Last week Kristjan-Paul Raude, CEO of WSI Online digital agency gave two lectures in University of Tartu: first an open lecture „How to grow your brand and sales using digital tools?“ and then an interactive seminar for IdeaLab STARTER program participants. The topic was suprisingly popular – in the STARTER seminar there was almost 100 people!

During the seminar Raude explained the client’s buying behaviour, gave an overview on different opportunities in digital marketing and shared some practical tips on creating a digital marketing plan. In more depth he talked about social media channels, content marketing, creating a strategy and marketing optimization tools. He also introduced inbound’ marketing: it is a marketing method that helps to market and sell more customer-friendly, focusing on the customer’s needs and interests.

„Inbound marketing is about using marketing to bring potential customers to you, rather than having your marketing efforts fight for their attention. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more. „ – definition by Hubspot.com

As a practical exercise, client personas for specific companies were created.  In the groups participants thought trough the demographic features of an ideal client, their values and wishes, problems and needs. In starter program they also learned how to use marketing tools, such as Google Trends for finding future trends and relevant keywords – as the world is nowadays changing so fast and long-term marketing strategies are becoming useless, keeping up with trends is crucial! Teams also did a quick competitor research, analysing what works for their competitors in terms of marketing.

One of the STARTER program team leaders Ako said that before workshop he didn’t have high expectations, but he’s always open for new knowledge and experiences. „What I learned from this workshop was determining the target group and why’s that important“, adding that he recommends everyone to participate in IdeaLab seminars – it’s a place for finding new contacts and learning new things!

• WSI Online blog (in Estonian)
  
• Inbound marketing article in Hubspot.com
• Google Trends