It’s a new year, which means your business needs a fresh approach to your digital marketing. A new year means new marketing channels, new customers, new purchasing habits, new technologies and new software – to remain competitive and relevant, you need to stay on top of these changes.
Here are some tips for making the most of digital marketing in 2017:
Create a new strategy
Why do you need to create a new strategy? Because you can always improve, and to stay competitive, it’s essential that you move with the times. You can do this by looking at your quarterly performances of 2016 across all channels: website, social, app, landing pages and analytics (etcetera) and then you use this data to form a compelling strategy in 2017.
Once you’ve tweaked your strategy, you should hold weekly, monthly and quarterly analytics reviews, so that you are constantly assessing how your new strategy is performing. Learn from your mistakes and evolve your tactics as necessary to stay competitive!
Reevaluate your products or services
The products and services that people want in 2017 might not be the same as what they wanted in 2016. To make sure that your customers want what you are offering, you need to re-evaluate current customer demands and make sure that your product or services line up with these. Want a real life example of this process? At Studio Culture, we noticed that our customers have been wanting new marketing services, which we previously didn’t offer – namely remarketing, email campaigns and Hubspot/Infusionsoft guidance – so, we recently updated our list of services to include these. If you want to stay relevant, you need to adapt to the changing demands of your customers.
Consolidate Your Marketing Efforts
If you’re not currently using your marketing tactics in a coordinated way, now’s the time to start. There are so many channels available for you to share your brand message, and the better you use these channels in conjunction, the better your results will be.
When you use multiple platforms consistently, you are sending one unified brand and message out to your customers. Using email marketing, social media, PPC, video ads and retargeting in your marketing mix makes it very hard for your target audience to miss your message! Making the effort to consolidate your efforts (including both online and offline marketing) will make a big difference to your brand recognition, reputation and sales.
If possible, you should also consolidate your marketing tools, as this will reduce the cost and improve your efficiency. For example, one platform that provides clear insight into your various marketing campaigns is preferable to numerous incohesive platforms – as information is often lost and misinterpreted when it is processed from platform to platform.
Update your website to be 2017-friendly
Take a look at how 20 of the most popular websites in the world looked when they launched in the 1990s/early 2000s. You will notice that the aesthetic and functionality of these websites is completely different today. Part of this is due to changing technologies, of course, but this evolution is also due to the way consumers have changed in the last 20 years, as the internet has become increasingly ingrained in their daily lives. Thanks to an abundance of online content, modern consumers have shorter attention spans, have learned to filter out online noise and want the information they seek out in the quickest, simplest and most efficient manner possible.
How to ensure a 2017-friendly website
- Make sure your website is fast. Studies have shown that 32% of consumers will start abandoning slow sites between one and five seconds.
- Include key information upfront. You need to give your customers the information they need instantly – if you don’t, they’ll move onto a website that does.
- Make your content as simple as possible. Do this by using short but punchy paragraphs, bullet points and descriptive sub headings. Tell the reader what they need to know, and nothing more.
- Think about other ways of representing information – such as images, graphs and other visual forms.
- Present information in a logical, sequential and streamlined pattern. Your browsers should be able to follow a clear path to obtain the information they need.
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly!! This is extremely important, as it is now official that more people are browsing from mobile platforms than traditional computers. Yep – it’s more important than ever that your website is mobile-friendly.
Stay on top of digital trends
Perhaps the biggest digital trend is the move to mobile browsing. Google recently announced that they plan to release a separate mobile search index, which will become their primary search index. A separate desktop index will also be maintained, but it won’t be as up-to-date as the mobile index. Better not throw out your smartphone!
Social media trends are also changing – Instagram has added stories, live video, disappearing content, a new algorithm and is also increasingly becoming a business platform (with new analytics tools). Facebook has introduced Facebook live, video filters, the pages manager app, multi-product News Feed ads and call-to-action button options for business profiles.
The popularity of video content and live streaming is an opportunity that your business should make the most of. Using video content puts a face to your brand, makes your content feel more personal and allows customers to get the information they need in a short time, without having to expend much effort (which is essential if you want to win over those dang millennials!).
Overall, if there’s one thing that your business should strive to do in 2017, it’s to use every available form of advertising, technology and marketing to promote your business and engage your customers. Good luck!
