In today’s digital age, customer savvy continues to reach new levels. Social media activity is thriving, mobile usage is at its peak and chatbots have made their way onto the scene. Tech titans like Google and Facebook are constantly updating their algorithms, which means marketing strategies must be updated regularly to stay relevant.
Fortunately, there are ways to stay on top of trends and, even better, get ahead of the curve. Here are seven steps you can use to accelerate your digital marketing strategy.
The first step to gaining momentum on any digital marketing strategy is to make sure you have buy-in from your executive team and can secure the budget to do your strategy justice. To justify your budget, you’ll need to be able to show how you will use each dollar to achieve results. In a data-driven world, marketers must be able to show the value of their efforts.
In reporting this information to the C-Suite, you’ll want to consider your current customer acquisition costs (CAC) and what results you’ll need to achieve with digital marketing to be able to lower those costs. Being able to back up your reasoning with numbers will make a stronger case for justifying the budget you need.
Once you get buy-in, you’ll want to take a look at what changes and updates have been made recently that might affect your strategy. Search engine optimization (SEO) is constantly evolving, making it a logical place to start. SEO should be a key part of your updated marketing strategy because without it, your content has a much lower chance of being found.
Some of the latest SEO changes include voice search and increased emphasis on backlinking. Although Google is sophisticated enough to pull keywords from voice search queries, tailoring your content to accommodate more conversational searches can help you rank higher in search results. Here are a few key tips to use:
With your keywords in mind, it’s time to create content that’s useful and educational. Perhaps you’re experiencing a readership plateau and you want to freshen up your content to get past it. Or maybe you’ve noticed you aren’t getting as many form submissions as you used to, so you want to take your content to the next level.
Developing a content strategy enables your content to be well thought out, and more likely to help you achieve your goals. Discuss with your team what your goals are for the year and how your content can complement those efforts. Learn what order the goals are in terms of priority and where you should focus your efforts first.
Brainstorm with your team to come up with some new ways to present your ideas that will engage audiences. Interactive pages are a great way to encourage participation and improve the user experience while helping readers find a solution.
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When you have an offer for readers, you need to update your promotion strategy periodically. Revisit your current calls-to-action and how the offers are presented. From there, determine how you can make them more enticing. Could the language be updated? Perhaps a design refresh? Also, be mindful of where they are placed around your website. Are there new places they can be added on your website?
One effective CTA placement is to have the offer appear while readers scroll down through a blog post. Another, newer place for CTAs is in your email signature. Technology like Sigstr enables you to capture leads through every email you send. The key is to try new things to see what works. Make updates to your CTAs, their placements and the overall strategy to strive for a CTA that converts.
To increase form submissions, HubSpot users can implement a lead flow on relevant pages. The lead flow captures reader information but is typically much shorter than the form on a landing page, making it more user-friendly to fill out. A quick email address entry and the reader is on their way to getting the information they need, while you’ve gotten a potential new lead.
Paid media is no longer an option in today’s market if you want your content to be found. Are you using the latest trends as a way to help your content get in front of the right people?
It may seem obvious, but you need to be addressing your intended audience’s most asked questions with thoughtful, carefully crafted answers with your marketing. Then, you need to look at where your buyers spend time online to help you choose the right targeting options within the various distribution channels that will offer your content to the most relevant audiences. Social media and Google advertising offer an extensive range of targeting options to help your offers reach the right audience.
Content has the ability to drive sales, save costs and retain customers. It can do many other things to help bring in quality leads, but be sure you choose ROI metrics that are true indicators of growth for your company.
For example, if your goal is brand awareness, you’ll want to look at website traffic growth. If you want to increase engagement, you’ll want to track return visits to your site and the growth in blog and email subscribers. This is where Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) comes in. You can calculate this by taking the costs of acquiring customers and dividing it by the number of customers acquired. So, if a company spends $100,000 per year on acquiring new customers, and they get 100 customers in that year, their CAC is $1,000.
Don’t forget to continue measuring the key performance indicators (KPIs) you’re tracking over time. This will help you show your content's value and justify the cost of marketing if you ever need to ask for more budget.
When a CRM is working smashingly, it means it’s enabling sales to prioritize leads and close more of them, faster.
But, your CRM is only as good as the people who use it. Be sure to train your team adequately on their roles within the CRM. Train marketing first, and be sure to have items such as campaign tracking, lead scoring and personas set up clearly before training sales. Make sure your sales team understands the inbound methodology and how the CRM serves to benefit sales reps.
There are many elements that go into developing a solid digital marketing strategy. Taking your strategy in a new direction can seem intimidating, but by following these steps, you will be on your way to a forward-thinking marketing plan that will produce results in no time.
If you’ve been using the same approach but are ready to ramp up your results, download our Digital Marketing Acceleration Kit. We’ve bundled our most requested resources together so you have all the elements you need in one place to accelerate your digital marketing and develop a well-rounded strategy. Get your kit today!
