1. Please introduce yourself, your company, and what you do!
My name is Kas Szatylowicz and I am an outreach coordinator at Nightwatch- an advanced, all-in-one SEO tool. I have recently transitioned to this role from the social media manager position and am really enjoying it.
In my day-to-day work, I get to connect and collaborate with other marketers and companies who share similar values to Nightwatch. My tasks mainly focus on link-building, guest posting, and running outreach campaigns to promote our tool.
2. What is the biggest lesson you've learned in your time as a digital marketer?
One of the best aspects of working in marketing, and especially in outreach, is the ability to connect with other like-minded people and to collaborate and exchange ideas with them. This made me realize the power of professional relationships.
Those relationships can hugely contribute to the business growth of the company as well as serve as a powerful network of professionals ready to help you out beyond the scope of a business, for example with personal projects. And vice versa.
This is something I have experienced many times and am always amazed to realize that not many businesses are aware of it (and they are really missing out!).
3. What aspect of digital marketing do you enjoy working on the most and why?
As mentioned previously, building new connections is what makes me happiest in my work. I use it a lot in link-building. A few months ago we've come with an idea of a long-term collaboration with carefully selected marketing experts and bloggers.
We've realized that mutual help when it comes to link exchange and social media promotion can be very beneficial for both sides. This involved reaching out and connecting with numerous marketers and brought us outstanding results when it comes to expanding our backlink portfolio and enhancing the social media presence.
I also really enjoy writing and performing marketing research as it always inspires me and gives me insights I was not aware of before. Understanding and implementing the principles of effective copywriting is something that I find to be both - intriguing and powerful. This psychological aspect of the marketing world, where you are taught how to encourage or discourage certain behavior is what pushed me to pursue my career in this field in the first place
4. What are some challenges that you think the industry faces today?
In fact, there are a few challenges that the marketing world would have to quickly deal with.
First of all, the low quality of the information and its overload. A good example is the hype around artificial intelligence and its use in marketing. I've read numerous articles on the topic and unfortunately found many of them to be complete nonsense.
We are bombarded daily with useless information that adds no value, neither to the businesses nor to the individuals. There are plenty of marketing-related articles, such as "5 Steps To..." that brings absolutely no value and solely contribute to the marketing news garbage that we are all responsible for.
But this also gives me hope because the companies and marketers focused on giving real value will always find their crowd and eventually stand out.
The second challenge is the short attention span and the lack of novelty when it comes to marketing promotion. Internet users are growing immune to the marketing information we throw at them. It seems as if the majority of businesses use the same old marketing strategies, only because they have a proven track record from the past.
Giving a low-quality freebie (e-book etc) for an email address is no longer working as the inboxes of our potential customers are already overflowing with useless emails offering free ebooks, courses etc. We have to understand that our potential customers are becoming pickier and are expecting their experience with our brands to be highly personalized.
5. What are some key mistakes you often encounter when it comes to digital marketing campaigns?
In my view, the success of digital marketing campaigns starts with solid research related to your target group. Unfortunately, too many campaigns are simply targeting the wrong crowd. It does not matter how good is your project if the people you market it to do not need it.
Apart from it, the lack of clear CTA and guidance for our potential customers on what to do next is what makes your sales funnel narrow down too quickly. It's important to remember that if your customers don't know what is expected from them, they will most likely not do what you need them to do (for example in the lead generation process).
6. Finally, where do you think the industry is heading in 2019?
I believe that 2019 will be about decluttering the marketing space and allowing companies with strong values and excellent products to thrive. I also think that there will be a significant shift in PPC advertising and influencer marketing.
We can already see the decreasing amount of people spending significant time on Facebook. The migration of the crowds to Instagram is just the start. With the short attention span and being immune to platform advertising (such as Facebook or Instagram), users will want to become even more autonomous in their decision-making process.
I think this will translate into people doing even more of their own research and being very careful with their buying decisions. This also means that influencer marketing would have to be redefined. In 2019 it's no longer about the number of fake followers, but rather about the real connection those influencers share with their audience.
And in my view, this change and leaning towards a more educated approach will hugely benefit the companies that display the right values, offer a personalized experience, and market excellent products or services.
Thank you, Kas!
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