Death of Simple Digital Marketing. It’s time to talk stacks on stacks on stacks.


NeilNeil Patwardhan

Head of Digital Marketing
LG Electronics USA, Inc. Commercial Displays Division

 

What happened to us? Going to a website used to be simple. If someone found your website and liked your story or product you were selling, chances are they would get in touch.

Fast forward to 2017 and the WWW is awash with millions and millions of sites all pushing for the same eyeballs. Standing out from the crowd is becoming harder and harder and conversion of those precious visitors to your site has become extremely important. New tools in this space are popping up every day and digital marketers are now faced with a complexity overload syndrome. Beware of shiny new objects in the digital world. What may work for others may not work for your needs.

And so the ideal digital strategy boils down to a few key questions you need to ask:

  1. What are my overall business goals?
  2. How will digital marketing help me achieve those goals?
  3. What technologies/partners do I have already?
  4. What do I need to go get?

Answering all 4 questions will drive you on a journey of digital stack exploration and help you define what the ideal stack should look like for you. We ran the same exercise here at LG and now are on our way to our ideal end state digital stack.

A common question I get asked all the time is “What are the components of an ideal digital stack?”

Every company and business has different needs so there isn’t a perfect answer to the question but there are some key components that should be in yours:

  1. Content Marketing Technology:
    1. Your goal is to get a specific message to a specific audience. It’s one of the building blocks of digital marketing strategy. Content is king and types of content can deliver great value.
  2. Data and Analysis:
    1. Having goals is important, but the ability to analyze data and measure those goals is even more important. Data can point out new opportunities, and show what is and is not working in a digital strategy.
  3. Lead Nurturing Technology:
    1. The ability to track leads, learn about them and get real-time results to make up-to-the-minute decisions is a huge advantage. It can make digital marketing more successful and help bring more money to the company.
  4. CRM:
    1. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are just what they sound like. They manage all of the data about current and prospective customers. Keep all of this information in one place to make it much easier to handle.
  5. Marketing Automation Tools:
    1. Get help with potentially complex and time-consuming areas like email and social media, as well as internal processes like collaboration, budgeting and workflow.

 

What we use at LG:

After evaluating our business needs, priorities and architecture, we have our digital stack that enables us to drive more visitors to our site and convert visits to qualified leads (MQL’s).

digital-blueprint-

Our stack has enabled us to:

  1. Increase quality traffic and impressions by nearly 200%YoY FY16 vs FY15.
  2. Increase in MQL’s of 400% YoY FY16 vs FY15

We are far from perfect. We have higher goals to hit in 2017. But through thoughtful understanding and consideration, we are on our way digitally. Vamos LG.