A good marketing strategy relies on constant review and reevaluation. Especially in the digital world we live in, where technology and trends change instantly, it’s important for marketers to always have their fingers on the pulse of their customer base and make the necessary changes in order to remain relevant.
While it may seem overwhelming to have to constantly change with the times, digital marketing has also supplied a range of easy to use tools to help. Analytics are readily available to show you what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong in real time. This makes it easy to evaluate your marketing strategy any time, and you should be doing this regularly.
While you should be constantly reviewing your marketing activities, the best time to do a major overhaul of your marketing strategy is at the start of a new year. At this point in the new year, we are far enough removed from 2016 to be able to reflect on it and far enough into 2017 that we have a sense of where things are headed.
You should begin by collecting all your analytics data for 2016 and the start of 2017 to search for any dips and peaks in the data to assess things you’ve done right and things you’ve done wrong as well as what channels and tactics are working well or that you might consider discarding.
Because we’re already a few months into 2017, you can get a pretty good idea of what trends are going to be big this year. We’re continuing to see movement towards mobile as the dominant search source, therefore further increasing the channels that go with mobile, such as social media.
We shouldn’t really have to tell you about the importance of mobile optimisation for marketing at this point, as it’s been on marketing trends lists for years. However, if you still haven’t done it, you really should. People use their mobile phones for everything and if you aren’t reaching your customers there then you’re not going to be around much longer.
So, with the help of Digital Next, specialists in the field of digital marketing in Melbourne, we have compiled a list of ways to maintain your footing in the world of digital this year.
Audit your social media
Auditing your social media channels is a good place to start with a marketing strategy update.
Some marketers have this idea that a good social media strategy is simply having an account on every channel and pushing some content through regularly. This isn’t a strategic use of social media and it results in wasted money and resources on channels that aren’t serving a purpose.
When you audit your social media channels for 2017, figure out which channels are most influential for you. This is usually a result of where you can find your customers. Most people aren’t active users of every social media site and you shouldn’t be either.
Your social analytics can tell you which channels are getting the most traction, and in 2017 you should choose to focus on those key channels. This will allow you to focus more on making the content on those channels meaningful to the customers you interact with there.
Go live, but don’t stick around too long
The latest trends on social channels have been live content and ephemeral content.
If you have Gen Z customers you’re going to want to adopt these trends as soon as possible. Younger people who have grown up all their lives surrounded by technology expect quick and immediate messaging. They use the live and ephemeral content options on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat and if you want to reach them, that’s where your content should be.
Gen Z aren’t the only ones adopting these trends. Professionals use Facebook and Twitter live stream features to broadcast a variety of events and other business activities.
SEO for voice
When updating your SEO strategy for 2017, it’s not just about how people type to search anymore.
Voice based search is now a feature on most operating systems. When you update your keywords and search terms, you must take into account that the way someone asks for something is different from the way that they would type it.
When updating your digital marketing strategy for 2017, it’s important to think about continuing trends you haven’t yet adopted as well as current trends that fit in well with the old ones. Things like social media and SEO will remain crucial for digital marketing, but the strategies we use to approach them need to be updated.
