You’ve probably developed a solid digital marketing strategy that works for your current goals, but it’s always worth investing some extra time and effort into futureproofing your marketing strategy.
1. Invest in Customer Persona Research
How well do you know your core customers? Do you have an idea of the types of customers you’d like to reach but haven’t connected with as strongly just yet? Customer persona research could be one of your most valuable marketing investments of 2022. Effective user research can provide you with a better understanding of your target market’s wants and needs, help you develop content that’s more precisely targeted toward their interests and goals, and understand your place in your niche more clearly.
Questionnaires, surveys, usability tests, and A/B testing can all provide valuable insights into your target customers. Develop several customer personas using the data you’ve gathered over time to determine who your best customers are, how they spend their time online, and the best ways to reach them with effective marketing campaigns.
2. Expand to New Social Media Platforms
Almost every business has a Facebook profile by now, but other social media outlets can be fantastic for connecting with different audiences. Instagram and Snapchat can be ideal places to display new products and upload video content snippets. They’re also great for photo content, and Twitter is the go-to place for hot stories and the latest news updates.
Determine where your target customers spend their time using social media and try to cultivate followings on a new platform in 2022. Spend some time fleshing out customer profiles and determine which social media platforms are most likely to appeal to them. This is yet another reason why thorough user research is such an effective tool for strategizing.
3. Increase Your Brand’s Authority
Does your audience know they can rely on you for the latest industry news? Do they regularly comment on your blog posts to tell you how informative and valuable they are? Brand authority builds as you connect more deeply with your audience. When you consistently provide your audience with relevant content and prove you know what you’re talking about, you inherently build authority.
Your brand authority also has a significant impact on SEO, so look for opportunities to prove your place as an industry leader. For example, if you publish content to your blog and simply list your contributing authors as “staff” without creating fleshed-out author bios for them, this is a big missed opportunity to build your authority and earn some easy SEO points under the new EAT update.
4. Start Leveraging Voice Search and Planning for NLP SEO
Search engines are getting smarter, and the newest set of updates for Google includes BERT, the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. This new system is a natural language processor (NLP) system designed to more accurately interpret user searches, especially voice searches that typically entail more longtail keywords and filler words.
While you have likely already adapted a mobile-first approach when it comes to web development and content creation, make sure to carry those lessons over to prepare for the surging number of voice searches. Start looking for ways to incorporate more NLP SEO elements, such as longtail keywords and more fleshed-out keyword strings with filler words that users will likely speak into their devices to perform voice searches.
5. Invest in Video Content Creation
Content still very much reigns supreme as the key to successful SEO, but the type of content you’ve produced may be a bit stale compared to what some other brands are offering. Video content holds incredible potential for virtually any brand. How-to videos, product demonstrations, facility tours, “meet the team” interviews, and behind-the-scenes showcases are all possibilities. Video content is also highly shareable, so this can be a great way to boost your social media presence, too.
6. Get influencers to promote your product
What influencers recommend is what the vast majority of the audience listens to. If you want an organic way to tap into the pulse of your audience, leverage the power of social media influencers. Invest in influencer marketing and get them to promote your brand — whether you are selling a product or a service. As soon as an influencer recommends something, their followers are likely to take notice and take the action you want them to. If you are a new brand, you can tap into the micro-influencers, given the budget constraints.
7. Analyze Your Results
What use is it to have a digital presence plan unless you are willing to take a look at the results? In the digital world, everything moves at a breakneck speed and you need to keep up with the changing times. This also means that you will need to periodically update your strategies — what worked yesterday may make little or no sense today. The most convenient way to achieve this is by keeping an eye on the analytics. Almost every social media platform has native analytics tools you can use. Third-party apps can be also useful to analyze the metrics. The best way forward is to create goals that you can track. For example, aim for a certain percentage of click-through rates and review your results every quarter. Bear in mind that the key is to remain patient as establishing a digital presence is not a one-off event.
8. Publish customer testimonials
Along with influencer recommendations, if there is something else that your audience will take seriously, it is the recommendation of their peers. That’s why testimonials play such an important role in establishing your digital presence. Your words are not enough — hearing it from someone who is also a customer can make a difference.
Every time you have a customer who is mighty impressed with your products or loved the service you provided, make sure to get a testimonial from them. And instead of opting for a text-based testimonial that is easy to fake, go down the video route. There’s something about watching a human being on screen sharing their thoughts about a product. It can trigger a reaction that a normal text-based testimonial may fail to.
9. Invest in email marketing
Email marketing can help tremendously to strengthen your digital presence. Reaching the inbox of your target audience and compelling them to open your emails can be a great way to send the traffic where you want it — that is, your website. But very few business owners understand the difference between spamming their customers and actually sending them emails that they want to read. Concentrate on building an email list. Tap into creative copywriting skills so that your emails always hit the right spot. Keep in mind that your customers are inundated with hundreds of emails on a daily basis. So they are really looking forward to reading an email that provides something unique information.
10. Optimize your website for mobile devices
A vast majority of your audience may be looking at your website on their cell phones. This means that your website needs to be specially optimized for them so they don’t have to strain their eyes. Your website needs to have the correct resolution to lure in the audience.
11. Have a value-first approach
Having more followers is no guarantee of a good digital presence. Your goal should be building a stronger presence on your own. Make sure that you are working towards developing high quality and niche group of individuals who are really interested in what you have to offer. Only then will it translate into more likes and comments on your social media posts and get you the desired traffic. Such user-generated content is extremely important for beefing up your online presence. As a rule of thumb, always focus on delivering more value than simply focusing on getting more followers.
12. Make use of online listings
Whether it is Google My Business or Facebook pages — there are a number of ways to list your brand online and increase your digital footprint. In fact, increasing your digital presence by way of online listings is completely within your control. You don’t have to rely on an audience to find out that you exist. If anything, these listings will make you easily discoverable and add as an additional source of getting more traffic.
