5 Ways To Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Originally published on Innovation Enterprise

Where digital marketing was once about little more than simply setting up a good website and building a mailing list, the goalposts of today are constantly shifting, as new technology influences consumer behavior at an ever increasing rate.

No strategy is complete without a well thought-out digital marketing element and, arguably, digital marketing is one of the most important functions of any company, large or small. Yet many businesses still fall down on the absolute fundamentals of digital marketing. Before setting out on any campaign, consider the following points to make the most out of your efforts and get the best ROI possible.

1. Know your audience

Despite seeming relatively simple, this is perhaps the most important fundamental when setting out any digital marketing effort. The tone of your content marketing or email blasts is integral; executives won’t take content that’s too playful seriously and millennials won’t read corporate guff.

Your target audience should be at the heart of every decision you make in digital strategy, and tone is just the beginning. Awareness of customer behavior should dictate not just how you target, but where, too. Be everywhere and anywhere your customers are, but don’t force a presence across every social media channel just for the sake of it.

2. Quality over quantity

This point applies to everything from tweets to content marketing. Posting less frequent, high-quality content is far more effective than spamming your audience with endless CTAs and poorly written email blasts.

In terms of content marketing, your output should offer real value to the audience. Avoid being just one of the hundreds of sites posting essentially identical content with clickbait headlines, and ensure that anything you publish is in line with the aforementioned and all important tone of your organization.

3. Don’t obsess over vanity metrics

When evaluating the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy, it can be tempting to look at social media engagement as the be all and end all of metrics. Likes, shares, and comments are certainly a good sign, but clickthrough rates and audience retention are the metrics that matter. Viral content is great, of course, but it’s ineffective if it fails to properly promote your brand or encourage the audience to engage with the brand on a deeper level.

4. Produce video

Where creating quality video was once the reserve of those with extensive marketing budgets, new technology means video content can be produced for even the most modest of sums. Twitter and Facebook are both encouraging live-streaming, and campaigns can range from the gimmicky - think Buzzfeed exploding a watermelon - to the inspiring - streaming from a far-reaching location, or giving the audience an insight into how your company runs, for example.

Video in an email leads to a 200-300% increase in clickthrough rates, a video on a landing page can increase conversion by 80%, and 50% of executives look for more information after seeing a product/service in a video. Essentially, if you’re not creating video content, your digital marketing strategy is flawed.

5. Go mobile-first

And, finally, your strategy should have mobile very much at its forefront. With the number of mobile internet users now far outweighing that of desktop, viewing the medium as somehow secondary - as many marketing executives still do - could be catastrophic. Mobile optimization should be a priority, as the desktop becomes more and more of a secondary touch point. 

Originally published on Innovation Enterprise