Decoding the Digital Age: A Marketer’s Guide to Building Trust and Delivering Results

Hey, hi everyone. Welcome to your show, E-Coffee with Experts. This is your host, Ranmay here. Today we have Susan, who is the Head of Digital of Online Essentials SEM with us. Hey, Susan, how’s it going?

Hey, Ranmay, it’s good. I’m so glad to be here.

Lovely. Susan, before we take it any forward, let’s start things off by talking about your journey a bit and how do you line up in the digital marketing space and also about online essentials or agency. What do you guys do? What do you guys specialize in? And then we take it off from there.

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. As you said, I head up online essentials and I fell into the digital world. I think my story is very similar to a lot of people who came into digital at the same time I did. I actually started in journalism. I worked with a Reuters-based agency, Voices of Iraq. At the same time, I was working for a publication based out of Cairo, Egypt, called Arab West Report. At that time, things in digital were really starting to pick up. Twitter was starting to take over as much more of a medium for people to get their news. At the same time, there was a greater uptake of Facebook and social media. As part of my role within those organizations, it was to increase our readership using online methods. The rest, as they would say, is history.

How did your journalism is interesting, right? How did your background in journalism and international studies shape your transition into the world of digital marketing? Was it helpful?

I think it was helpful that when you work in news and media, you’re always looking to make sure that you’re fact-checking what you’re saying, that it’s easily digestible for your readers, that it provides an open avenue for discourse and learning. I I think digital marketing is very similar in that you need to make sure that you’ve got your groundwork done, you’re standing on informed decisions, and you’re speaking to your audience in a way that they can understand. I think my background helped me translate that to the marketing environment.

Absolutely. You have been in this space for quite some time now, and you have seen enough summers and winters and algorithm updates and all of How your approach to marketing has evolved with the rapid changes in technology and consumer and on all those Google updates every time it comes and it shakes up the market, right? Yes. Give us some insights on that.

I joke quite regularly with my wider team that you’re just going to wake up one day and log into the Google Ads platform and it’s going to be completely changed again because that just seems to be the reality. But I think it teaches you evolution. If there’s anything when it comes to digital, learning how to evolve and how to be proactive rather than reactive is a core skill set. Having worked in so many different iterations of technology as it evolves. First of all, it forces you to continue to evolve yourself. You have to continue to develop your skill set. You have to continually think outside the box and not only understand the new technology that’s available to you, but also embrace it and use that to the benefit of your clients, your campaigns, and the platforms that you’re using. I think if anything to take away from that, it is to embrace the change and evolve with the landscape. Even though we sit here now and say, Is this still going to be an industry 5, 10 years from now? Will it look the same? It probably won’t look the same, but we’ll probably still be sitting here having a conversation about how evolution is is such a fundamental part of the digital marketing journey.

Talking about evolution and the future, while AI is already there, it was always there for that before ChatGPT. But what is your take on this? Where are we heading with all of this AI and machine learning picking at?

I think we’re heading into a world where marketers have a lot more decision-making capabilities at their fingertips. Ai makes it much easier to to digest big data sets, to pull out patterns out of those data sets. I think it can help you create a more structured and defined ideal audience, if you will. Ai is also going to be much better at digesting and absorbing patterns and helping you improve what it is that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis. I use AI regularly. Again, I use it as part of data analysis, but also I use it almost as a training partner and a training tool because it’s great way, if you have a bit of a question when it comes to tracking or set up or anything like that, and you get a bit stuck with a piece of code, it’s almost like an extension of your team where you can harness such a huge powerhouse of knowledge and use it to benefit what it is that you’re doing on that day.

And then paid search is something that you have been doing for quite some time now. What are your go-to strategies, Susan, for maximizing ROI?

I think When it comes to paid, there’s still no getting away from a core keyword set of strategies. That’s been the go-to for many years since Google Ads first was conceived in terms of the single individual keywords to what now is longer phrase match, more search strings that are more likely to be searched by a user on their mobile. For us, it’s still very much getting into the mindset of what it is your consumers are searching and what pain points they need resolving and answering that between the combination of long string keywords and closely defined ad copy. With that being said, there’s no getting away from the fact that Google is also pushing us towards more of their smart-based campaigns. The other platforms are starting to do similar where you have additional AI enhancements to your ad copy, to your images. I think when you’re looking at it from that perspective, it goes back more to your audience profile and really knowing what what it is at the core that makes your audience tick and feeding that information into the algorithm. It’s a mutual approach, really.

Period advertising can be tricky, right? It involves a lot of budgeting and funding, from the client saying. The trust factor becomes very important because if the results can vary and you cannot really guarantee it all the time, I’m sure you’ll be doing a brilliant job, but you cannot really guarantee a result. What are some of your strategies for building and maintaining that trust with your client, even if things go south with a couple of campaigns? If you could back it up with a real use case, maybe that’ll be great.

Yeah, absolutely. I think when it comes to establishing trust with a client, It’s about transparency. It’s about being open with them and not only highlighting your wins, but also discussing your challenges. In doing that, you’re educating the client on the real-life scenario as far what the digital sphere is doing. We had a client very recently, and one of the biggest disruptions in the past year, at least in the EU, has been consent mode B2. What the result of that was is we saw conversions in Google Ads dropped off quite significantly. And so from the top level perspective of the platform, it made it appear as though we were going from about 25 leads a month down to about seven or eight leads a month. So of course, from the client’s perspective, they’re sitting there thinking, Performance has dropped off massively. What can I do? And in some scenarios, this would trigger panic alert buttons. Like, this is a huge drop off in conversions. What’s going on? And it turned out what was actually happening is with the traffic that was not being flagged as far as consent mode goes, it was being bucketed into unassigned or direct traffic in GA4.

It was throwing out all of the attribution journey and laying that out clearly to the client, but then also saying, This is how we’re going to be able to try and resolve this, but let’s keep this an open communication channel is an example of how you can build that trust with the client, not only using your expertise, but also hearing their feedback as well and looking deeper and showing them as you’re going what it is that you’re finding. I think it’s all about communication and transparency between yourself and the client and their wider organization as well.

Absolutely. I love that bit when you said, just highlight your wins. Also, showcase or maintain those pointers in your reporting. That what worked and what did not work, what you’re doing to make it work the next month, the next quarter, whatever it looks like. So that you have the trust and the transparency before they pick it up. They already have, You know what? This did not work this particular month. You’re working on it. So that creates that establishment establishes that trust and relationship with the client. Absolutely. The agency is being honest with me in terms of… Because no business is perfect, no agency, no marketing is perfect. A few things might work, few things might not. It’s better to highlight those pointers in your reporting as well so that the client is aware in terms of and did not wake up to one shock, some wanting that, Hey, you know what? This particular metric is not up to the mark, a thing. But I’m really glad you mentioned that because we as an agency, we follow it deep down that before alerting the wins, let’s hide what did not work and what we are doing to then fix it.

I think it’s also important because it’s easy to get stuck into the details when you’re in that month. Then three, four months later where you’re stuck in new details. It’s nice to have that to be able to look back on and also be able to say, Look at what we achieved over the past year. This is some of the stuff that we’ve tried that did work out. This is some of the things we didn’t try. This is some of the stuff that maybe we need to investigate further. Just having that when you’re all on the same page in that regard, it really does enhance that relationship with your client as well.

Absolutely 100%. In a world There’s so much of marketing noise in and around, and you’ve been there for quite some time, worked across agencies. Probably you’re the best person to talk about it. How do you ensure that your agency agency stands out? You must be pitching to fresh clients, fresh prospects. What do you feel makes you different from all those agencies out there? How do you win that client’s trust? How do you get on boarded?

I think being authentic, being your authentic self is the best way to approach that situation and also to understand that not everything’s going to be a perfect fit. It’s more important to find clients that align with your ethos and you align with theirs as well. You do that in being authentic about your brand and positioning yourself authentically. Also by understanding, again, who your client’s ideal consumer is and can you, again, align with their goals and be authentic with them? Because in a world where, you mentioned ChatGPT earlier, in a world where ChatGPT can spit out ad copy and headlines at the click of a button. It’s important to make sure that we’re not all sounding AI generated. There is a person behind who you’re speaking to, and that, I think, is the key thing for us.

Lovely. Have you said no to a client ever, Susan?

Yes.

Give us that story.

We had a client a few years ago, and they were extremely ambitious, really lovely team, but they were quite determined in the messaging that they were going to be using, and it just didn’t really align with our ethos. We also thought that there was maybe some questionable audience targeting that was going on, and it just didn’t really align with what we were looking for. We passed on that opportunity and actually referred it over to a sister agency of ours, and I believe they worked with them for about three months, and then the relationship, I believe, soured because unfortunately, that client, his expectations in terms of what was going to be delivered was just a little unrealistic, shall we say.

All right. Clients and their expectations, right? The business would want their phones ringing all the time, the business overnight. The business owners, right? I don’t see anything wrong in that. But yes, you got to be a bit realistic as well. Yes. This are no God, right? Yeah.

Also, we really want to believe in what we’re marketing. If we don’t believe in what marketing, it makes it difficult to, again, go back to that authentic message. If I don’t believe what I’m putting out on paper, the audience is going to be able to know that I don’t believe that they’re going to see through it. It lacks that pizazz and that certain factor that you can tell the thought that’s gone into this has been with passion.

Absolutely. As a marketer, you got to breathe in into it, right? Yes. It’s difficult to resonate with the target as much as I want to. I completely get it. Great, Susanne, this has been a brilliant conversation. But before we let you go, a quick advice for our young listeners today. You have been running your own agency, you have worked in an agency set up from journalism to now a digital marketer. I’ve seen it all, right? Any tips for our young listeners who are trying to make a mark in this space and all maybe wanting to start their own agency sometime down the line?

Yeah, I would say Meet as many people as you can, talk to as many people as you can. There is such a wide array of expertise and knowledge in our industry, and you’ll find that most people are more than happy to impart that knowledge. So get involved with groups, get involved with Slack communities, and just put yourself out there and have faith. We all have imposter syndrome. It’s not unusual for people in this industry to feel, wake up in the morning and think, What am I doing? Is this It’s really my life? But it is, and just keep going and embrace change and get out there and do it. It is possible.

Lovely. Following up on that, for our audiences, how do they reach out to you? How do they talk to you?

You can always follow me on LinkedIn. I’d be happy to chat to anybody through LinkedIn, or you can visit our website and get in touch with us this way. But anybody that wants to reach out and have a communication, feel free. We’re here to chat.

Lovely. Great, Susan. Thank you so much, once again.

You’re very welcome.

For taking our time to do this with us. Really appreciate it. Cheers.

My pleasure, Ranmay.