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Join me as I chat to Armin Wieland, Founder & Managing Director at V5 Digital of V5 Digital
Are you a small business owner wondering how (practically!) you can implement digital marketing for your product or service? I called on my friend and digital marketing heavy weight Armin Wieland, to answer some burning questions about going digital. True to form, Armin offered fantastic advice based on his years as experience.
Armin worked for many years in corporate digital marketing before launching his very own digital marketing agency – V5 Digital. This was a longtime dream of his, which was only amplified when he did his MBA at Stellenbosch recently. This, coupled with the fact that there were not a lot of digital agencies in Windhoek, made him realise he was onto a winning business idea. Two years ago, he turned his vision into a reality – and is now making waves in Namibia with a small agency with loads of heart. He is also really encouraged by the startup scene which is emerging in Namibia – full of young people with innovative ideas. The internet, he explains, is the great equalizer. So it no longer really matters whether you are – if you have a good internet connection and the same passion he has for digital – you are already half way there!
V5 Digital brings to life the possibilities of data driven decision making, on various digital marketing channels for the many brands they work on. Now more than ever, businesses seek out Armin and his team’s advice on how to market more effectively online. Whilst there is hardly ever a silver bullet solution to marketing (particularly in a time of crises) – Armin had some great tips on what you can do practically to uplevel online.
One of his first nuggets of advice is to keep marketing – to maintain top of mind awareness even if your sales are down – and that doesn’t have to mean spending loads of time or money on content. He suggests using any down time to review content you have created for your business and expand or adapt upon it – so repurposing it on other platforms or creating a blog post to tell people more about what it is that makes your business so special. Then he urges it’s time to look at an effective paid media strategy to support these key messages. He says that it’s important to promote the messages your customers need to see – but not rely entirely on social media networks. Armin suggests looking at your CRM data and how this can be utilized cleverly – for example for email marketing purposes.
He is also very optimistic about small businesses and emphasizes that they are perfectly poised to embrace digital transformation due to their agility – and the ability to roll out changes quickly – course correcting along the way.
Whilst most trend predictions for 2020 are probably out the window for now – the one trend which Armin believes will endure is automation! This can be as simple as ensuring your Facebook Messenger auto reply bot is set up correctly – or as advanced as you have an appetite for.
Tools which Armin swears by include Trello to work collaboratively with his team whilst working from home, link shorteners like Bit.ly (which Armin always suggests customizing to be more on brand!), Typeform for building forms easily and intuitively (there is a free version!) and the lead generation/marketing automation tool Sharpspring and finally Zapier - the “glue” that connects all your systems and automates messaging.
Armin’s pragmatic approach to digital marketing means that he is able to help clients enhance their presence online without creating unnecessary complexity – but rather focusing on brilliant basics and optimizing along the way.
If you would like to get in touch with V5 Digital, you can email: hi@v5.digital or check out the V5 Digital website here.
A big thanks once again to Armin to being such a great sport in agreeing to be my first interviewee! You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.
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