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

Soubhik Chakrabarti, CEO, Canada Hustle

Soubhik, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your journey to becoming a digital marketing expert?

I'm the founder of Icy Media, a premium digital-marketing agency in Vancouver, BC. I started my career as a freelance content writer and offered writing services to various clients. I've over ten years of experience in e-commerce, digital marketing, SEO, and social-media management. I worked on client acquisition, lead gen, and client-relationship management and oversaw paid and organic marketing strategies.

What pivotal moments or decisions in your career path led you to specialize in digital marketing?

My transition from a business marketing manager in a real-estate organization to becoming a freelance content specialist was one pivotal moment that shaped my digital marketing career.

You mentioned using paid search advertising and content creation for a comprehensive online presence. Could you elaborate on how you effectively integrate these two strategies?

Our paid-digital efforts include running paid-advertising campaigns across social-media platforms and the web to attract an audience interested in exploring and buying our services and merchandise. We also create SEO-optimized content by thoroughly analyzing our audience's demographics, pain points, interests, and preferences. For this, we craft our content-marketing campaigns using the best data-analytics and social-listening tools to understand our competitors and trending topics.

In your experience, what are some common mistakes businesses make when trying to balance organic and paid digital efforts, and how can they avoid them?

Insufficient digital-marketing efforts, negligence toward data analytics, inability to understand contemporary trends, and ineffective social-media strategy are some common mistakes businesses make when trying to balance organic and paid digital efforts. To avoid them, organizations can avail themselves of digital marketing agencies' services, invest in AI-powered data analytics tools, and conduct proper research using social-media listening tools.

You emphasized the significance of data in understanding your audience for maximizing ROI in paid advertising. Can you share a specific example of how you segmented and targeted a particular audience for a campaign?

I used social-listening tools to segment and target our Gen Z audience for one of our email marketing campaigns. Sprout Social, an effective social-media listening, helped us discover our audience's demographics, pain points, and preferences. Through its automated data analytics, I assessed that most of our audiences belong to the Gen Z age group. So, we crafted our email marketing campaigns based on these findings. Social listening is an effective strategy to segment and target a particular audience. I'd advise marketers to consider this option for their marketing campaigns.

What are some key metrics you focus on when measuring the success of your paid advertising campaigns, beyond just ROI?

Audience demographics, cost-per-click (CPC), engagement rate, click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, video view rate, and call-to-action (CTA) button clicks are some key metrics marketers should focus on when measuring the success of their paid ad campaigns.

How do you adapt your digital marketing strategies to keep up with the ever-evolving landscape of algorithms, platforms, and consumer behavior?

I rely on AI-powered digital marketing tools to keep up with the ever-evolving landscape of algorithms, platforms, and consumer behavior. I also train my team to stay updated with the current digital-marketing trends. For this, I have created a separate learning fund to establish a digital-media library and workshop. Our team members can consult articles, podcasts, online courses, and industry-related webinars, and share their opinions on digital-marketing trends. I offer them proper mentorship through different workshops.

What role does creativity play in your data-driven digital marketing approach? Can you provide an instance where a creative approach significantly impacted a campaign's success?

A creative approach improves your marketing campaigns' success, helps your brand stand out from competitors, attracts new customers, and retains existing ones, and creates personalized experiences for the individual consumer. We used user-generated content in our email marketing campaigns to attract new customers for one of our travel platforms. We asked our social media followers to share the travel experiences they enjoyed using our travel services. After repurposing the content, we ran an email campaign for new customers, offering different perspectives on our services. This strategy improved our campaign's ROI, and we also reached a wider audience. My advice: ask for permission from your users while repurposing user-generated content for business purposes.

What advice would you give to aspiring digital marketers looking to make their mark in this dynamic industry?

Follow industry leaders, attend digital-marketing webinars, and implement the latest AI marketing technologies.