In our ever-increasingly digital world, it is vital to be on top of your digital marketing game for your business. We get tons of questions about all aspects of it, often more than we can answer. We recently learned a local Santa Cruzian co-authored a book all about the topic of digital marketing that was listed as the #1 New Release in the Digital Marketing category on Amazon. His book “Digital Marketing Fundamentals” covers the following chapters: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization, Email Marketing  (or marketing automation), Mobile Marketing, Paid Search (PPC), Digital Analytics, Careers and Hiring. We sat down to interview him and learn more:

SCW:  Congratulations on the #1 position in Amazon for your book Digital Marketing Fundamentals! We’d love to know more about the book and you! What is the book about and who is the intended audience?

Stebbins: Thanks. Well, digital marketing is one of the hottest knowledge spaces right now and it’s enabling a lot of careers and fueling business growth like we’ve never seen before.  

But most books or courses that teach hot trends, or tips and tricks go out of date right away. So we set out to write an authoritative guide that equips people with just enough digital marketing knowledge to run a business, guide a team, or as a foundation for a digital marketing career.

As a bonus, the book is written to industry standards to prepare you for the first level of OMCP exams, the OMCA. 

SCW:  For anyone who might not know, what is  OMCP and what is OMCA Certification? 

Stebbins: So OMCP is an industry standard for digital marketing. By the time you put this up, over a thousand universities and training programs are teaching courses to OMCP standards. The certification exams test at two levels: OMCA for those who manage and communicate digital marketing programs, and OMCP level for those who implement those programs. So for example, most brand managers at Procter and Gamble and many of the world’s larger agencies are OMCA certified, and the companies look for that in their hiring process. So “Digital Marketing Fundamentals”  is also the official guide to preparing for your OMCA exams.  And if you are pursuing OMCP-level it can help prepare you for the foundation exams as well.    

SCW:  Can you tell us about your background and your co-authors' backgrounds?

Stebbins: Well, the co-authors and I have been teaching and practicing digital marketing since the early 2000s.  When you’ve been on the conference circuit with the same folks for this long, you get a keen sense of who is authoritative and you form great relationships.  The other co-authors are recognized leaders in the covered practices, and by that I mean they are already well-published and continue to be invited back to present keynotes and sessions at major conferences worldwide.  I’ve got to give credit to Greg Jarboe for initiating the project, managing Wiley’s interest in it, and setting up the contracts. 

SCW:  What is your connection to Santa Cruz County, and what got you interested in digital marketing

Stebbins: Wow, some of that is ancient history. Let’s see. I was born here and went to school here, Ben Lomond to Bonny Doon, Santa Cruz to Watsonville to Scotts Valley. I learned computer science at UCSC and that led me to work for one of the professors, Dr. Frank DeRemer, at MetaWare supporting compilers. I  eventually moved into sales and then marketing when I brought a competing compiler company from Scotland to Scotts Valley.  Round about 2001 I was buying digital ads and wrote some tools to measure their performance. Good marketers love to be measured and the ability to see, instantly, what ads were generating profit opened up a whole new opportunity to accelerate businesses growth using digital marketing.  And that’s just what I did, building ClickTracks with John Marshall, starting Market Motive, Brainwaves Toys – all which got acquired with very nice multiples to the investors, all in Santa Cruz.. Most recently I founded OMCP with John and Avinash [Avinash Kaushik of Google] and it is thriving now as a digital marketing standard.  So in all, Santa Cruz has been a great home and a place for innovation, talent and building businesses.  

SCW:  What are your favorite sections/chapters of the book and why?

Stebbins: Well, If I’m practicing SEO this week it’s the SEO section!  If email, then the email section.  But that’s not the answer you wanted right?  [Here’s] the thing about that last chapter [Careers and Hiring].  So when we founded OMCP here in Santa Cruz, we polled, it must have been, thousands of hiring managers to establish the competencies required for a career in digital marketing. Really, I think it was over 4,000 hiring managers.  I personally have kept open dialogue with dozens at Fortune 100 companies all the way to small agencies.  I also talk to hundreds of people each year who are building their career in marketing.  And I gotta tell you, there’s a painful gap between what the hiring managers are looking for and what the candidates are told they need to know or do to stay gainfully employed.  So while the subject matter chapters address each practice, I address career challenges in Chapter 10, laying out specific techniques that increase the chances of getting interviewed and finding a fit. But I also take a shot over the bow of hiring managers and I do it right in the same chapter to illuminate to both sides where the gaps can be bridged. 

SCW:  What was the most challenging portion or process of creating the book? What is something new you learned while writing the book?

Stebbins: Hmmm. Honestly there wasn’t a big challenge because the work was spread among many authors. And we all trust each other implicitly to write to a specific target skill level.  One other advantage is that we were writing to competency standards established by the industry, so that kept us all on the same sheet of music if you will. But I have a hunch each of the authors would have nailed it anyway.  As a publisher, Wiley is one of the biggest, but all of us have worked with them in the past.  So the publishing process has been smooth as well.

SCW:  What are your predictions for the biggest digital marketing trends in the next 6mo-year? 

Stebbins: Well, I love that you used the word, ‘biggest’ instead of newest.  Newest trends are risky for skills development because they are often transitory.  So the biggest trends and skill demands remain solidly in the essential practices: Social Media, SEO, Digital Advertising, Content Marketing, Analytics, Email, Conversion and Mobile. If you want to get ahead of those skills demands, I predict an increasing demand for skills that harness large data/resources and turn those into persuasion messages.  So examples include Social Selling, UX/UI Testing, Marketing Automation, and Marketing Stack Management to name just a few.  

SCW:  Where can we find your book? 

Stebbins: Aw, thanks for asking.  Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble, and Chegg and a number of other sources are already carrying it. I even saw it on ebay and am not sure if that’s a good thing or not. You can find info on the book and upcoming formats, and a mailing list, at https://mo.am/book1 

I’ll put updates there on the Kindle edition which is supposed to be less expensive than the print edition, and Wiley told us an audio version is in the works.  Also the publisher is suggesting it’ll be a required book for many university courses, so if you’re a college student, it may be part of your course.   

SCW:  Is there anything else you want to share?

Stebbins: There is so much going on. It’s really exciting. I can tell you that there is a second book in the works that shares a very backwards approach to building a sustainable product or business. I’ll share update on that at the same place https://mo.am/book1  Also a big thanks to Santa Cruz Works.  I love what we can do together here.  And thank you for the interview.