Hi, my name is Ben. I’m a Digital Marketer.

The days of looking at digital properties as a passive sales tool for your business are long gone. In 2012, 78% of Americans are using the Internet and 50% of Americans have a smartphone. This adoption of the online world is the reason why “inbound marketing” is one of the hottest trends in marketing for 2013, making an integrated digital marketing strategy more important than ever.

In a step to add to our digital marketing expertise, Synapse is excited to announce the addition of our new Director of Digital Marketing: Ben Wilver. Ben has over 10 years of digital and search marketing experience, working in both the client side and agency side. This experience has allowed Ben to grow alongside an emerging industry and gain a wealth of knowledge by working with companies across numerous industries.

When he’s not playing online at Synapse, Ben can be found taking in live music, playing golf, riding motorcycles or enjoying the outdoors. This week, we had a chance to sit down with Ben to hear more about his background and digital marketing.

What attracted you to Synapse? From the first time I spoke with Synapse, I could tell that it was a group of passionate and bright individuals and once I stepped foot in the office, their teamwork was noticeable. These were the two big factors of why I wanted to come work here.

Why digital marketing? There are 2 main reasons why I love digital marketing. The first is that it is an always changing and evolving industry. I am a continual learner and love the ongoing challenge of learning new things and keeping up with the changing landscape of search engines. The second reason is that with good analytics and conversion goals, you can track the success of every activity online. This is important because it allows you to see ROI and provides you with useful data to base continual improvements on.

How did you get started in digital marketing? I started my career as a developer and quickly became fascinated with the online world. After building a few websites, my natural curiosity lead me to wonder what now? It was great that I just built a website, but what good was it if nobody knew it existed. This led me in to a little known industry at the time called search engine marketing. As the industry evolved, I continued to evolve with it and add new skills to my bag of tricks, making me a true digital marketer.

What do you see as a trend in 2013 for digital marketing? We need to focus on, build for, and speak to the user. When it comes to websites, you need to focus on providing a good user experience and quality, useful content to the user. When these things are done right it provides the building blocks for a good SEO strategy. The same is true for social media as well; we need to interact with the user to build engagement, not speak at the user. It’s great to have a bunch of people that “like” your page or “follow” you, but if they aren’t interacting with you and sharing your content, is it really doing anything for your brand?

Want to sit down and talk digital marketing with Ben?  Start a Conversation with us.