I had the opportunity to present a Digital Marketing Refresher: The Latest Tactics & Strategies to Promote a Business Online last week at Franklin College and the Taylor Institute in Lugano, Switzerland. I shared with the audience my perspective on what's new marketing-wise and how companies are leveraging the web to boost their businesses.
Franklin College and The Taylor Institute reside in Lugano, a beautiful city on the Swiss / Italian border, known for its lake, incredible scenery and temperate climate.
I invite you to view the presentation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r8oBvfpbuI.
My takeaway from the audience was that marketers in Europe have a significantly greater set of variables to account for, given the multi-language and cross-continent nature of their target audiences. While here in the United States most marketers have a fully stacked plate just dealing with each of the major search engines and social media channels, our European counterparts also face the challenges that emanate from country-specific search engines, social media outlets and domain extensions that complicate their tasks immensely.
One of the themes of my speech was to keep digital marketing efforts simple and become proficient in singular aspects incrementally, rather than trying to accomplish everything all at once (with limited resources).
An observation from walking around both Lugano and Milan, Italy is that there are a significantly fewer businesses actively promoting their social media presence on billboards, in storefronts and on television. It doesn't appear that level of engagement has made a foothold with businesses yet. Therein lies an opportunity somehow.
No matter your location in the world, there are numerous commonalities within digital marketing. That said, be sure to also be sensitive to unique factors that arise based on the markets you are operating in.
