Behind the Screen with Digital Strategist Haily Nguyen

Tell me a little about what it’s like to be a Digital Strategist with 2060 Digital in Washington, D.C.

Well, first, I’m very fortunate to work in the same building with an award-winning news organization and be supported by a professional team of account executives. My goal when I meet with prospects and clients is to listen and understand their marketing objectives before strategizing how we can use digital marketing to accomplish their mission. I spend a lot of time educating and consulting before I even come back with a strategy. The digital landscape changes weekly and I appreciate that the company is constantly sharing knowledge between our markets.

That’s a good point – it’s not just you trying to figure it out all on your own in D.C.

It really isn’t. For instance, last month, Google invited us to their Chicago office for training, and I was able to meet with the Chicago 2060 team. The strategists there and I have parallel roles, but there are different things we’re doing and seeing great success, so being able to share those ideas and strategies with each other is really helpful.

Are there any specific challenges you see your clients facing in the D.C. market?

In D.C., there are a lot of companies and organizations that just don’t have the content or the material to market online. The challenge we often hear from our clients is that they have limited resources and bandwidth to create content – they may not have writers or videographers, or a project manager who can create campaigns around the content. So the fact that we can make it a one-stop shop enables our clients to focus on other areas of their business.

So that’s how 2060 can be a difference-maker for them?

Right. We can create really good, high-quality content from the start that can be leveraged on different digital platforms in a variety of ways throughout the year. We’re not re-inventing the wheel every month – instead we use all the different tools we have, from banner ads to Facebook and LinkedIn, to strategically position their content on the platforms where their target audience might be to consume it, whether it’s a video, eBook, or a white paper series. And typically we can see in Google Analytics that anywhere from 40-70 percent of the traffic driven to that specific piece of content was due to our digital marketing efforts.

That’s awesome.

I know. There aren’t this many federal agencies or government contractors in other markets, so it just shows that digital marketing does apply to any kind of niche because it can be so targeted. If you want to reach government employees who are interested in something as specific as data consolidation, we’re able to build strategies that can target that B2B audience. I mean, that kind of targeting can be unnerving for the non-marketing person, but as marketers, it’s fantastic and very exciting.

So, speaking of non-marketing people, how much interpreting do you find you have to do of the results 2060 brings in?

Well, whether they’re marketers or not, I think interpretation is a huge part of my role. I have a client right now marketing a $10,000 device, and they wanted to know why they weren’t getting any sales. What we found in our analysis was that not only did we drive their web traffic over 300 percent this month, but people were looking at two, three, four pages of content – they’re doing their research. Not many people are going to just spend $10,000 right away without taking some time investigating the company and the product. So it was a matter of showing the client what those numbers actually meant and then using that information to make decisions for our strategy moving forward.

When it comes to reporting, the main thing any client wants to know is “how does this information matter?” Most of our clients are required to report up to an executive or a team of stakeholders, and we want them to be able to justify their collaborative marketing efforts with us. So we help them understand what the results mean which in turn helps them articulate why digital marketing matters to every department in their organization. We want that information to make sense so they can make better and more informed decisions for the future.

What would you say is one of the biggest differentiators about 2060 Digital?

The way that 2060 Digital approaches marketing – the scope of our services and the time we take behind the scenes to optimize campaigns. We’re not a set-it-and-forget-it operation. You could go to any agency and get a digital strategist and some digital marketing services. But you’re not going to get our team of experts with the specialized knowledge and technical expertise each of us brings to the table. From our strategists and project managers to our designers and content writers, we spend the hours and have the confidence to analyze and work creatively to get clients to their goals. That’s the differentiator – it’s us.