How to Create an Effective Online Marketing Strategy with @PeterLeshaw #vcbuzz

Q1 How did you become a digital marketer? Share your career story!

Back in ‘97 attending @FAU and working as a PC tech consultant with @jlaratro, I was offered a job to become @EDCofSouthFla’s first Dir of Internet Marketing. I was in charge of SEO and generating revenue from banner sales (sponsorships).

I continued on in school while working and earned a masters degree in Information Technology. I left EDC and started a PC Consulting / Web Marketing company.

Since then, I have been working both in-house and as strategist for the last 18 years until it led me to where I am today where I work as the Sr. Dir. of Digital Marketing @Peak_Activity

Q2 What does an online marketing strategy entail? What are its goals and components?

An online marketing strategy for me means a well optimized, multi-channel digital marketing campaign that speaks to the customer on multiple levels, tones, and mediums..

A mixture SEO, Content Marketing, Social Commerce, SEM and Paid Search, of course Email and Affiliate Marketing if possible.
It may seem like a lot. No, it all does not need to be deployed on Day 1. There will need to be KPIs fully defined before the campaign is created, tracking must be in place, and A/B testing must be a part of everything.

I can’t say enough about Dashboards. Real-time Dashboards that track the KPIs that are pre determined to be the grading factor of the entire campaign, need to be set up on multiple levels so that each channel is analyzed for its ROI and lifetime value.

In short, Goal are to eventually speak to your customer on every level available, the components are segmenting your audience, marketing message, and track everything.

Q3 How to go from planning to implementing? Where to start and how to get organized?

Every successful digital marketing campaign needs an experienced strategist that can help guide a team to deploy said campaigns with successful tracking AND WITH DEFINING CLEAR EXPECTATIONS.

Working with an experienced strategist means that you should have clear defined goals (this helps to grade the performance of the strategist too)… BUT that also means that you should have VERY clear expectations about how the campaign can and should perform as well as a plan for when to make course corrections, if needed.

The experience of the leader should bring the ability to hire talent, very easily and effectively, in every market (location). Building an scalable team is very key to making certain that the implementation process goes smoothly.


Q4 How to avoid over-planning and maintain balance? How to encourage your team to go beyond the plan by getting creative and innovative?

Overplanning is overcome by having a culture of testing within each campaign. The outcome of the testing can change the course of the plan. Change, as a result of a test, improves efficiency.

So you see, it’s a machine that evolves and overplanning should not happen because the data is right there in front of you. Change the plan, when necessary…make adjustments in the interim.

I always look for way to grow a team. Let’s face it, every digital specialist has the ability to have a side hustle.

Although not entirely encouraged, it is possible to nurture this so that your team can practice their trade and test new ideas on someone else’s campaign…then bring back the successful nuggets in-house.

Another way, As a team, contribute to a non-profit / charity event and offer digital services or related services to the success of that campaign or fundraising efforts. Test new ideas, call to actions, and messaging platforms. Bring back new ideas in-house.