“We must not, as executives and marketing professionals, miss the mark and mission of what 21st century marketing has afforded us the ability to consistently and predictably achieve; things like more leads, more customers and higher revenue,” asserts Tom Donohoe, the CEO and founder of Level.Agency, an award-winning digital advertising agency based in Pittsburgh.
“Does your marketing team talk about impressions, clicks, and likes on Facebook more than cost-per-sale, and return on marketing investment?,” Donohoe asks in his debut book, The CEO’s Digital Marketing Playbook; The Definitive Crash Course and Battle Plan for B2B and High Valve B2C Customer Generation.
“If the answer is yes, you are setting money on fire,” Donohoe quips.
Welcome to the candor of a man who offers the C-suite of America’s high-end brands a focused look at what many companies fail to understand or execute when it comes to digital marketing. He explains, in his new book, how to fix what’s not happening in a company’s marketing and sales funnel, especially for companies that sell B2B or high end B2C.
“Digital advertising is the best, most cost-effective vehicle to win new business in B2B and high-value B2C,” says Donohoe, whose digital advertising agency has been on the Inc. 500 list and won an E&Y Entrepreneur of The Year Award, among others.
He boils down his prescription to four essential things that he calls The Core Four, and eight more areas he labels The Advanced Eight once the fundamentals are in place. He clearly details how a company should spend marketing dollars to drive more customers and revenue – and to do so profitably. His play book is geared towards billion dollar corporations to small businesses, both which frequently don’t execute on the essential, must-have arrows in the quiver of digital marketing.
Donohoe shares his strategies, tips, and insights on:
• The four essential digital marketing campaigns that every company in the world needs to run.
• How to focus all marketing conversations on things that deliver immediate ROI – and why clicks, retweets, and likes are not nearly as important as how much marketers talk about them.
• How to prioritize the major digital channels efficiently – search engines, social networks, display advertising, email campaigns.
• Why there is a 99% chance your company is not deploying the most simple, profitable campaigns and marketing tactics to compete in the 21st century.
• The key questions all CEOs need to be asking their company’s marketing leadership.
• Why and how terms such as PPC, SEO, and SEM are misused, misunderstood, and miscalculated.
• If you care about profitable marketing, you must use Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and stop talking about any other digital channel.
• What needs to go into today’s ad creative in order to break through the clutter.
• Why tech terms and digital tools confuse most CEOs and CMOs – leading them to underperform and mismanage.
• The trends, challenges, and changes of the digital marketing landscape.
• What needs to be on a must-have, high-level strategy checklist for every company on Earth.
“This book is about creating new, or engaging with current, customers and driving more revenue and profit, and the methods, tech, ad channels, and work that it takes to do those things all day, every day,” says Donohoe. “Sometimes they’re not sexy, but they definitely work.”
The relatively cheap, easy, and most profitable types of things companies should be doing include:
• Advanced tradename search engine advertising on Google and Bing.
• Advanced social media advertising via Facebook/Instagram.
• Using digital advertising to nurture leads and customers can lift ROI by more than 35%.
• Stop treating email as if it can get you new customers.
• The use of landing pages versus your homepage.
“I fear that a huge percentage of a CEO’s or CMO’s marketing mindshare, let alone the stuff that employees in marketing departments really do on a daily basis, are focused on things other than activities directly tied to customer generation, revenue and profit.”
The CEO’s Digital Marketing Playbook highlights what does and does not work well in digital marketing and advertising. It could all change tomorrow, but for CEOs and CMO’s looking to execute smart, cost-effective digital campaigns for today’s marketplace, Donohoe provides us with the tools, insights, and strategies to succeed.
Steven Maglio at DiNapoli’s Stone Mill