In a Digital Marketing setup, your team is key. Your vision could be great, your idea might have weight, but is your team at par with you? In order to ensure that your team is capable of delivering your vision, it is your responsibility to form a capable team.

But how to do that, how to ensure that the 5 member or 8 member team you have chosen will be able to cover the task. In fact, not just cover it but excel at it, making your business grow.

And so, we bring to you a step by step guide to create your own team for Digital Marketing. We will also explain to you their importance so that you know who to add and why.

First, you need to hire a Strategist. Your marketing strategist is the top dog here. He/she will be the person at the top forming the big picture for your company’s direction. It is their task to create a trajectory with the help of strategies that lead towards your vision. This strategist will keep a lookout for marketing trends, utilize them or modify them to get target audience for your business and keep the rest of the department working according to those goals.

It is very important for them to understand your vision and internalize it because they are not only involved in planning but also overseeing. To find a candidate for this position, you can conduct behavioral interviews. Behavioral interview will work best here since you need to assess their past experience in leadership roles and how hey tackled problems.

Websites play a very important role in gathering your target audience. If your website is not able to retain your audience, you have potentially lost them regardless of your social media presence. So you have to make sure that your website is not only aesthetic but easy to navigate. Thus comes the issue of hiring a talented web designer. Once you land a web designer, you will see that his main objective will be to design a website that would limit the bounce rate.

When you hire for this position you will have to look for a team player since the retention of audience does not just depend on the look of the website. The content they see should be equally eye-catchy. Therefore, his work will be closely linked with your content writer.

Hire a creative! Content writing is a vast field that has recently provided numerous opportunities for many individuals. And while not all of them need to be creative to get their tasks done, it is important for you to get a creative individual. Someone who has vast imagination and a ton of online experience. While online experience makes them good at research, it also allows for a free flow of words on any topic. Coupled with imagination they can introduce your brand to new heights.

Remember, the content writer you choose and their chemistry with your web designer can make or break your brand.

Congratulations, your content creator and web designer have set up the website with the CRO specialist and Graphic designer. Now comes the part where you have to direct your target audience towards it. For that you need social media specialists. Gone is the time when the Sudoku guy had to place his website link on The New York Times for free Sudoku. Now is the social media age which is not going away any time soon.

Facebook may be considered old school, Instagram for millennials, while Snapchat for GenZ, however, one thing’s for sure, you can use these mediums to direct traffic. But not every social media user can be your social media manager. Your social media manager or specialist needs to know what drives a particular forum in what way, what its trends are, and how to use the daily trends to attract them towards your social media platforms and eventually to your website.

Obviously, it is a given for them to know the tools to schedule posts because if they don’t, then my friend, they are no social media experts but your everyday Facebook users.

Obviously, there are many more positions you need to fill. For instance, you need to hire a Data Analyst, have the right influencers on board, and also have a programmer. But the above mentioned team is the core team you need for effective digital marketing operation.

With the pandemic taking over the world, we have seen businesses adapt to the new normal after first stumbling a little. Marketers had to adjust as well. With lockdowns they had to make use of digital platforms more compared to pre-Covid times. And with increasing marketer involvement, Digital Marketing got a makeover. Let’s see what happened.

I do not think we will be forgetting this any time soon. The frenzy people fell in and the chaos that erupted will remain fresh in everyone’s mind. But that was the start of the lockdown when people were scared. They wanted to be prepared. So they ordered everything they would need; from tech products to gym equipment.

Retailers went out of stock. This surprised the retailers who were basically running on on-demand inventory model. Following this, the retailers are now moving away from this model, especially considering the expected second coronavirus wave. Not to forget the online shopping stores that became all the hype since people could continue shopping from the safety of their homes.

What is loss-aversion psychology? It is the mindset which feels unease until it knows it has avoided all the known losses. The idea that we should avoid losses is stronger than something’s acquisition. Are you getting the flow here?

See, with the advent of this pandemic, the toilet paper also went away. Why? People were scared they would lose it. Digital Marketers know it too. So now you will see it being employed ubiquitously across all platform in the post-Covid times.

Amidst, COVID pandemic various myths were escalating through various social media platforms. People would get PHDs from the respected WhatsApp universities as they were jokingly called. And they would try to do practical of those myths in hopes of COVID cures on themselves, and sometime their families. As expected those homemade remedies didn’t work out leading to consumers becoming skeptical.

Time went on, people started to not trust these myths. The digital marketers picked on that too. And now the marketers should and will take approaches that are more relatable to this increasingly skeptical public.

People really don’t care about low price deals even in times of crisis. Basically what this means is that although we are going through hard times due to the worldwide pandemic the majority of the public is choosing to buy higher priced products in exchange for quality rather than untrustworthy products with lower price. To prove this there are two products which are being bought in this way masks, and sanitizers.

With people buying sanitizers that gave itches or other skin diseases, they became careful about the quality. They began to favor high prices in exchange for high grade masks. These examples might be unusual and distressing but they nevertheless prove that what customers prioritize is acquiring what they need from brands they believe in.

And this should go without saying. When everyone is inside, why will brands spend on OOH advertising? So that followed Jack and Jill. But to replace that, online platforms were readily available for the public which was absent from Times Square was now on TikTok.

Digital marketing is also comparatively easier for brands considering it takes limited spaces and limited resources. So like you have aspects such video content, content marketing, interactive content, and the ability to personalize the experience which plays an important role in customer retention.

So all these touch points of digital marketing make life easier and much more efficient for the brand.

Don’t we just love it when people listen to us? Even when huddling with our group of friends and everyone is talking with each other, don’t you just love that one friend who gives you his full attention? Similarly, when you pay attention and listen to your customers, they love it too. Paying attention towards what they like and dislike, always hearing what they are saying; it is called social listening.

Now, I don’t mean that you start stalking your target group. But when you listen and you show that you are listening to them, that is when you relationship with them strengthens. And how you convey that? Through your marketing strategies of course.

So in this article we will discuss how social listening can be used for digital marketing. And it will be very useful for if until now, all your communications have been along the lines of talking at someone.

So first of all, monitor your own brand name!
How to do that? It’s simple. Instead of just knowing when you are tagged somewhere on social media, you set up a tool that notifies you even where you are just mentioned and not tagged. Sometimes what happens is that the consumers do not tag you when giving honest reviews. Keep an eye on those honest reviews and experiences.

For instance, you hear, by monitoring your brand, your current content does not stand for a certain social issue. IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN. If your target audience is someone who cares about this issue and if you see that it is something you should stand for, incorporate it in your future content.

And it does not have to be that big even. You don’t have to look for new social directions for your campaigns, look for technical things as well. So for example, see what your audience is searching or talking about, and cater your content to that. Use those keywords in your content, and make sure your headlines reflect that.

This might sound creepy but it really isn’t. Monitoring your competitors will allow you to get a grasp on what’s in. And you will know this stuff without doing experimentation on your own. So for example, you find out that something didn’t work for them, you won’t have to invest time and effort on a similar idea for your brand.

And monitoring them will also help you expand your own knowledge. Stick with me here. So what I am trying to say is that hypothetically speaking, you see something worked for your competitor. Now you know what works, what hits the consumers where you want it to.

However, you can’t use that exactly as it is. Because if you do, you will be accused of copying. Plagiarism is never endorsed by anyone. So you will have to brainstorm for ideas. You will have to brainstorm for methods to broadcast the same notion in a different packaging. And that is how your competitors teach you as well.

There is a lot more you can do here. But what you are really doing by social listening is, you are getting to ‘know’ your audience. And it all boils down to your audience. Are they happy with your content? Do they want something different? Who they want to follow? And by hearing them out, you will be better able to generate strategies that bring your consumers right to your website again and again.