It has been about seven years when I first launched the “Online Marketing Switch” website and from there, I had the opportunity to work with amazing people. The site has been the voice to share my work portfolio and spread my personal advocacy to help companies in the Philippines and overseas to switch to online marketing as I help them learn the jargons and reap the benefits for their business. My goal is to open the door of digital marketing to clients and allow them to appreciate it, make them be comfortable with the tools, and use it as part of their overall business strategy.

Our old site has been a huge help but it’s time to introduce a new face and apply some major updates at the backend.

Thankful to have worked with a reliable Web Designer, Ryan Laxamana. We collaborated with the first design long ago and now he is doing his magic with the new one. The site is now using a visual designer called Elementor and php move up to 7.4.

As we agreed from our chat last week, the page is still a work-in-progress, but I already love how the new look! Why I’m blogging on it while still on WIP!

Excited to polish the contents and yet to not lose the heart of the site. I think that’s the most important thing in digital marketing—stay focus, be authentic, and remain human. True that we have to adapt at some point to the many changes from voice search to metaverse and we can find ourselves drowning in jargons, but it is a must to swim and stay afloat with what matters. Our audience are human beings with real concerns, go where they are and talk to them as you would to a friend. Only use the technology to know them more, analyze behavior to tweak the approach to the campaigns, and for them to get in touch the easiest way possible.

There will always be changes. A lot of time and energy are required to create social media contents, interpret the analytics, and for us recently, to redesign the website but let’s keep our ground and stay firm with our objective for our clients and customers to learn from us, and trust that we can truly help them. And when they are ready to reach out, we are just a click away.

Even if your company gets a digital marketing team to run your campaigns, you just don’t drop the tasks to your consultants completely without understanding what’s going on. This does not mean that you have to write the social media content plan, interpret the insights, review the keywords for SEO, or run the boost—it is for them to work on. Rather, be a part of the online journey of your Team and contribute to improve the strategy. I have some clients who are suddenly in awe when they see their ranking move higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) or notice an increase in booking via Messenger. Wins cannot be achieved overnight and there will always be hiccups; some learning curves, trials and errors, series of adjustments but it is always an amazing process to take part.

Consider to have a key participation in identifying who your customers are. Where to find them, what they like, how to converse. There might be jargons that you need to explain; resources to share to the team so they can get a better grasp of the industry and the audience.

You are probably the best endorser of your company. On occasion, why not share and comment on your fan page posts; create a video narrating your story and services or maybe write an article to share your expertise. You are not going to do this alone; you have an online marketing team to back you up. They will definitely give their 100% support as you are providing one of the best contents ever! You do it naturally when writing for a blog page, for example, answer the common questions you have heard from your buyers and let ideas flow. It is then the role of your Team to edit the material for grammars and tweak it for SEO purpose.   Engage. Put a face to your brand.

Monitor what’s going on. I would recommend to meet the Team weekly especially during the first three months to polish the direction and then once a month after that. No need to dive so much into the technical side; what matters is to know if the key performance indicators are achieved. Are we getting conversions on the website after running the Google Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign? How much are we paying for every inquiry sent on messenger? Did we increase our database on Mailchimp after promoting opt-in promos?

Another year has gone by and it comes with many blessings and challenges. Learning several lessons in online marketing and gaining new friends from the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand; conversations mostly happen through virtual setup due to the persistent COVID-19 but fruitful talks happen either way.

I am very thankful to have been granted amazing clients for the entire 2021 despite the economic turmoil brought by the pandemic. It always brings some level of excitement when diving into a new industry and slowly understanding specific jargons; I love creating digital marketing strategy and watch it come to life with real results.

To all my clients, colleagues, partners, and readers… Thank you for the trust and for giving me an opportunity to help, teach, and learn at the same time.

To my family who is always very supportive as they see me daily in my office corner in high and low spirit, excited, puzzled, serious, grumpy (with no coffee yet), lost because of platform glitches and random algorithm updates, and beaming when I get to rank a client #1 on SERP. It is certainly an everyday dose of ups and downs at work but always worth exploring.