He who hesitates is lost, or something like that. The point is that without a firm strategy in place you are not going to convert a customer into a lead and you’re not going to see a good return on your investment. A whole 60% of a marketer’s time is dedicated to digital marketing, so your strategy needs to be optimized if you’re going to make any progress this year.
Crafting a digital marketing strategy is about so much more than listing who you want to hit. It’s a constantly changing entity that you have to review regularly.
So how can you optimize and improve your digital marketing strategy?
Every Strategy Should Be Driven by Data
Big data is the buzzword of this year. Most people have no idea what it means, but they still like to throw it around every so often to make them seem informed. But it should be obvious why big data has grown in prominence. Every strategy should be driven by data.
You have to make sure that your strategy is backed up by the numbers, because data-driven marketing is the future. Don’t just do something. Ask yourself why you’re doing something and whether it’s backed up by firm facts. If it isn’t, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
Is Your Content Actually Sending People Somewhere?
The reason why this is a question to ask is because everybody knows that content is king. They know how important it is. On the other hand, they don’t actually know what happens to that reader after they’ve read that content. We as successful marketers and brands all have to know where someone is going to go next in the sales funnel.
Content is a part of your sales funnel and it should lead somewhere. Are you going to a purchasing page? Maybe you’re going to another piece of content? You might even be shooting over to a newsletter signup page.
But you do need to be sending them somewhere. Content alone doesn’t mean anything if you have no big picture.
Are You Trying Anything New?
The whole point of an optimized digital marketing campaign is to try new things and to break barriers. But if you’re just copying what you’ve done every other year you are going to experience results that are no better than what you had before. You need to be trying new things if you’re going to make any progress.
This year we can’t deny that video marketing is the next big thing. If you haven’t already given it a try, now is the time to do that.
Optimizing Through Personalization
Personalization in marketing has never really been personal. Just picking out your key target audience and laser targeting them isn’t really personal. It’s just targeted. What you are really looking for is real personalization, as if you’re talking to that person and only that person.
Short of actually going up to them in the street and selling something, the next best thing is to use personalization based on previous visits.
You’ve already seen this with Google, even if you haven’t yet noticed it. Every time you go back to Google your search results will change based on what you were searching for before. The same thing applies to Amazon. The company automatically changes their product recommendations based on what you were looking for before.
This is what customers want to see. It’s what they’ve come to expect. If you want to get through to them, you need to use previous data to do it.
Optimization Through Actual Optimization
It has to be said that if you haven’t yet optimized your online platforms for mobile, you’re already far behind everyone else in your field. How many more times do we have to say that you have to be optimized for mobile if you’re going to gain any popularity at all?
And now Google is giving you a big reason because they’re penalizing websites that aren’t onboard with the mobile revolution. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to change, so why wouldn’t you do it now?
But Testing Trumps Everything
Staying optimized is something that you’ll always be fighting to do. The industry changes all the time and you can’t expect the landscape to be the same three months from now. If you want to stay optimized, you need to be testing, testing, and testing.
Make sure you’ve saved enough in your budget to accommodate it. You should already have a lot of money put away for split testing simply because this is something that never ends. The more you test the better your results.
How will you optimize your digital marketing strategy today?
