The first Wednesday of November is World Stress Awareness day as stress is a major issue in today’s day and age, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to The American Institute of Stress, around 33% of people report feeling extreme stress, 77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health and 73% of people have stress that impacts their mental health. Stress affects all people regardless of your age, sex or religion. At least 91% of Australians feel stressed about one or more important aspects of their life.  

Every career has an element of stress and the same goes for digital marketers. The importance of digital marketing has opened a number of doors for individuals, online media continues to grow therefore so does digital marketing. Businesses require an online presence and hire digital marketers to do the job, in fact, digital marketers were the most hired people by companies in 2015 according to Smart Insights. Although a career in digital marketing is rewarding in itself by helping businesses reach their business objectives with an online presence, there are many factors that can cause digital marketers to stress about their jobs. 

Stress causes for digital marketers

There are always buckets of stress that every digital marketer has to deal with. These stresses come in different forms and are triggered by different causes. The end result is that digital marketers find it difficult to formulate successful marketing campaigns, generate traffic and ultimately drive conversions. 

Here are the top 5 causes of stress and solutions for digital marketers:

1. Measuring metrics ????

The cause: The act of measuring metrics is not exactly stressful, yet the stressful part of metrics can be divided into two forms:

• A digital marketer has put their heart and soul into a campaign for at least six months, eventually, the campaign comes to an end and the results are calculated. The metrics, however, indicate that despite all the hard work done by the digital marketer, the goals were not met. The last of the budget was utilised on the campaign that did not yield the desired results and there is nothing remaining in the budget ????. Now the digital marketer has to compile the data from the campaign and say that it was not a complete loss as they had learnt more about the user behaviour. And ultimately please for more budget and to try again ????. 

• The second part of the metric stress is the part of having no metrics at all! Content metrics, for example, 88% of marketers integrate content into their marketing strategies, yet 57% of marketers are struggling to measure their content marketing strategies. That is a lot who do not understand, or at least have difficulty understanding, what metrics they are supposed to be used to measure what they need. 

The solution: Goal setting is the key to success and less stress. Defining what is the most important part of the campaign is the first step. These can be the primary, secondary and tertiary goals of the campaign, as defining past the primary goal is important as the goal is not always met the first time around.

2. Tinie Winie Budget ????

The cause: Uh oh… Having a low budget or no budget at all makes it extremely stressful for digital marketers to do their job as most of the time these low-to-no budgets are paired with a side of extremely high expectations. 

The solution: Unfortunately, not everyone is gifted with a large budget. By clarifying realistic expectations from the very beginning, digital marketers are able to inform the client what they can expect to receive. Although digital marketers cannot predict the future, they are able to avoid extreme amounts of disappointment and stress by setting realistic expectations from the get-go. Digital marketers should be aware of inbound marketing and should make use of organic marketing channel to get the job done, such as SEO, email marketing, social media etc. 

3. Google updates ????

The cause: We all love Google, but digital marketers are required to constantly stay on top of every update that Google makes. So much so that they try to prepare before the updates and algorithm changes, just like CleverClicks does. Within a blink of an eye, Google can make major changes that can have drastic effects on their client’s websites both positively and negatively. So yes, Google does occasionally contribute to the stress of digital marketers. 

The solution: Staying up to date with Google’s changes is the only way to reduce stress. Just as Google takes note of things like cyber bugs, spam and other web-related issues, digital marketers should too. By doing so it will help predict when changes are going to happen and the type of changes that will occur. CleverClicks make use of the 1thing, which is the 1thing their clients and blog readers need to know that week. These 1thing posts relate to the changes being made by Google or other social media platforms that may have a direct impact on their clients. 

4. Lack of conversions ❌

The cause: Believe it or not but digital marketers have sleepless nights thinking about if they fail to drive conversions. Even if digital marketers are able to drive a ton of traffic to the website and successfully achieve engagement, this can still result in not driving conversions and will cause major stress for the client as well as the digital marketers. 

The solution: The website needs a closer look at if the digital marketer is able to drive engagement but not conversions. There are three main reasons users leave a website:

1. Slow page speed – the website could be taking too long to load the content. 
2. Complicated design – user experience is important, therefore a simpler approach for the look and feel of the website is far better than a complicated fancy design. 
3. False content – having a message that matches the content is important. If the client promises a 50% discount it needs to be featured on the website. 

5. Strategy development or lack thereof ????

The cause: Producing results has to be the biggest stressor any digital marketer goes through. Even though it has become common knowledge to digital marketers and clients that it takes TIME, we all still want results as soon as possible. This is why so many budgets are wasted, digital marketers have a tendency to go headfirst into trying to produce the best results but forget about developing a strategy that will obtain those results. 

The solution: Defining goals, determining the needs and then defining a strategy is what should be done first in order to get the best results, not working backwards. 

Any new project or campaign should follow these steps:

1. Defining the audience – who is the campaign going to be for? 
2. Defining the goal – what are the primary and secondary objectives of the campaign?
3. Defining the budget – how much can be spent on this campaign to achieve the objectives?
4. Defining the strategy – what kind of marketing would be best to use to accomplish the objectives? 
5. Implementation of the strategy – put steps 1 to 4 together and given the selected method a chance to deliver results.
6. Defining the results – were any results produced from the selected method? Were they close to the aligned goal?
7. Do it all again

Overall solutions for digital marketers 

Continuous learning is important for digital marketers as digital marketing is fiercely competitive. Keeping up with the latest trends is vital to be a valuable asset to any company. Continuous education, training and learning are of importance in this industry as anyone with more experience and a fresh mind can beat you to the job, let alone businesses would much rather work with them. A good way to do this is to attend digital marketing courses as it will assist in tackling tasks and providing more innovative solutions. At CleverClicks we encourage our digital marketers to learn every Friday in addition to watching MozCon and PubCon videos to stay up to date. 

Another way to reduce stress as a digital marketer is to practice stress-reducing activities such as meditation. By doing this, digital marketers can reduce cortisol levels and gain better control of their breathing while calming the mind. CleverClicks has a flexible working approach, not only are we remote, we also allow for flexible work hours. Mental health is important to us and this is why we do not confine our team to an 8-5 hour approach, but rather let them choose their own time to work as long as their hours are being met. Additionally, since we are remote, we have team catch-ups where we discuss what we have learnt, talk about the 1thing we need to know this week as well as play online trivia. This all to assist in reducing stress levels, as we are strong advocates of stress management and stress awareness. 

Tags: digital marketing