How can you keep your headcount lean? Doing a thorough job; making sure that you make the right hires to increase ROI. Working with people that understand the technologies needed for digital marketing.

This can be tricky. A lot of legacy companies still rely on bureaucratic management, and bloated processes that get in the way of digital. Companies must find a way to get past these hurdles and allow digital to come up with a new growth playbook; higher revenues with minimal headcount. You can run a $1 billion company with a team of 5 digital people. As long as you make sure you have people who are digitally strategic, technology/data driven, and agile-minded – including management – you will be able to do it successfully.

It still surprises me to see companies trying to drive growth without adapting to digital. Look at your company; is it settling on legacy PMs that still can't understand how your project management software works, copywriters who love lengthy copy that doesn't convert, or marketing directors who still believe that list-rentals will help get new customers? In the digital world companies can't afford to have people that they don't need – it slows them down and makes them the perfect meal for smaller, faster, more-agile companies.

Of coarse, this means that legacy companies with traditional marketing teams will have to downsize. If a company has 30 employees in marketing, and it's only seeing growth from the digital side with a smaller team, what should they do?

Getting to a mature digital state isn't easy. But it's something to which more companies should aspire if they want to stay in business.

ROA is the positive impact on the organization's profits for the increase in spending in digital analytics. The key here is calculating improved profits thanks to digital analytics minus the original profits that you were getting, multiplied by the period it was used, all divided by the cost of digital analytics. It's very similar to the ROI calculation.

Here's a hypothetical illustration of ROA quantification: You're an online retailer who sells outdoors gear, and manage a digital marketing monthly budget of $340k,
with $3.9mm in monthly sales, for a 1,047% ROI. But, you realize that your current paid search campaigns can still be optimized. Consequently, you invest $36,000 in a media optimizer software to find hidden data insights to improve your paid search marketing efforts, and after 3 months your sales increase to $5mm per month. Obviously, the improvements were made by the whole digital marketing team, but they hadn't been pinpointed until you started using the new software.

Using the calculation logic mentioned above, 12 months of media optimizer software driven analytics will get you a 5,294% return.

CMOs will soon start scrutinizing the impact of digital analytics – as a result of all the money being spent on analytics – demanding to understand what all these tools, services, and people do for the bottom-line. ROA qualification can be you answer to that.

Ten years ago, including happy people smiling in a banner ad was all it took to get someone to sign-up for free weekend getaway. These days online customers look for authenticity signs throughout their digital journey. Think about it; when was the last time you purchased anything from a brand for the first time, ignoring reviews, data security, reputation, etc.?

Digital trust can't be undermined. There are many ways to become more trustworthy. The first step is understanding what your customers like to see here and there, so you can aim to be authentic. I've tested different techniques over the years, including being explicit about who exactly the product is intended for, mixing good and bad reviews instead of just 5-star ones, and showing transparent trust seals.

It doesn't take much effort for a landing page to show authentic signs of trust. Digital trust is built by dropping little hints all through the customer journey, and it is what greases the pan of business online today. It can be the answer to conversion improvement — applying for a car loan, getting a free quote for a home security system, or purchasing a product.

Without a doubt digital trust is a critical part of online conversion. The risk of not testing improvements is very high. Most websites have huge room for improvement. And you have to find a way to reinforce your call to action using trust.