Steve Pailthorpe, founder and Chief Executive, Iconic Digital
The emergence of artificial intelligence and new marketing tech has resulted in more British businesses turning to digital marketing to increase their return on investment than ever before
Digital marketing is all about building and creating connections with customers and prospects alike. Using your website as your primary digital asset, it enables a business to grow by driving targeted, relevant traffic to its website. Lead-tracking software then allows marketers to nurture prospects and convert more sales leads. Digital marketing promises end-to-end transparency with the ability to track and monitor conversions, proving that a return on investment model has total scalability when managed correctly.
The world has shifted and moved almost entirely online, with a myriad of different marketing channels now available at the marketer’s disposal. Search engine optimisation, paid advertising, social media and marketing automation all drive and direct traffic through to the website. However, many British companies have yet to harness the power of artificial intelligence and marketing attribution modelling to achieve exceptional and ground-breaking results.
“Selective skills in digital marketing can take years to acquire,” says Steve Pailthorpe, Chief Executive of London-based digital marketing agency Iconic Digital. “Developing an in-house team of professionals can be an attractive proposition to larger businesses. However, it’s simply not cost-efficient to recruit, train and develop experienced people with the variety of different digital marketing disciplines which are required to produce real results.”
The world of digital marketing is evolving at an incredible pace. Marketing technology is becoming smarter, with the level of personalisation and segmentation now available to yield significant returns. The industry is moving away from the old-school methods of consultancy and switching steadily towards a new era of methodology. Marketing technology can now tell you who is on a website as well as provide metrics to track and monitor the behaviour of those individuals. Unmasking the people on your company’s website gives marketers the ability to retarget these individuals based on a prospect’s behaviour, via email and paid advertising.
Every day, across every corner of the planet, things continue to change at speed. While some principles in business remain identical, marketing technology continues to evolve at an exponential rate. Big data, artificial intelligence and social media have rocked the world we live in. Amid a global pandemic, companies are seeking innovative ways to generate sales leads, and the digital marketing strategies that focus primarily on lead generation are working well for start-ups and emerging enterprises.
“Within the marketing funnel, larger businesses typically focus on brand building,” says Pailthorpe. “But with tighter marketing budgets for the year ahead, following the global pandemic and Brexit, marketing directors are being forced to consider channels which focus more directly on lead generation. Search engine optimisation, paid advertising and marketing automation strategies typically yield more leads than market engagement channels such as social media and content marketing.”
There’s no denying that the digital marketing revolution has begun. An elite group of digital entrepreneurs has emerged in the UK. These individuals are using digital marketing to transform their business and gain continued successful results. None of these business leaders have to rely on venture capital, investors or bank loans, because their digital marketing pays dividends – and as a result this covers the cost of their marketing investment. Moreover, this generates sales leads that turn into valuable long-term customers.
Iconic Digital is a digital marketing agency headquartered in London. Over the past 10 years, it has pioneered a scientific and innovative approach to digital marketing which has guaranteed a return on investment for each of its clients.
Find out more about Iconic Digital’s digital marketing agency in London.