map for how your marketing system flows. Start the process by making a checklist of all the critical needs. Then make a secondary list of features that aren’t absolutely necessary but would make managing the digital marketing campaigns much easier. Finally make notes of any add-ons or experimental features that appear to have value but have not been tested to date.

This checklist can be used to evaluate your current systems or to analyze new potential vendors. Be sure to do your own analysis and take advantage of trial offers. Many vendors will list features of things their app can technically accomplish but might do so in such a cumbersome factor as to make it unusable. Even the most robust solutions like salesforce.com’s marketing platform have tons of plugins that do a particular function much better than the out of the box platform will.

Once you’ve completed your checklist you should have a thorough evaluation of what functions are being met, which are not, and some options to fill in the gaps. Filling in the gaps is a more subjective exercise typically driven by budget and true need. For instance, a user tracker on a website can be very valuable but many trainers, consultants, or professional coaches, don’t see a good ROI on the cost because the traffic levels are not sufficient.

In the evaluation, keep the number of systems as low as you can. Double check to see that there is not too much overlap in a one of the three categories above. Often sacrificing some non-critical functionality in communication or reporting can be advantageous if it makes data manipulation easier. This is especially true if a system does not integrate with your other platforms.

As with any tool, a system is only as good as the user behind it. Before investing in any marketing system make sure that it is technically appropriate to the person that plans to use it. Many times a tradeoff for user friendliness over functionality in an app is necessary if the primary user is not up to a more technically skewed application.

As with many things, keeping it simple will eliminate headaches. With digital marketing platforms it’s worth analyzing your systems every other year or so to see if it’s organically grown into something more cumbersome than necessary.