This is the short and brief version of what I believe in relation to my work.
Always know how to measure success – this encapsulates both to create a KPI framework for you business to evaluate your activities and initiatives, to ensure your analytics is correctly implemented, track events, goals etc. And use attribution modelling and other holistic reporting tools such as DoubleClick to get the full picture of your performance and results.
Transform data insight to knowledge and act upon it – create a dashboard, either using nifty tools or by using Google Analytics. Remove the noise and select data that is relevant to you against relevant KPI’s, which you can access easily and use in your work to get forward faster. You do not want a monthly report – with a collection of data – a month after it’s relevant. You want knowledge you can act on now for real data-driven decisions or marketing.
Your website is key to your online presence – which means that your website should be at the heart of everything you do. Without a well-designed and executed website that caters for your customer’s needs your digital marketing and communications efforts will have less impact and effect. Before you start investing in digital media ensure the basic components and content is in place to truly maximize your media investments.
Dare to fail forward – test and evaluate. Do pilots in one market or three and choose parameters to evaluate against. Learn, and test something new. Digital is such an exciting sphere where everything you do is instant, easily measurable and easy to change.
Dare to be picky with what you invest time or money in – doing something well and dare to choose which activities or social channels you invest your time in. You don’t need to do everything and be present everywhere, make a choice and a selection.
Always evaluate everything – everything you do you should track and measure accordingly, hence you should always evaluate your performance or even your project. Always strive to learn and improve. Evaluating something is the first step to be able to optimize your performance.
Rather invest in new functionality for your website – then throw away money on yet another external campaign website which will only make your digital footprint rather messy to both keep track of and evaluate.
Always focus on your end-customer needs – that’s how you find your business value (and profit) in the end.
Set a purpose – for everything you do. If you can’t answer I’m doing this to achieve Y by targeting X – then don’t do it at all. For your digital marketing activities, this means that you have a primary goal and perhaps a secondary or third goal which you then work to optimize towards.
Invest wisely in digital marketing – dig where you are. Use re-targeting against your website visitors, CRM database, or other functionality to target those you know have shown interest in you. Use whatever advantage you can find in terms of knowledge about who you want to target and use functionality to enhance your efforts – whether it be AdWords, programmatic, writing content for your website or Facebook Ads.
Always make a plan – it’s half the job done. You know what your goal is, what you need to do etc to get there.
Be goal-oriented – however, do not lose track of the bigger picture. Have a holistic perspective with the end goal/result in mind.
Collaboration & teamwork – I believe when you work together either across agencies or as a client and agency – you should act as one team. Everyone contributes and is equally as important to achieve the end goal. Whether it be in the planning phase or creating new concepts. It’s a shared responsibility and with this mindset in a team across client and agency – you’ll achieve better results and also, you’ll have more fun along the way.
Curious questions – help me understand the bigger picture, my clients, my team. As I believe everything is possible, if you have the right resources, my tool is curious questions and I have loads of them. When you meet me you will understand, and you will meet someone who asks “Interesting, why is that?” a lot.
Authenticity – I strive to tell everyone I work with, whether it be a client or a team member – to be the one who tells it as it is. To be completely honest and transparent. How uncomfortable the truth may be and even if it would mean that a collaboration would not proceed in terms of sales of services. I believe in always doing what is best for the client’s end goal.
With heart – we are all humans. In an increasingly digital world, our humanity, feelings and experience matter even more. I dare to bring a compassionate element with me, in my work, no matter the circumstance. I strive towards acting with compassion and understanding.