This week, we have been running the #LoveDigital campaign here at Creare. You may have found your Twitter feed cluttered with our staff’s mugs telling you why they love the digital world.
But we don’t just want you take our word for it, we thought it’d be insightful and fun to extend the question to some of our brilliant partners.
So without further ado, please welcome to the stage Warren Knight, Tamsin Fox-Davies, Yiuwin Tsang and John Hayward…
Warren Knight
Warren is Creare’s (and the UK’s!) social media guru. Since being the keynote speaker at our ‘Digital Demystified‘ event back in July, he has been contributing regularly to our Advice Centre giving great advice on topics like Twitter and how to create and implement a social media plan for your business.
Warren has over 20 years’ experience in marketing and selling products and services globally and over seven years experience working in social media and eCommerce. Since 2008 he has specialised in business growth, helping business owners, entrepreneurs and sales and marketing managers sell more products and services, through social media, digital marketing and eCommerce.
We quizzed him on his love for what he does…
How does ‘digital’ affect your job?
It makes me smarter and allows me to share that knowledge that I’ve gained online. The content that I read online enables me to learn from others and then teach.
What two things do you love about digital?
- It keeps me connected
- It makes me more socialÂ
Why do you think digital marketing is important for businesses?
80% of my marketing spend is on ‘Digital’ – I think that answer’s your question!
You’re a social media guru, what would be the trend you’d predict for 2016 in your field?
I predict that they’ll be more transparency online through “live streaming.” I think tools like Periscope and Meerkat will be paving the way to deepening relationships by making individuals accessible in real time, at any time.
@WarrenKnight
Tamsin Fox-Davies
The Creare team love Tamsin from Constant Contact! Like us, she is passionate about enabling and equipping small businesses to develop and become successful. She gives up her time to teach us, and the world, about email marketing and is always on had to answer questions.
Tamsin has more than ten years small business marketing experience. During this time she has run her own businesses as well as taking the time to support, mentor and train other small businesses owners on how practical marketing can really work.
Here’s what Tamsin had to say on the subject of digital marketing…
How does ‘digital’ affect your job?
My role is to teach digital marketing to small businesses and to support our partners who are mostly marketing companies, so you could say that digital IS my job in that sense. Everything I talk about has a digital marketing connotation to it. Also, I use digital channels as major communications routes for most of my work. This includes Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin as primary channels for me personally, and I also create a lot of blog content and videos which are posted on YouTube. Today life is digital and no business can afford to ignore it.
What two things do you love about digital?
I love the accessibility of digital and the whimsy of it. Social media and email marketing have democratized the digital space to a great extent. YouTube creates teenage millionaires and celebrities, and everyone has a pretty good camera in their phone that they can use to capture images or video and create great content.
In terms of whimsy, I love the humour that we see in so much of the digital landscape. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously on Twitter for example.
Why do you think digital marketing is important for businesses?
There are two huge reasons that digital marketing is important for today’s businesses:
- It’s hugely cost-effective. Email marketing is at the top of this tree, delivering an average of £38 for every £1 spent (according to the DMA).
- It allows you to get your message directly to the people that want to hear it. Customers are able to connect directly with the brands that they want to hear from, and so your message can be targeted specifically for them.
 You’re an email marketing expert, what would be the trend you’d predict for 2016 in your field?
My trend prediction for email marketing is the mainstreaming of segmentation and automation of certain aspects of email messaging. What I mean by this is that it will become normal for businesses not just to ask customers to join their mailing lists, but to ask them what they’d like to hear about specifically and only send those things to them. For example, you might run events, have regular special offers, and share tips on your blog. I could sign up just for events and offers, if I’m not interested in tips. In terms of automation, things like birthday offers, appointment reminders, service updates, etc. will become more common, where at the moment email marketing is still quite a manual process for most small businesses.
Tamsin Fox-Davies – Constant Contact
@tamsinfd Â
Yiuwin Tsang
Yiuwin is our buddy at The Pitch, Britain’s biggest small business competition. As sponsors of The Pitch, Creare work really closely with Yiuwin and his team to provide useful content, inspiring stories and key advice to small businesses at the start of their journey.
Working as a Publisher at Sift Media creators of The Pitch, Yiuwin understands small businesses and is truly passionate about helping them to get up, running and succeeding at what they do.
Here’s his take on digital marketing…
What elements of digital marketing do you come across in your job?
I come across a huge amount of digital marketing in my job working for a digital publisher, we’re right on the edge of digital marketing, seeing first hand the rapidly changing landscape that business need to navigate to land their messages in an effective and timely manner. We work with partners executing marketing campaigns including content marketing, display advertising, mobile marketing, lead generation, insight generation and social amplification.
What two things do you love about digital?
Tricky! There’s so much too love!
Firstly, it’s the scope for creativity and personality to win. There’s no doubt that digital provides very empirical, measurable results; clicks, reads, shares or leads however, what separate the good digital campaigns from the ones that sear themselves into your consciousness is that the whilst former is executed well, the latter are spun with intricate stories and narratives that give the message purpose and longevity, bringing the campaign to life.
Secondly, it’s the people you get to meet working in digital. As mentioned in my first point, there’s some wonderful personalities in the world of digital, people with a real passion and belief that what they bring to the world is something amazing – not in a self gratifying manner, but in a truly altruistic way, bringing energy and expertise to the party that’s properly contagious.
Why do you think digital marketing is important for businesses?
Digital marketing offers two key benefits to businesses: reach and amplification of message. It’s an effective means to reach wide audiences and project the values and character of the business. The important part therefore, is to ensure the message you broadcast is the right one that reflects your proposition effectively but also your values as a business.
You work really closely with small businesses and entrepreneurs, what would be the one bit of advice you’d give them related to digital marketing as they get up and running?
Get help! The digital world evolves so fast. But there’s so much information out there the challenge becomes cutting through noise and pull out the nuggets that will make a tangible difference to your business. Step one, know what these differences are ie know what success looks like for you, be it more traffic, clicks, social followers, whatever, know what you want and work out how you will measure it. Then the testing, trialling (and fun) begins. Test, learn, iterate and build efficiency into your digital marketing. Small businesses can be very agile in their approach to digital marketing – use this to your advantage.
@yiuie
John Hayward
John Hayward has transformed Creare! His expertise in branding and his ability to create practical application to it helped launch the ‘Our People Your Team’ campaign for us back in the summer. John is our newest contributor to the Advice Centre, be sure to check out his posts if you need some down-to-earth small business branding advice.
John runs Hayward Brands, a branding and marketing consultancy businesses that provides jargon-free branding and design work for companies across the UK.
We asked him how his work was affected by digital marketing…
How can digital marketing work with branding?
Your brand is about the perceptions held by your customers, and you’ll want those perceptions to be positive and heading in a direction you want it to be known for. For many your digital marketing is going to play a major role in those perceptions. So your digital team working on the many digital platforms and touch-points need to know (and should ask!) what your brand is all about. It sets a design look and feel, a tone and the messages themselves in your blog, about us page, video or social posts. Fundamentally if you’ve done the right thinking your digital marketing spend will work harder for you.
What two things do you love about digital?
1. It allows all types of business to create something as spectacular, engaging, cool, trustworthy, immersive, informative (I could go on!) as big businesses. The best ones do it even better.
2. Measuring impact.
Why do you think digital marketing is important for businesses?
We shop, investigate, ponder new suppliers, entertain and get social wherever and whenever nowadays, on multiple devices. Word of mouth and reputation are still crucial, but you can bet after someone has heard about you they’ll be straight on ‘something digital’ to check you out. We’re living so much of our lives on-line that the chance to interrupt or be at the end of a conscious search are becoming vital for the vast majority of businesses.
You’re a branding expert, what would be the trend you’d predict for 2016 in your field?
We will continue to become more discerning, more quick to judge and more easily distracted. If you consider the fact that more searches are conducted on mobile phones than anywhere else nowadays, it brings in to sharp focus the need for your brand to look good, stand out and say the right thing quickly and brilliantly.Â
@haywardbrands