What Do Project Managers Need to Know About the Latest Digital Marketing Trends

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Project managers are in great demand in marketing, especially now that the digital marketing landscape is rapidly transforming. In fact, an article on Using the Project Management Methods in Digital Marketing highlights that project costs can be reduced by as much as 35% whenever marketing projects adopt the project management system. In addition to the cost reduction, the project management system benefits digital marketing efforts through forming creative teams that can minimise project length and increase the quality of the outcomes.

Organizations need all the help that they can get with project management teams, especially now that marketing projects are more competitive. Our previous article on professional services company Accenture revealed that 80% of businesses are threatened by their competition, due to the adaptation of advanced digital technologies. As such, project managers need to understand the latest digital marketing trends to help businesses stay ahead of the competition.

Trust-building with privacy restrictions

Customer data is vital in digital marketing efforts, since this information allows marketers to understand the preferences and pain points of their target audiences.

Though customer data remains significant, a study on the Perspectives of Business Process Ethics in Data-Driven Marketing Management revealed that consumers lose their trust in businesses that don’t provide explanations or choices for the data collection process. Since the trust of consumers can affect your website traffic and marketing efforts, project managers need to protect the privacy of their target audience by making their terms and conditions visible and giving them freedom over the data collection.

Personalisation of content

Customer-centric strategies are fuelling the success of businesses, but projects running on limited budgets may find it difficult to personalise their marketing efforts for consumers.

Since projects and small businesses operate on a limited budget, digital marketing experts at Ayima explain that project teams can struggle to allocate costs and workflows for their content optimisation. As such, numerous project managers opt to outsource to content SEO companies that can research extensively about the target audience of the project and produce relevant content. These experts can make personalised messages for specific demographics, ensuring that the project's budget is properly allocated.Additionally, local SEO service providers can help projects with niche keyword research and targeted geographic content to reach the right audience. 

Story-building using marketing

Apart from providing personalised content, project managers also need to tell real stories in their marketing projects to show consumers a glimpse of how each product or service can affect their lives.

These sories are important, since the visualisation of a product’s functionality in one’s everyday life can trigger its emotional attributes. To illustrate, Swiss watches have risen in popularity because consumers attribute their luxury to confidence and career success. Similarly, project managers can highlight the symbolisms of products in the consumers’ daily lives to pique their interest and convince them to try the product.

Implementation of conversational marketing

In an effort to become more customer-centric, digital marketers are also adopting conversational marketing strategies to increase the satisfaction of their consumers online.

This can be a very tech-intensive project, since the business development director at business transformation consultancy TMX explains that project managers need to establish a proper channel strategy to communicate effectively with their consumers. The project may need to develop AI programmes so that designated technologies and employees can entertain consumers on every channel. Since unresolved customer conversations can result in a $2 million loss per day, these conversational efforts can better address customer concerns and convince them to purchase the offerings.

Project managers need to keep up with the latest digital marketing trends, especially now that there are numerous products and services available online. Most of these strategies are aligned with the marketing preferences of consumers, thus proving that project managers need to take a closer look at customers' needs and wants.