Best Practices for Implementing Digital Marketing Tactics and Strategies
If you want to sell something, people need to know it exists. From this problem, the field of marketing was born. Much thought has since gone into finding the best ways to reach the right people and convert them into paying customers.
85% of Americans go online on a daily basis. People live in digital worlds, so marketing needs to be digital too. Online videos, pop-up ads, search engine marketing, tutorials, blog posts (including this one!), and social media campaigns are all examples of digital marketing. Various methods work better with some products than others, but most often, you’ll need to pursue a variety of avenues to reach the most people.
With the rapid development of technology, constantly changing algorithms, novel software solutions and innovations such as AI and machine learning, digital marketing is always expanding and altering. As we look ahead to the rest of 2023 and beyond, let’s take a look at some of the best modern practices, strategies, and trends so you can leverage your digital marketing efforts to their fullest.
Set Goals
What do you want? Website traffic? Leads? Sales? This is the first question services like Google Analytics ask when you sign up for their advertising services.
By being specific about what you want, you can focus your digital marketing efforts. As you try new strategies such as those below, keep your focus in mind. Carefully observe how any changes you make affects the metric you’re looking to improve.
Identify Your Target Audience
If you’re selling children’s Halloween costumes, you don’t want to advertise to adults without children because they are very unlikely to buy your product. This will strike most people as common sense – but you’d be surprised at how many people fail at this concept when it comes to the digital marketing for their product or service.
There is a prevalent mindset that more views, more clicks, more eyeballs are better. However, this isn’t necessarily true. 500 views with a 5% click-through rate isn’t any better than 100 views with a 25% click-through rate.
In order to succeed, you need to think efficiently. Who are your ideal customers? What demographics do they have? How can you focus your marketing efforts towards those potential customers? Google and Facebook analytics allow you to target your ads towards specific demographics by using the vast amounts of data they’ve collected from their users.
Develop an Action Plan
Perform market research to find your target audience, their pain points, and what kind of content and messaging resonates with them. Decide on the tactics you will use, outline the resources you’ll need, and create timelines for implementation and accountability.
Monitor Your Progress
Define the key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll use to measure the success of your digital marketing efforts, such as website traffic, conversion rates, and return on investment.
Keep an eye on these KPIs as well as your competition. Be ready to adapt to new trends and technologies because – as we’ll see later in the article – they’re always around the corner.
Common Tactics and Strategies
Content Marketing
This tactic is quite common – to the point where it’s inundating the internet. Content marketing involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content (articles, blog posts, videos, tutorials, emails, etc.) to attract and engage your desired audience.
The key goal – as mentioned – is to drive customer action. In marketing parlance, this is referred to as “conversion.” We want conversion. If the content is great, you’ll build trust among the consumers and increase their likelihood of converting.
Conversational Marketing
Engaging with customers and prospects in real-time through conversational interfaces like chatbots and messaging apps provide personalized and immediate assistance, build relationships, and ultimately drive conversions and sales.
Conversational marketing is equally an aspect of customer service as it is marketing. Responding to customer queries, providing personalized product or service recommendations, and guiding customers through the sales process helps with satisfaction as much as it helps with leads.
As an example, scheduling software like When2meet and its alternatives allow customers to easily make appointments to speak with sales representatives, facilitating the entire sales process and giving customers a streamlined, hassle-free experience.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This term has become quite the buzzword over the past decade or so. When you Google something, results appear based on what Google’s algorithm has determined is relevant.
By learning about what the algorithm looks for in its consideration of your site’s relevance and optimizing accordingly, you can influence your site’s position on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
There are many roads to achieve this end such as keyword research, creating high-quality content, and improving website technical elements like meta tags and alt text.
Influencer Marketing
As opposed to straightforward ad purchasing, utilizing the modern phenomenon of social media influencers – users of social media who have a large following – allows for a more natural way to market your products and promote your brand.
You can reach out to influencers and offer them brand deals, free samples, merch, or money. The influencer will then make a post or a video showing off your product or service to their audience.
Trends in Digital Marketing in 2023 and Beyond
AI and Machine Learning
Huge leaps and bounds have been made in the space of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing in just the past few months.
• Personalization: AI can analyze browsing and purchase history, demographics, and other factors to provide an evolving, personalized customer profile as well as recommendations, content, and offers.
• Chatbots & Content Creation: AI powered chatbots like ChatGPT3 and soon, GPT4 can be used to provide customer service and support, field questions, and speed up the process of creating marketing content.
• Predictive analytics: Machine learning algorithms can analyze large quantities of data to predict customer behavior and preferences, allowing you to target your marketing efforts preemptively.
• Voice search optimization: Search engines will be able to leverage machine learning to augment understanding of natural language to improve the accuracy of results from voice searches.
Voice Search Optimization
According to a 2018 study by GlobalWebIndex, 27% of the global population uses the voice search function on mobile devices. Voice search queries give different search results pages – people talk to their phones naturally.
In order to capitalize on this, optimize your website content and meta tags to match this kind of natural language. You should also make sure your site is mobile friendly and can easily be navigated by voice commands.
Focus your content marketing and written content titles and headings in a question and answer format. This is because many people ask questions to their mobile search engines. “Hey Siri/Alexa/Google…”
Automated Messaging
Sending out personalized, automated messages at the right time can be a valuable digital marketing tool, but can also be perceived as annoying if not used correctly. The key is to strike a balance between providing utility while being respectful of the customer’s time. Make sure automated messages are opt-in and give the customer the ability to easily opt out at any time.
The takeaway
By following these best practices, you can develop a comprehensive and effective digital marketing strategy for your business that helps you achieve your goals and grow. Keep an eye out for trends that shake up the digital marketing landscape – the quicker you’re able to incorporate new technologies, the greater a chance you stand of staying competitive and finding success.
