This week, our class had the pleasure to hear and learn from Ron Abraham JR, a digital marketing and content specialist. While living in the UK, Ron is the co-founder of the agency Dominat8, which helps fashion and beauty brands with paid acquisition and performance.
Being week 5 in the course, we have now heard from many different content strategists who have left us with the same advice. Balance your work, be creative, follow your brand kit etc. Many times in Ron’s talk, I heard a lot of repetition from the previous guests about finding your target audience and the need to be creative in your field.
What I appreciated about Ron’s take on content strategy was his focus on data and how data can help a company with its engagement. This was a refreshing take and one that I honestly haven’t really thought about or educated myself on. Data comes from every channel and through his presentation, I learnt about open rates and click through rates in email marketing. By being able to see what your audience is relating to and appreciating, you can understand what language to use to effectively sell to your customers. Furthermore, by arranging your data and customers into levels, you can reach them personally with reminders for example, to move them through the funnel.
Another concept that I made note of was looking at the overall picture first and then moving forward step-by-step. Although, saying; think about what you are selling and what problems you need to solve first before you start content, seems like common sense, it was a good reminder to understand exactly what goals you want to achieve. For me it’s easy to skip right to the content creation process as that seems most interesting but if we sit back and understand the main goal of selling a specific product, it will help with overall sales. It is also important to understand if this content is for brand awareness or customer loyalty as these will have two different visual outcomes.
Lastly, I valued his note of recognizing what exactly we like about ads and then applying that to our work. One ad that I thought of was the new Redken ad with Sabrina Carpenter which has gained some traction. This ad was very entertaining but the part that has made it so successful was the fact that the brand paid close attention to Sabrina’s brand, style and colours which made it a more special collaboration. It’s not often you see hair care ads looking like retro commercials with pastels but it gave it that wow factor to grab attention. This ad was so successful that I didn’t find it from the source but from fans promoting it on their pages.
After graduation, I will look more into learning about data and analytics. This is one aspect of marketing I have not even briefly touched on and hearing about how this has helped Ron in his agency was motivating.
