To optimize your marketing strategies, digital is mandatory. Digital marketing can help you to get to know your audience, learn important data about them, and provide metrics that will give your marketing team credibility.
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- I don’t know my audience well enough to get started. Getting to know your audience takes time, and while your marketing team may have developed audience personas that can be of use, consumers actively spending time online may not behave in the way you’d expect. You’ll need to test different language with different targets, keeping in mind that certain descriptors will appeal to different people and their place in the buying cycle. Attune yourself to your audience and you’ll build credibility that will set you apart from the competition.
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- I haven’t optimized my channels for SEO. Regardless of your position in the marketing process, it’s important to have an understanding of SEO best practices. In addition to improving search engine ranking, SEO can reinforce and support your campaign testing and optimization to ensure you’re delivering high quality, valuable content that your potential customers want.
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- I don’t have a social media strategy. Regardless of whether you want to develop an organic social media strategy, a paid social media strategy, or a blend of the two, it’s important to have some form of social marketing in place. While social media is excellent for branding and engagement, it can also be a useful channel for digital marketing advertisement. Find a niche and a consistent voice, be patient, and as your following increases, the impact of your ads will increase as well.
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- My marketing teams are siloed. It’s important to break out of silos to create nimble, fluid structures. Your customers aren’t sequestered in one channel waiting for ads, so your marketing efforts must deploy cross-channel functionality with teams that bring multiple skill sets to the table to engage customers where they are. Each social network and channel includes different audiences and expectations, so marketing efforts may look completely different for each. This includes tone, imagery, offers, and even the time of day you post.
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- I’m under pressure from my CMO to report on metrics that support the bottom line. Digital marketing supports a vast universe of metrics that can be utilized to determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, but these metrics should be chosen with care. Each case will depend upon your audience makeup and focus on each channel. Keeping this in mind, start by determining your goals for each channel and set metrics your CMO will want to see the most.