Ryan Mathews is the Director of Marketing at Adaptive Insights and author of the book, Pro-Active Marketing. Prior to Adaptive Insights, he worked as a senior marketing executive at HubSpot and Marketo, and served as Director of Marketing for Jive Inc. He has also held senior marketing roles at GoDaddy and Yahoo! and in his personal time, he consults with numerous blue-chip brands on digital marketing strategy.
Digital Marketing Career
In the world of digital marketing, Ryan Mathews has worked with brands such as HubSpot, Marketo, Jive, GoDaddy, and Yahoo!. Since joining the Adaptive Insights team in 2017, he has helped the business double its revenue and grow its customer base. Outside of work, he holds a Master’s degree in Business Analytics from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Carnegie Mellon University. He also sits on the board of directors of the Chicago Entrepreneurship Program and is a member of the Young Professionals Group (YPG) of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s).
Saving Industry Experts Time
One of Ryan Mathews’ primary goals is to save industry experts time. He explains that for years, marketers have been putting in long hours, only to generate marginally better results than before. To combat this, Mathews focused on areas where marketers can have the biggest impact – such as SEO, content strategy, and social media – and tried to automate the processes as much as possible. This not only reduces the number of times experts need to intervene, but also increases the likelihood that the work will be performed to a higher quality.
How Digital Marketers Can Become Industry Experts
Ryan Mathews’ approach to becoming an expert in digital marketing is to start early and build up experience. Once you’ve completed your education, obtained a job, and developed a track record, you can then apply for an expert designation. To begin your journey to becoming a digital marketing expert, you can take online courses such as Digital Marketing All Inclusive from Kognitiv or the Google Digital Marketing Specialization. Alternatively, you can look into joining a reputable digital marketing agency, where you can gain hands-on experience and become a valued member of the team.
What Is Digital Marketing?
If you’re not familiar with digital marketing, it’s time to learn. The purpose of digital marketing is to attract, retain, and motivate customers to interact with a company online. To gain these objectives, marketers use digital and offline marketing tactics, devices, and platforms. Traditional marketing is still present in some form, but the focus is on marketing to consumers and engaging the social media generation through video content.
The Four Main Pillars Of Digital Marketing
Based on his extensive experience in the field, Ryan Mathews outlines the key areas marketers should be focusing on to establish a digital marketing program and drive growth. He breaks down these pillars as:
1. SEO.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the rankings of a website or an app in search results. SEO is a critical component of any digital marketing strategy, as most consumers start their search for products or services online and then land on a business’ website. Having a higher ranking in search results means gaining exposure to more potential customers.
SEO is extremely important because consumers often don’t venture past the top few search engine results on their search engine. So, you can bet your sweet bippy that business owners, marketers, and SEO managers will be hard at work trying to improve a website’s or an app’s SEO.
2. Content Strategy.
While SEO focuses on drawing in customers through search, content strategy determines what those customers will see once they’ve arrived. In other words, content strategy decides what information a business will give to its potential customers about the products or services, as well as how that information will be presented. A content strategist’s job is to ensure that all the content a business creates is designed to engage audiences, encourage action, and improve conversion.
A content strategist’s role is changing as consumers increasingly expect to find relevant and interesting content when searching for products or services online. Therefore, content strategists have to keep up with the latest news, trends, and technologies to ensure that their content is always fresh and engaging.
3. Performance Marketing.
Performance marketing is a combination of marketing and advertising aimed at attracting, motivating, and engaging customers to take a certain action. This could be signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase online, or filling out a form or survey.
As a marketer, you probably engage with your audience on a daily basis and have an idea of what would make them most interested in your content or messaging. Performance marketing allows you to test and improve your approach, by allowing you to see how effective your strategy is in comparison to others.
4. Social Media.
In keeping with the overall theme of this blog post, social media plays a major role in our information-gathering and -sharing society. And boy, has the world of social media evolved in the past few years!
If you’ve been in the marketer’s chair for even a short period of time, you’ll be familiar with the dozens – and often hundreds – of accounts, platforms, and channels that are intertwined in today’s digital marketing world. It’s a lot to keep up with, let alone master!
Fortunately, with the right guidance, tools, and training, you can take the stress out of social media management and let technology do the work for you. Platforms like Hootsuite allow users to schedule posts in advance and measure the success of their campaigns using analytics. Additionally, many social media platforms offer free trials so you can test the waters before committing to a paid plan. Once you’ve determined that this is the right fit for your business, you can then train your team to create engaging content that will draw in and retain customers on your behalf.