By Arthur Wilson
Digital marketing campaigns fail all the time. It’s an unfortunate truth, especially coming from a marketer, but the research backs it up. Nearly half of all social campaigns fail to meet the desired audience, while the cost of poor marketing data within campaigns stands at a staggering $600 billion a year.
There are many reasons why campaigns fail. The wrong messaging, the wrong platform, bad timing, poor creative, bad product . . . the list is endless. But one of the predominant reasons why, in my opinion, is that there’s a lack of support in place to maximize the potential value of the campaign in the first place.
For example, a PPC campaign fires traffic into a landing page . . . but nothing else happens around it. No remarketing campaigns on social, or follow-up emails, or juicy lead magnates to get them interested in your content and expertise.
The result is that you’re giving yourself one shot to make that click work. If it bounces, as 50% of all web traffic does, then that’s it—CPC wasted.
The answer for sustained, profitable results from your digital campaigns is to actually think less individual channel, and more integrated approach.
What is a digital ecosystem?
A digital ecosystem can be described as the network of marketing activity that surrounds your website and brand—and how it relates to each other.
These ecosystems can vary in size and complexity, from very simple processes to massive hives of digital activity. I like to term this as "feeding the machine": inputting prospective customers as traffic, and building the digital gears and levers around that to spit out a customer at the end.
This graphic gives an idea of how a digital ecosystem may look in a lead generation funnel:
- All traffic sources funnel initial traffic into the website.
- Traffic that doesn’t convert gets remarketing via PPC, social and email marketing too (such as through a CRM).
- Converted user data is used to either upsell or create lookalike audiences for further social prospecting.
This is a really basic ecosystem, but it doesn’t require too many moving parts, and once all the elements are set up, you can let the system run on its own and invest your time optimizing and improving each element over time.
Benefits of creating an ecosystem over individual channel focus
Creating a digital marketing ecosystem takes a lot longer to set up than just launching with one channel and putting all your focus into that one area. So why bother? What are the benefits of taking that time out to properly plan and create a network of channels and content that works together in harmony?
An informed user journey
Every prospective customer goes on a journey with your brand before buying into it. By creating an ecosystem, you can control and nurture that journey.
Better conversion rates
It can take a prospect three to four site visits before they become a customer. Creating an ecosystem with numerous remarketing touchpoints increases the chance of them hitting the buy now or sign-up button.
Improved CPAs
First-time site visits are more likely to bounce and less likely to take action. Aligning more budget into second, third and fourth-time visits will increase the overall conversion rate of your site and cut total CPAs.
Increased brand presence
Creating various digital touchpoints increases the reach of your brand and exposure of your offering to prospective customers. This keeps you front of mind in what is no doubt a crowded niche.
Upselling and lifetime value
They bought once? Great. But how about if they bought five, six . . . sixty times?! An ecosystem can create the right messaging, at the right time, to keep them coming back for more.
Maximize the chance of success
It’s unlikely that all your digital channels will work straight away. By creating an ecosystem of activity, you can test which channels work best, and increase the likelihood that a couple of your campaigns will really hit the ground running and start driving results.
Set it up and let it run
Once you’ve created your ecosystem of activity, you can launch it and let it run. Think of it as having an entire marketing department handling your email outreach, follow-ups, social remarketing, and traffic generation. For new businesses, this means you can focus on actually running your company. For large firms, it means you can invest more time into specific areas, like content creation, or partnerships.
What elements should you include in your digital ecosystem?
Now we know what a digital ecosystem is and how it can benefit your marketing efforts, let’s look at some of the different elements you can deploy in your own strategy:
Your website
Everything starts with your website. Which pages will you deploy? What will your paid landing pages look like? Where will your lead magnates sit and what does the user journey look like?
Great content
To engage and to sell, you need great content. Fantastic selling copy on your website, as well as value-adding lead magnates and blog content.
SEO
Keyword rankings take time to develop but are critical to the long-term success of your digital marketing strategy. And even if you need to cut back on marketing spend because of economic headwinds, SEO is one area that you should still spend on.
Create blog content designed to drive organic traffic to your site, and link those articles with lead magnates or email subscription boxes to feed users into your funnel.
PPC
Drive traffic from the keywords that matter most to your business and the people most likely to convert. Google AdWords (and don’t forget Bing!) are great places to start. The digital ecosystem is especially important to support your paid campaign and to maximize the potential value of each and every click.
Social content
Social media can increase awareness, engage, and sell. Your organic social content should add value, while paid ads and remarketing all feed into the machine you’ve created.
A Digital ecosystem doesn’t work nearly as well without an email strategy behind it.
Trust signals
At every point along the journey, you need to be proving to the prospective customer the value of your offering and that you are a trustworthy seller/supplier. Include regular trust signals in all your messaging, from customer testimonials to case studies, award wins and user reviews.
Try not to jump the gun
It can be oh-so-tempting when launching your new brand or website to want to start driving traffic into it straight away! But if you can, try and be patient.
Putting the digital groundwork in place first will maximize the potential returns from your efforts, and in the long run, will actually streamline the amount of time you have to put into your marketing activities too.
Digital marketing ecosystem FAQs
Below we have summarized the most important questions and answers on the subject.
What is a digital marketing ecosystem?
A digital marketing ecosystem is a group of interlinked channels and activities working together to form a wider digital strategy. This integrated approach sees data from various channels feeding into one another in a bid to improve marketing overall performance.
How do you build a digital ecosystem?
Building a digital ecosystem depends on the various channels you want to utilize. Most ecosystems will include a central CRM system where leads are stored and further marketed to, as well as analytical accounts to track performance. Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook Business Manager are three other popular platforms that form part of a digital ecosystem.
What are the benefits of a digital ecosystem?
An integrated approach to digital marketing sees each click remarketed to across other channels, as well as lead nurturing from prospect into paying customer, and upselling thereafter. Digital ecosystems drive better conversion rates, lower churn, and more profitable CPAs.
About the Author
Post by: Arthur Wilson
Arthur Wilson has a decade of experience helping small and medium-sized businesses to punch above their weight online.
Company: Target Performance Marketing Agency
Website: www.talktotarget.co.uk
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
