There are so many digital marketing tactics, and often they can be challenging when you're trying to determine which one to focus. Marketers looking for the ultimate digital marketing strategy need to have a strong understanding of their company , product and demographics before they consider a digital marketing strategy that will be successful in meeting their needs.
We believe that you wouldn’t want to waste your time selecting the wrong strategies when it comes to your digital marketing strategies. Also, you still need to remain on top of your generation-leading activities. So, here's a detailed guide that can help you drive customer engagement, boost brand awareness, and generate leads in 2021 and beyond.
1. Stay Nimble
One of the key characteristics of digital or social media marketing is that it requires a lot of trial and error. It is not easy to go through all the processes so brands and businesses have to make sure that they are flexible enough before making a digital marketing plan.
They have to be flexible with:
- Shifting SEO patterns
- Upcoming trends
- Their content calendar and timeline
- One or two social channels only (the ones that perform best)
- Which KPIs to focus on
- When to get progress reports, where you can discuss and regroup
Effective strategy will often take some time for adjustments due to diligent and consistent monitoring and adaptation. If you're working alone or in a small business, don't be afraid to recruit external experts to help you dig into your metrics and redefine your goals if anything doesn't seem to work as expected.
2. Understand Your Customer
As a marketer, if you don't first have a good understanding of who buys your product and why they buy it, no digital marketing campaign can be successful. Similarly, where and how they purchase it may or may not be important in this case. Hence, dig deep and analyze different audiences not only to understand what they want to buy, but also to understand what they are concerned about economically, socially and politically.
Some of the ways of forming a robust profile of their audience and inform their tactics include:
- Define the channels that fit key demographics best
- Speak their language, considering that “language” isn’t just words
- Understand their pain points and how to switch on emotions
- Create useful personas for each of your demographics to help you visualize their lives and predict buying patterns
- Be culturally aware
- Consider unique partnerships such as with influencers
- Focus on action-oriented experiences and results rather than the product itself
- Use well-developed automation tools for highly detailed segmentation and targeting
3. Offer Quality Content to Show Authenticity
There are several ways to generate leads, but one tried and tested approach is by creating useful written content and distributing it accordingly. When you connect your blogs and articles to a specific offer via the landing page, you increase your conversion potential.
However, don’t just use social to "post". To create an effective marketing campaign, brands should share their own company’s values and mission no matter what channel or method they’re using.
Some tips on this:
- Publish and do live videos to get personal
- Focus on providing interactive features and look behind the scenes of the business or product whenever possible
- Offer continuous learning and education as part of the mission and vision of the brand, whether it's about the brand itself or a cause that it's close to
- Generate content on a conversational level by using podcasts and written interviews to ensure that they have SEO-optimized, authoritative content out there on the web
- Post their live and other videos to their website and even embed them in ads. Video is one of the top-converters, and it doesn’t require a high budget to use well.
4. Focus on Mobile
Though it is true that social media is definitely on the rise, one thing that should not be ignored is the technology used to access it. There are billions of people around the world who use social media on their phones or tablets, while many people do participate in social media at work or at home on desktop computers.
Nearly 90% of all users of social media access social media channels via mobile devices. Similarly, almost 80% of the overall time spent on social media sites takes place on mobile platforms. Smartphones and social media are evolving side by side, and brands and businesses should be sure to keep up with their brands. The way forward is mobile friendly interfaces, and they need to ensure that their content and layout is designed for mobile if they're marketing online.
With that in mind, here are a few ways brands can ensure that their mobile marketing strategy stays on track:
- Optimize website for both desktops and smartphones
- Use clickable phone numbers, addresses, and CTAs (calls to action)
- Make sure the contact details are connected to a map app
- Ensure a quickly loading website Always review ads for social media or other types of mobile-friendly platforms