How To Roll With The Punches Of The Digital Marketing Industry (And Still Beat The Competition!)

The technology that surrounds us in our daily lives is constantly evolving.

Digital marketing is no exception, as it’s on the same road of frequent and ongoing innovation.

But with innovation comes change, with change comes new processes, and with that comes new tactics.

Many of our clients allocate a majority of their budget to the two most widely used and dominant digital marketing platforms, Myspace and Friendster.

Just kidding, it’s Google and Facebook. And just like any other company in tech, to remain the top players, those channels are working towards a better advertising platform, not to mention frequent rule changes.

How can digital marketers stay ahead of those updates and changes? And how can they use their grit to confidently beat the competition and provide the most value to clients?

Four words: Rolling with the punches.

Doing so in digital marketing can be tough, but there are a handful of strategies smart digital specialists use to stay ahead of the game. At the end of the day, it’s part of our job to ensure everyone on our team up to date with every platform change, so we can execute our client campaigns accordingly.

Here’s how we roll with the punches.

First, the straightforward answer:

Marketers stay updated via the announcements made directly from the platform. These announcements can be announced in a variety of different ways including emails, in-platform notifications, or on the social media accounts or blogs of any given platform.

Second, the outside of the box answer:

Something I adopted as soon as I started working at Wpromote was Google Alerts. Google Alerts are simple and effective. You simply put in a keyword or phrase (don’t worry, we’re not building a search campaign) and Google will send you an email with many of the top articles related to that word or phrase.

Here are a few of my favorite alert worthy search terms:

• Specific Competitors. If you have a brand you specifically compete with, you can set up alerts for their names to stay up to date on what they’re doing and adapt to the competition.
• iOS Updates. Updates to hardware on phones may affect how a viewer sees their ads. This alert is a good to stay up to date with hardware updates.
• FTC Advertisement News. It’s not often that rules are passed by the FTC that affect your everyday work. But it can be interesting and potentially valuable if a new rule or law is passed that can affect how your company runs advertisements online.

With alerts, sometimes you’ll hear rumors about potential platform changes (not to rely on, but to start thinking about). Sometimes you might hear of an actual announcement before you’re able to find it from the platform itself. Alerts also send articles from a variety of different marketing and tech websites. Some of the articles provide thoughts and tactics that can help us as marketers spark our own thoughts and ideas of how to adapt to the changes and updates of a given platform.

Third, the social answer:

Should you be using social media for social media updates? Fair question. Twitter and Reddit are platforms open for 24/7 conversation, debate, and news updates. On Twitter, there are many marketers who voice news about platform updates as well as their opinions and marketing tactics to their followers. You have to be careful to trust everything you read, but I can’t deny that I have used social media to learn about updates and changes to Facebook or Google along with conversation on how to adapt for success.

I also learned how to melt a cassette tape with a popcorn maker:

Gotta love social media!

Finally, the conversation and collaboration answer:

Rolling with the punches of digital marketing is not a one-person job. At Wpromote, Slack is used on a daily basis to share updates, changes, and the best ways to adapt for success. News and idea-sharing is a team effort, and one of (if not) the best way we as marketers stay ahead of the game to beat the competition and provide maximum value to our clients.

Okay, one final note…

Digital marketing is not an exception when it comes to constant technological innovation. To stay on top of the game and remain competitive in the digital marketing landscape, it’s essential that we as marketers roll with the punches and stay updated on each and every change and innovation.

At our agency, it’s part of our job to ensure everyone on our team is up to date with every platform change. That way we can assure every one of our clients have the best chance at growing their brands successfully.