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As the shift to digital continues, traditional marketing is increasingly disrupted by digital marketing. Digital marketing teams are under tremendous pressure to manage this transition, seize the opportunities of digital marketing and reap huge profits. Here are seven tactics for doing just that.
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Automate to improve workflow efficiency
Improving workflow efficiency is a great way to improve customer experience, reduce service costs and improve agency profitability. That’s what venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said ten years ago “software is eating the world.” Today it is more correct to say that artificial intelligence (AI) is eating the world. AI is disrupting industry after industry, and digital marketing is no exception. An easily deployable tool is using conversational intelligence to extract insights from conversations with customers and improve marketing strategies. For example, conversational intelligence can determine which keywords customers use and shift marketing so that products and scenarios reflect the customer’s language.
SEO remains important
Any marketing expert will tell you that search engine optimization (SEO) has grown past the days when it was just about getting a site higher in Google’s page rank. While it remains important to move up Google’s page rankings, SEO has fundamentally changed. Digital marketers should consider alternative SEO strategies. While Google’s dominance among search engines continues to grow, search strategies on platforms such as Amazon, Instagram and Twitter will become increasingly important.
Stand out with thought leadership
Thought leadership is a new and increasingly important way to grow a brand. It is also a way to do it with high margins, requiring very little economic investment. What it does require is an investment in developing unique insights. This may even require someone whose job is to do nothing but read, think, write, or post videos.
People are hungry for insight and what they want is someone who can deliver deep insights that make it worth their time. If you can gain people’s trust as a trusted authority, you build the value of your brand.
Collecting data
In the era of Big Data, data is the new oil. Owning data is the foundation of a good business. Your company should invest in tracking your customer’s activities not only on customer websites, but also on third-party websites. On Apple products, of course, they must give explicit permission for this, and you can even proactively ask their permission when they land on the customer’s website. The portion of traffic you can track gives you insight into what people want. Tracking lead conversions is vital.
If you can’t measure something, it’s hard to know what you’re doing right. Collecting data is essential to understanding what works in your digital marketing strategy and therefore reducing the cost of acquiring each customer. It’s also important to please your customers by giving them exactly what they want and need. Without data, you can’t maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your campaigns. In this way you increase your chances of retaining your customers.
Prepare for Google Analytics 4
As of July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics will no longer process data. While you may continue to see Universal Analytics reports for some time, new data is being processed by Google Analytics 4 properties. Google Analytics 4 is touted as the “next generation of Analytics”.
It is recommended that you use both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 in preparation for the transition so that you are familiar with Google Analytics 4 by July. In addition, you should start using Google Analytics 4 tracking features to give yourself a little treasure trove of data once the July deadline arrives.
Build customer loyalty
The lifetime value of any customer is determined by the degree of customer loyalty you can foster. This isn’t just because customers will stay longer the more loyal they are, but it’s also because loyalty will lead them to use more and more of your services, helping you “land and expand”.
To increase customer loyalty beyond what your own operational excellence can achieve, you need to offer customers free offers, loyalty discounts, and referral discounts, and you need to over-communicate your fulfillment expectations to build trust. These matters are all the more relevant in times like these when customers are in a state of uncertainty and may even face declining revenues. These investments will pay for themselves in the long run. You want to go the extra mile for repeat customers so they understand how valuable they are to you.
Third-party tracking is dying out. Apple is one of the main reasons for this, as it provides a push to answer customer fears about privacy. For digital marketers, this means rethinking how you advertise in a world without third-party cookies. More specifically, digital marketers will have to do more to collect first-party data. The importance of data remains, but now success depends on having enough data to gain meaningful insights. Digital marketers who manage to build out their own data will be ahead of those who can’t and won’t analyze the performance of their ads and do better market research.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.