How to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy in 11 Ways

Refine Each Digital Marketing Goal

A typical digital marketing strategy plan includes overarching objectives, such as generating leads via email. Such tactics are great for looking at the big picture, but the best strategy centers on clear goals implemented at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

1. Add Objectives for SEO and Search Intent

Increasing social media followers or bolstering brand awareness are great goals. But don’t ignore the value of specific objectives that target search intent.

Help clients find your services by employing the latest best practices in search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing for keywords, phrases and intent increases the visibility of your digital assets. Review all existing strategy, campaign and platform objectives. Then tighten the scope and ensure each digital marketing goal aligns with your user’s search intent.

The goal to increase social shares should focus on providing relevant, actionable and shareable information. Your audience wants to know how to do something or solve a problem. Their search intent reflects a desire to learn.

However, with a transactional or commercial purpose, users search for terms such as “free shipping” or “buy project management software.” With these searches, users move toward a purchasing decision. Satisfy transactional searches with goals that concentrate on conversions via clicks to your landing pages.

2. Match Digital Marketing Goals to the Buyer’s Journey

From content marketing to community building, your tactics help guide your audience. However, the goals can vary at different points of the buyer journey.

Indeed, the path isn’t linear. Rather, buyers perform research and revisit stages several times before concluding a purchase.

According to Demand Gen Report’s 2019 B2B Buyers Survey, 61% of business-to-business buyers rely on peer recommendations and review websites when evaluating a purchase. This suggests you need to engage and nurture prospects using a variety of methods and touchpoints.

A mix of objectives helps you use your digital marketing strategy to increase engagement. Devise specific goals to support users at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

For example, a goal of increasing email sign-ups by 25% in 3 months could turn into statements listing your company-specific goals:

• Top of the funnel: Attract new prospects with a personality quiz that aligns with your products and services. Consumers share their email for the results page.
• Middle of the funnel: Help leads decide to buy with a downloadable comparison guide in exchange for their email address. Get new downloads.
• Bottom of the funnel: Entice soon-to-be customers by offering a coupon during checkout for those who opt-in for email updates.

Incorporate New Digital Marketing Strategies

Keep up with change by building flexibility into your digital marketing strategy. Plan for regular updates by setting a monthly or quarterly review meeting.

Come up with new digital marketing strategies by using your time to:

• Identify top-performing campaigns
• Better understand your audience
• Find gaps in your tactics

Different companies use different marketing strategies in business. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all template. Frequent testing and improvements help you get the best return on your investment (ROI).

3. Pivot Toward Engagement Tactics

The expanding virtual world means more people are looking for ways to stay connected. Help them by making it easy and pleasant to communicate with your brand.

Explore engaging techniques to reach leads and customers through:

‍Relationship building – Regardless of your goal or channel, make use of activities and metrics tied to relationship building. For instance, reward clients using a loyalty program. Send out emails, offer coupons and highlight devoted fans on social media. Implementing such techniques can create loyal customers and support customer lifetime value (CLV). Measure progress by assessing the number of loyalty reward program sign-ups, clicks to your coupon landing page and increases in engagement levels on social platforms.

‍Community building – According to Higher Logic, a provider of engagement platform services, nearly 50% of online community members are “actively engaged,” leading to better client support and retention. Providing safe, inclusive spaces for your audience to congregate online and meet other like-minded people is a great way to engage your audience. The encouragement and goodwill increase trust in your brand.

‍Customer support – Brands such as Zappos invested in customer service by addressing the whole customer experience, not just product support. These brands encourage clients to call, text or email with questions about anything. Being supportive gives clients the extra assurance that your brand wants to add value to their business, not only reach your sales goals. Bolster engagement using frequently-asked-questions (FAQ) pages and click-to-connect links on your website.

4. Refer to Data Analytics at Every Step

Collecting, assessing and taking action on information and insights are among the best ways to improve a marketing strategy. According to a study by Forrester, 37% of marketers experienced wasted marketing spending as a result of poor marketing or media data quality.

Evaluate quality analytics from internal and external sources to ensure each marketing tactic appeals to your target audience. Get a higher return by investing resources into data with the greatest impact.

How do you determine this?

‍Prioritize what data to collect. Some data can improve customer service. Others, such as a question on your lead generation form, help you segment your email list. Decide what problem you want to solve first. Then, determine how data supports your decision-making process. Focus on information that improves a specific task or generates higher revenue.

‍Collect data. Gather information from customers or use third-party software, such as Google Analytics or social media analytics, to collect data. The collection methods used should tie back to your purpose. For customer support improvements, you may request feedback after service calls and review key performance indicators such as first-contact resolution rates.

Analyze selected data. Turn facts into actionable insights that fuel strategic decisions. Combine statistics from quantitative research (such as figures from polls) with context from qualitative data (such as answers to survey questions). Doing so gives you a better picture of performance or sentiment.

‍Answer questions and collect even more data. Once you’ve broken down your data, look for knowledge gaps. Invite your teams to share feedback on the insights and look for other ways to develop a clear picture of your audience. Create further survey questions or host focus groups to get more information about your customers or internal departments.

‍Report results and take action. Share the final results with teams, and provide key takeaways to inform best practices and tactics. Revise existing goals and create a timeline to check back, analyze and report on new results.

5. Concentrate on Increasing Sales

Generating leads is a must, but if your leads don’t convert, then you’re back where you started. Learn what makes your audience take the next step using market research and data analytics. Identify any friction during the final leg of the buyer’s journey by studying relevant information, such as abandonment rates. Once you know more about user concerns, develop tactics to address them.

How to improve digital marketing strategies to increase sales can be achieved by:

• Adding a chatbot to answer common questions
• Retargeting lost leads with an email offering an incentive
• Cross-selling similar products that improve the customer experience

Lead With a People-First Approach

The best digital marketing strategy aligns your goals with the needs of your audience. This requires regular audience research and breaking down departmental silos. Use customer-first marketing tactics to personalize your messaging and build stronger relationships.

6. Develop Customer-Focused Insights

Gather user-generated content and use it to inform your strategy. In doing so, you’ll find new ways to help customers while interacting with your audience.

Improve digital marketing strategies with these research methods:

• Social media polls for product or customer research
• Quizzes to enhance product recommendations
• Emails to request customer feedback
• Reviews or case-study interviews to bolster social proof or social influence tactics, such as sharing a testimonial that encourages others to trust their peers and take a similar action

7. Deliver Relevant Content to Improve Reach

Develop platform-specific strategies based on data. This increases your chances of satisfying users and algorithms. A customer-centric approach, for medium to large businesses, relies on techniques such as adaptive content and creative ad sequences. Your ad strategy combined with team collaboration supports a whole-company approach that connects clients to your brand.

According to Facebook, “people were 31% more likely to convert after seeing a video ad followed by a photo ad on Facebook than those who saw other combinations of creative.” The better you know your customers, the more likely you are to capture their attention online. Extend your reach by:

• Personalizing ads, emails and websites using dynamic content that changes according to the user
• Testing experimental ad sequences and placements on a segmented audience
• Encouraging a free flow of communication between sales, marketing and customer success teams

Revitalize Assets Across Channels

A library of evergreen content supports SEO. It also addresses your ideal buyer’s concerns.

However, don’t let your website become stagnant. Refresh your marketing campaigns by updating and repurposing existing content. Doing so helps you get more value out of every marketing dollar.

8. Update Website Content

It’s essential to refresh your website, blog and digital assets frequently. Consider updating your content at monthly or quarterly intervals. Adjust your language and promotions to fit trending and future search-intent needs.

Develop new digital marketing strategies to update website content by:

• Performing competitive research on various channels
• Analyzing SEO tactics to ensure they meet current best practices
• Updating content with new keywords and phrases
• Sharing optimized content via advertising and email campaigns

9. Repurpose Your Digital Marketing Assets

Your content repository is a library of assets and information. Your business may have user-generated content, niche-specific web pages, case studies and long-form guides.

Repurpose existing assets to refresh your digital marketing strategy:

• Create infographics from blog post data, audience surveys or social media campaigns
• Add a video to existing content to help fans explore the concept visually
• Turn pillar content and its companion blogs into a downloadable asset
• Explore new ways to incorporate user-generated content into your marketing
• Personalize existing content for location-specific campaigns

10. Distribute Existing Content in New Ways

If you hit a wall and aren’t getting a response from a marketing channel, look for other outlets.

New ways to distribute existing content could include:

• Sharing a video snippet in email or posting it on YouTube
• Posting a compelling statistic and tagging the source
• Using content headers in your advertising copy

Rank your platforms using data from your audience and competitive research. Next, employ marketing tactics that support cross-platform promotions.

Bolster brand awareness or generate leads by expanding your distribution methods. Pull statistics, quotes and headers from your guides. Look for related hashtags and social media accounts of your sources. Use this information to create social media posts or slideshows or to enhance videos.

Take Advantage of Digital Marketing Tools

Regardless of your business size, a successful digital marketing strategy focuses on resources. Easy-to-use tools help you stay consistent and support communications. It’s vital to assess your tech stack and use more of what works. Improve your digital marketing strategy by ensuring each tool you wield has a purpose.

11. Invest in Cloud Platforms That Back Marketing Tactics

The key to agility is assessing your tools and going with those where you see a decent ROI. Automate and personalize your communications while encouraging conversations across departments. The right mix of tools improves the customer experience by supporting users throughout their journey.

Connect teams with integrated platforms such as:

‍Content management system. Manage website content creation and workflows using an application such as WordPress, Drupal or Squarespace. These programs support the editing process, allow you to set access levels for different team members and use plugins to optimize for SEO.

‍Asset management system. Consider investing in a digital asset management (DAM) system, such as cloud-based platforms from companies like Bynder or Libris. Or use Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets or Airtable to track digital assets.

‍Marketing automation platform. Track communications, respond to leads and keep teams informed with a platform such as HubSpot or Marketo. Top applications put customer data, analytics and content automation in one spot while offering integrations with other tools.

‍Customer relationship management (CRM) system. Improve outcomes and lead generation efforts using a CRM program. Popular platforms like Salesforce integrate with automation and accounting programs for a clear view of your costs and overall reach.

‍Social media management. It’s nearly impossible to stay on top of social media without a program such as Buffer, Hootsuite or Sprout Social. You can automate messages, download analytics and manage permissions.

‍SEO tools. Ubersuggest, BuzzSumo, Google Trends and AnswerThePublic give you ways to see what users are talking about and searching for. Invest in paid programs such as Ahrefs or SEMrush for advanced integrations and data analytics. Plus, consider using A/B testing and heatmap tools, such as Hotjar, to improve your website.

How to Choose Different Marketing Strategies in Business

Personalize your digital marketing strategy to fit your audience and business capabilities. It should make good use of existing knowledge and resources while identifying new tactics to engage leads. For example, Denny’s implemented a different approach to digital marketing when the restaurant chain began engaging consumers on videogame platforms. The brand connects with fans on Nintendo Switch and Xbox One platforms. After announcing its gaming account, the company experienced a 26% engagement rate on Instagram and a 15% engagement rate on Twitter, according to Mobile Marketer.

While this technique worked for the restaurant chain, it won’t work for all companies. Base your decisions on market and competitive data, then tailor your actions to your capabilities and purpose.

Mix up your plan and goals to give yourself some quick wins along with long-term objectives.

Top Ways to Continuing Improving Your Marketing Strategies

A successful digital marketing strategy focuses on a foundation of long-term value and quality user experiences.

Always look for new ways to improve your plan:

• Identify gaps in your digital marketing strategy using competitor, audience and customer research.
• Narrow your focus by specifying platform-specific goals mapped to the buyer’s journey.
• Test, measure and adjust marketing tactics every 1 month to 3 months.
• Use tools to automate and personalize to the best of your ability.

Digital Marketing Strategy: Plan for Action

You learn something new every day — and so do your potential customers.

As technology evolves, so will buyer habits and search intent. Use your digital marketing strategy plan to increase sales by taking a human-first, data-based approach. Review your digital marketing strategy regularly, and equip teams with the right tactics and tools to build long-term relationships. Then reach objectives by continually combing through each layer of your blueprint and making improvements.