This interview is with Soubhik Chakrabarti, CEO at Canada Hustle.

Soubhik Chakrabarti, CEO, Canada Hustle

Welcome, Soubhik! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey to becoming a digital marketing expert, perhaps sharing a pivotal moment that solidified your passion for this field?

I'm the Founder of Icy Media, a premium digital marketing agency in Vancouver, BC. I have over a decade of experience in e-commerce, digital marketing, SEO, and social media management. Additionally, I've worked on client acquisition, lead generation, and client relationship management, and have overseen paid and organic marketing strategies. Currently, I'm contributing as a Digital Marketing and Business Management Instructor at Excel Career College in Surrey, BC. I have been passionate about writing and find it an effective medium to communicate with people by informing them about trending ideas. Following my passion, I enrolled in digital marketing courses and discovered endless opportunities to convey messages to readers and businesses. My switch from law to digital marketing was a well-executed decision when I was convinced that my marketing skills would open doors for expanding my understanding of digital communication. With effort, I started my agency, established an entertainment portal, and began providing marketing solutions to businesses.

Looking back on your career path, what advice would you give your younger self just starting out in digital marketing, knowing what you know now?

My younger self should have been informed during the scaling period. When I look back at the initial stage of my digital marketing agency's establishment, I realize I lacked the understanding of how to conduct effective scaling. I had invested in cutting-edge technologies and strategies to offer services to my clients. However, I was unaware of which strategies needed scaling and what alternatives should have been considered.

For example, I invested in manual email marketing campaigns to target my potential clients. Our agency worked with the same strategy for a few years and failed to achieve the desired results. Similarly, for hiring our employees, we used generic platforms that also brought in generic employees.

Now, with experience, I automate my marketing campaigns and use networking to hire my employees. I wish I had had such an understanding to save time and effort and to bring traction to my services. Additionally, I should have discussed my problems with my friends for relevant suggestions.

Soubhik, you've spoken about the power of targeted online advertising in a previous response. Could you elaborate on a specific campaign where you saw remarkable success using this strategy, and what made it stand out to you?

We ran an advertising campaign on LinkedIn to attract clients for our digital marketing services. For this, we created LinkedIn ads to reach people at decision-making status at potential client organizations. We also hosted regular webinars on LinkedIn to showcase our expertise and provide a clear picture of our services. This two-step strategy helped our agency secure a respectable position in this competitive landscape and attracted clients from different professional backgrounds.

Our marketing team worked with the UX designers to create compelling LinkedIn ads that described our services and expertise. We also advertised our webinar hosting schedules to attract clients. For the webinars, we invited experts and industry leaders to discuss the importance of digital marketing using visually appealing materials. Their valuable opinions and suggestions helped us organize a successful business series.

After sharing these sessions on our networks, we noticed a surprising spike in our clients' inquiries about our digital marketing services. We also used these webinars in our email marketing campaigns to inform our existing clients about the value of our services to maintain their retention.

I'd suggest my fellow organizations use any B2C social media platform like LinkedIn to improve their reach and find undiscovered areas to find business.

Building on that, how do you see the role of data evolving in crafting successful digital marketing campaigns, and what are some tools or techniques you find indispensable in this regard?

Data has become the backbone of crafting successful digital marketing campaigns. Data analytics, in particular, offers a detailed picture of your customers, their demographics, behaviors, and personas. With a clear picture of your customers' preferences, you can craft highly personalized and successful digital marketing campaigns.

For instance, we gathered data about our potential clients using data analytics tools and crafted email marketing campaigns to inform them about our digital services. We specialize in offering our clients SEO-optimized blog posts, effective landing page solutions, sales scripts, and press releases. To reach new clients, we used the collected data through different channels to design a personalized email marketing campaign to address them based on their professional expertise and business type.

The metrics helped us identify each client's persona, and we crafted personalized emails regarding their industries. To specify, the collected data allowed us to send a different promotional email to a healthcare professional than to a real estate agent. Since both have separate personas, we need to deliver our services accordingly.

Data-driven tools like Improvado, Google Analytics, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence are some efficient tools we use to craft successful digital marketing campaigns. For example, the AI-powered marketing analytics platform, Improvado, helps us analyze data, gain instant insights, and identify opportunities to reach new clients. Similarly, Google Analytics is an ideal tool for understanding user behavior that provides us with opportunities to optimize our marketing campaigns and make informed decisions. Lastly, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence allows our marketing team to assess the success of their campaigns.

You've previously highlighted the transformative impact of AI in your work. Can you share an instance where AI surprised you in its ability to either solve a problem or uncover a new opportunity within your digital marketing efforts?

I can recall a time when my agency decided to automate our customer services, and AI-enabled chatbots helped us in the process by serving as an effective marketing tool. As our agency flourished, we found manual customer service ineffective in dealing with a high volume of clients' queries. We constantly had to check our email boxes to discover any new queries regarding service requests. The lethargic process also hindered effective communication, as we had to wait long hours, even days, to get a response. So, we invested in AI-powered chatbots to answer our clients' general queries and schedule demo calls. These tools personalized the information consumption stage of our clients when they consumed our marketing content. Surprisingly, the pre-programmed data of our sales funnel helped our clients to receive valuable insights about their preferences. Integrating artificial intelligence into our marketing strategy has revolutionized our efforts, and with the help of chatbots, we can now convert queries into services. It has improved the customer experience and solves complex communication issues instantly.

With the ever-growing presence of AI in digital marketing, what skills do you believe are becoming increasingly crucial for marketers to master to stay ahead of the curve?

In my view, marketers must have prompt-engineering skills to use ChatGPT to write effective content and marketing strategies. Second, they need to learn data curation to identify the best workflow for using AI models for specific marketing tasks. Third, if marketers have storytelling skills, they can combine AI tools and manual creativity to craft compelling marketing narratives. Finally, critical-thinking skills positively help marketers to evaluate marketing efforts efficiently.

Considering the rapid pace of change in the digital landscape, how do you personally stay updated on the latest trends and technologies, and what resources would you recommend to our audience of digital marketing professionals?

I follow industry leaders, attend webinars, read digital marketing-related blogs and articles, listen to podcasts to stay updated with the latest trends, and keep a growth mindset.

From your experience, what are some common pitfalls you see businesses falling into with their digital marketing strategies, and what advice would you offer to help them course-correct?

Many businesses fail to understand their target audience. They are less informed about buyer personas and waste their time and resources to resonate with their potential customers. Second, they are not fully harnessing the power of social media to improve their brand’s reach and presence. Another aspect is the lack of visually appealing content on poorly designed websites and ineffective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.They don’t have clear objectives to set clear, measurable goals for digital marketing campaigns. Also, neglecting remarketing strategies to attain proper Return On Investment (ROI) is another issue businesses fall into while designing their digital marketing strategies.To check them, businesses can hire reputable digital marketing agencies to perform these tasks efficiently. These agencies use cutting-edge technologies and create successful marketing strategies to convert potential customers into loyal ones. They also help you establish your brand’s presence on the digital landscape.

Finally, Soubhik, if you could share one game-changing prediction for the future of digital marketing, what would it be and why?

There will be the rise of hyper-personalized content supported by artificial intelligence. Businesses will rely on AI to analyze vast amounts of data and design strategies based on these findings. As more users start using digital services, there will be a great volume of data that businesses have to analyze to make informed choices based on customers' preferences.