Digital marketing is a highly dynamic field where techniques and trends evolve quickly. As you build a digital marketing strategy that’s comprehensive and effective, it’s important to consider a range of tactics to discover what works for your brand.
After all, digital marketing has grown in importance in recent years, taking up 72% of marketing budgets today. Here are some insider tips and techniques to take your digital marketing the extra mile. Remember that every company is unique, so be sure to tailor these ideas to your own brand’s needs and audience.
Source: Freepik
11 tips to take your digital marketing strategy to the next level
Let’s walk you through some of our favorite digital marketing strategies so you have some new tricks up your sleeve for this year’s campaigns.
1. Aim for your content to be share-worthy
Never produce content just for the sake of it. Everything you make should pass the “share-worthy” test, so you’re actually adding value for your potential customers.
Consider generating top-notch content such as in-depth blogs, podcasts, webinars, white papers, educational materials, and more. You might even team up with an expert to achieve higher quality in your digital materials. Ask yourself, “Would I share this?” If the answer is no, try to create something you would. If you won’t, why would anyone else?
2. Leverage multi-channel campaigns
We live in the age of endless options – and digital marketing channels are no different. It’s important to manage multi-channel campaigns since customers check several mediums before trusting a brand. Create campaigns that work across email, mobile, social media, paid search, direct mail, radio/TV, etc. in order to break through the noise of marketing today.
For example, you can work with email marketing companies to create a summer newsletter email campaign that is timed with a social media push, themed landing pages, and radio ads, in order to elevate the potential of your campaign.
You can integrate traditional marketing with digital and also complement your digital campaigns by sending flyers, catalogs, and other printed materials to your customers through direct mail. This is an extremely powerful combination. Print works!
3. Hire a visuals guru
It only takes a second for potential customers to form an opinion about your website. Images and design play a key role in ensuring an enthusiastic first impression.
If you don't already have one, partner with a visuals guru (i.e. a graphics designer) who can boost your images, infographics, web design, and video marketing for all your assets.
4. Personalize at every opportunity
With the customer data available today, companies have a huge opportunity to target their content. It’s vital to learn how to personalize certain types of content, offers, and recommendations according to your business’ audience. This way, you’ll be able to personalize the journey for each unique segment of customers with greater success.
For example, you can edit your website so that it has several different landing pages for different segments, and then push these pages through unique social media posts.
5. Test all content in a mobile environment
Your digital marketing should be mobile-first, as the majority of users are connecting on their mobile devices. Be sure to check all content on a mobile testing platform and work with developers to get a high-performing site on mobile.
Pro tip: Get Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for your website in order to optimize for mobile browsing, speed up load time and increase your Google ranking.
6. Optimize your buyer journey
Understanding the buyer's journey is also essential for long-term digital marketing. You should regularly be analyzing user behavior on your website through Google Analytics and tools like Crazy Eggs to understand how customers land on your shopping page.
With this behavioral data, you can optimize your digital marketing campaigns in order to create smoother flows to these pages.
7. Don’t forget about local SEO
The majority of digital marketers know how to improve SEO, but one area that’s often overlooked is local SEO.
It’s important to hook your local audiences with tailored keywords that use location words, events, and searches. Local SEO gets some of the best results, so be sure to incorporate it into your digital marketing strategy.
8. Go beyond SEO by tracking reach
As you listen to the customer and find out what’s working, always track reach. This will give you a sense of what types of content and messaging are more powerful.
This will include reaching metrics such as engagements per month (viewed, liked, shared, downloads, open rates, etc.), 10 highest ranked content pieces by engagement and shares, month-over-month engagement metrics, etc.
9. Achieve tried-and-true customer service
There’s no shortcut for cultivating great customer relationships through top service. Every interaction a customer has with your brand counts as “service” so be sure to consider how to support customers throughout their digital buyer experience.
According to studies, about 75% of millennials say they would pay more for a good customer experience. So take time to show these clients what makes you special when servicing them throughout their digital buyer journey.
Have customer service in place for digital marketing channels to answer questions, provide personalized recommendations and tackle service challenges that come up on your social media feeds.
10. Don’t be afraid of repurposing content
Having content to share on a daily basis can be exhausting for content creation teams. Don’t forget to take stock of what content you’ve already made. It’s perfectly fine (and smart!) to repurpose content by resharing it or recycling it in a new way.
For example, a blog post that had good traffic in the past could be reimagined as an infographic, video, or podcast episode. Be efficient with your team’s time by finding ways to re-engage customers with the same content. Luckily there are lots of tools out there that will help your team to make great-looking videos and generate quality content with minimal effort.
11. Take advantage of automation
Finally, automation can be your closest ally as a digital marketer. Every year, there are more channels and metrics to handle. Wherever possible, find ways to automate processes, so you can free up time and focus your efforts. You might automate:
- Social media post scheduling
- Email cart abandonment workflows
- Chatbots for social and web support
- Push notifications for certain web actions (i.e. on the purchase page)
Through these automated steps, you can get rid of repetitive tasks, better allocate resources and ensure your teams are maximizing their time every day.
Bonus tip: Boost your digital marketing strategy with the right tools
Source: Freepik
Finally, without the right tools, your digital marketing strategy may be impossible to manage. For every aspect of your strategy, ensure that you have the tools and technologies to support your team. This goes for top digital marketing tools (such as Sprout Social, Audiense, Ahrefs, Hotjar, etc.) as well as collaboration and management tools such as Notion, Trello, Podio, and TeamPassword.
With the ideal suite of tools, you can empower your team and start incorporating these digital marketing tips in no time!
