How To Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy for 2023

Digital marketing is going to have a banner year in 2023. Many brands will see budgets reach all-time highs between search engine marketing, Facebook advertisements, and display advertising, just to name a few.

Voice search, augmented reality, and virtual reality marketing will become more prominent shortly – things that digital marketers or any white label social media marketing agency can offer to step up their game. 

Digital best marketing practices are essential for businesses looking to get a positive return on their digital investments. 

Establish Your Goals

Defining your goals is the first step to creating your digital marketing strategy. It is critical to set clear goals for your campaigns if you are to measure their success. 

A goal might be to increase traffic, increase the number of leads generated, or even only make an impression on a select demographic.

Regardless of your plan – whether as a primary marketing goal or a market penetration strategy – ensure you have a clear and concise vision of the goals you want to achieve to build your strategy.

Goal setting is essential to the success of any initiative, whether it involves simple or ambitious targets, particularly during a paradigm shift from traditional leadership practices to modern ones.

Let’s look into this case study as a marketing strategy example.

Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad set a goal of 100 million readers a month for the publication after taking over the leadership role for the media company, which was planning to transcend into the digital age  – and at a time, it was facing insolvency.

Pragad, who holds a Ph.D. in Mobile Internet from one of the leading research institutes worldwide, envisioned a radical transformation of the fledgling company and raised it to reclaim the giant it once was.

“I thought, ‘in the digital era, that should be at least 100 million readers a month. So I set this big goal. At that point, I didn’t realize the scientific power of setting big ambitious goals,” Pragad said.

One key point was that the team was not afraid to commit mistakes during the process and learned from them.

“When we made a mistake, we didn’t want it to be like, sorry, we push it under the carpet and go away. We wanted to hold ourselves accountable, so we had a corrections page; in the beginning, we had a lot of corrections, so others made fun of us for that page.”

“But for us, that became a source of pride, it held us accountable, and today, we hardly have any corrections. So by being very transparent, as we scaled, we were able to bake in quality control into that as well.”

“We wanted to define our mission clearly, and we defined our mission as a publication that listens to people across the political and cultural spectrum,” he added.

In early 2021, Newsweek surpassed its 100 million readership goal.

Deciding how to achieve goals is easier once you’ve defined them. 

Best practices in digital marketing revolve around ensuring goals are met. 

For instance, if one of your goals is to generate new leads for your business, then you should start by focusing on the UX of your website, and the top of its sales funnel to achieve your goal. 

Your content marketing, marketing strategy plan, and remarketing tactics are likely to be where you begin if you’re looking to convert more leads into sales through your content marketing. 

Whatever the case may be, the tactics are determined by the goal. 

You will still need to pivot in the future. There is always the possibility of changing your goals by the end of the process, but you will also have to change the tactics you use to meet them if you wish to go in a different direction.

However, starting with goals rather than a tactic or an “overall strategy” is crucial to ensure that you achieve your goals.

Take advantage of business and data analytics.

The best digital marketing practices include using data that makes sense for your business. But, unfortunately, marketing today is more a numbers game than a creative process of taking big ideas and thinking of omnichannel campaigns to make them work.

Most of your data will likely come from Google Analytics, your CRM platform, your email marketing platform, and your display and affiliate partners. 

You must be able to trust what you see in the data, and if you can’t, then spend the time required to clean up the data before proceeding any further.

It is highly recommended that you spend some time learning about Google Tag Manager, Facebook’s pixel, Google Search Console, and any back-end conversion data you will receive from your ESP or CRM. 

Making sound business decisions is based on the ability to trust your numbers. 

As reported by the US Bureau of Statistics, bad data costs the United States $3 trillion annually in terms of lost productivity. 

So there is no doubt that this is one of the most important areas that businesses need to focus on aside from setting goals.

A successful growth marketing strategy does not rely on gut instincts to be successful. 

Instead, growth marketers should base their actions and strategies on the data collected from their tests and data analysis. 

You need to pay attention to the breadcrumbs that will lead you to the ultimate objective of owning your industry to be able to achieve success in your venture.

There is often a link between those breadcrumbs and the key performance indicators you set out to track. However, several qualitative KPIs, such as customer sentiment, can also be used as KPIs. 

Establishing metrics and goals for each funnel stage will assist you in determining whether your strategies are effective or need to be tweaked.

There may be a reason why you have fewer referrals from customers than you would like.

 There needs to be more enthusiasm among your customers as a result of the inconsistent quality of service, based on results from your net promoter score surveys. 

Although some of your customers are happy to recommend your brand to others, you have a growing list of passive consumers. An inactive customer has the choice of taking your offering or not. To become a brand advocate, one must convince them that a brand is worth their loyalty.

When you ignore this data, you must follow the breadcrumbs that lead you to the destination. First, review your referral program to determine if it needs to be in sync with what customers are experiencing. There may be inconsistencies in other departments that will have to be addressed by you. 

To remain a loyal customer, you might need more than just a reward, and you may need to pay attention to the rewards. By taking a close look at the behaviors of consumers, you can make better decisions when it comes to marketing.

Get to know your customers.. and your core identity

There’s no doubt that this is an obvious example, but it’s essential to realize that if you need help understanding your own company and what it means to the customer, there’s a problem. 

Discussing digital marketing best practices is possible if your marketing team knows its value proposition, market, and customers.

Having a deep understanding of your company (and your customers) is only possible if you know them well.

Remember that you should always think like your customers regarding your business. 

When creating an advertisement or piece of content, you must consider what you would like to see if you were a customer. 

Be sure to consider how you will measure this and how it will fit your goals. What is most important is knowing why it matters to the people who matter most to you.

Getting your customers involved is always a good idea. Take advantage of your customers’ feedback and find out what they think about your products and services. This is an excellent opportunity for you to get positive reviews online.

If you are building a digital marketing strategy for your business, it can be highly beneficial to start by picking your customers’ brains about their industry. To be successful, you must first understand your customers to provide them with what they need.

Reinforce Your Brand Credibility

You can carry a reputation with a brand from one place to another. However, if a growth marketer does not have a good reputation from the start, they will have a more challenging time overcoming said hurdles. 

The same applies to inconsistent marketing messages and a lack of specificity in a brand’s marketing strategies that may tarnish its reputation simultaneously. As a business owner, you must know how to establish and build a brand’s credibility to gain customers and keep them.

Credibility is something that takes time to build or repair. There is also a requirement for trustworthiness and expertise in this field. Consumers will be less likely to convert if they aren’t convinced they can trust your brand at any funnel stage. A high level of trust usually accompanies a high level of expertise. 

Companies must demonstrate to their audiences that they are well-versed in the topics they address and can speak with authority about them.

Your brand credibility must create engaging and unique online content that is insightful and engaging.

By ensuring your content meets your audience’s needs and search intent, you demonstrate a deep understanding of their needs and wants. 

A connection and a sense of trust begin to develop as you get to know each other. In addition, you can further increase the credibility of your brand by integrating customer reviews and working with other industry influencers. 

Nevertheless, it is vital to ensure that what you say aligns with what your organization can deliver.

Develop Omnichannel Experiences

Understanding how different market segments move through the sales funnel is crucial to helping brands reach the right consumer at the right time. 

Furthermore, it ensures consistency in messaging and experiences across multiple marketing channels. In today’s world, there is a high likelihood that leads, and customers will interact with a brand through more than one channel. As a result, consumers today expect to receive consistent and personalized experiences across all channels.

Based on a study conducted by marketing specialist Analytics Partners, companies that embrace omnichannel marketing strategies have a 32% higher return on investment when compared to companies that don’t.

By understanding how segments interact with your brand and where they interact with it, you will be able to identify opportunities to enhance the omnichannel experience for your brand. 

Imagine that your pay-per-click ads and blog posts are what a consumer group sees for the first time when they browse your website. 

Although these advertisements and posts are designed to raise awareness among this segment, many people call customer service for more information. As a result, they need clarification on your online store and the checkout process to be too lengthy and complicated.

This segment of consumers needs to understand why you cannot ship your products to a home address since they cannot do so. They don’t expect to be able to order online and have their order delivered to a local store since they have to have their order delivered to them.

What is the point of getting leads to convert by using your website if they have to go to a store anyway? To improve conversions and meet bottom-of-the-funnel needs, you should modify your online checkout process and shipping practices to match consumers’ expectations.

Marketing with mobile 

Over 50% of US mobile users report watching more video content this year than last year. People are also increasingly choosing smartphones over computers if their budget allows only one device.

For any marketing campaign to succeed, you must put your messages where your target audience can see them. In today’s phone-first world, those who will view most of their messages on a mobile device. 

This is what you will want to focus your attention on, so this is where you need to focus your time. How about native ads on mobile? 

Do your display ads have multiple sizes to fit your audience’s specific devices? Do you have a mobile-first Facebook ad strategy? These are all critical questions that should come to mind.

One of the best practices of digital marketing shortly will be to make everything mobile-first to ensure that it stands the test of time. 

If you need to incorporate mobile marketing into your digital marketing strategy, there is always room for improvement. As a result, you need to ensure this is at the forefront of your work, not simply an afterthought. 

In addition, your website should be responsive (if you still need to adopt the responsive design, I encourage you to do so as soon as possible).

Without an excellent website, a fantastic marketing plan will not be as effective as it could be.

In short, you should focus on mobile users but pay attention to desktop and laptop users. When your landing pages need to be better designed, are slow to load, and have unclear buyer journeys, they all defeat the purpose of your other digital marketing strategies.

Desktop, tablet, and mobile ads should all be divided into three categories. It would be best if you customized ad sizes, creativity, and goals for different types of people using other devices. Desktop users still play a significant role (although one that is diminishing over time). Remember, mobile-first…but not exclusively.

Utilize Paid Social

It is shocking to see how many brands fail regarding social media and pay-per-click marketing. 

Even so, paid social marketing allows you to laser-target your audience based on their interests, locations, titles, and buying habits (as well as many other exciting options). 

Consider outsourcing digital marketing if you do not possess these skills in-house.

We want to draw your attention to something important here…we believe that there is one role you should handle internally.

A social media manager plays this role. 

This role will likely have little to do with paid social. Non-paid social media is only sometimes a sales driver. 

By connecting with a community, you humanize your brand. 

It allows you to maintain a consistent voice. All of these things are fine but don’t expect them to generate direct and outright revenue for you.

Personalize whenever possible

Digital marketing is becoming increasingly personalized. It is best to personalize whenever possible, and there are many levels of personalization. 

It is becoming more common for automation platforms to move in this direction. The advertising industry isn’t far behind.

Invest in personalizing your digital marketing (emails, landing pages, event pages, etc.). 

Research shows that extra effort can capture customers who never purchase, never become leads, and never interact with your brand.

Skill & Knowledge Gaps? Outsource

It is subjective to determine what constitutes digital marketing best practices. Therefore, one person’s “must do” may not be the “no way” of another. 

Outsourcing digital marketing can, however, have a significant impact on the bottom line. After all, people with talent are expensive. 

Moreover, if they are really “deep” in one area, you need several of them to operate effectively. This can have a crippling effect on a budget. 

You are spending more on salaries than on marketing makes no sense. It serves many purposes to fill critical skill gaps with shared outsourced professionals. 

For example, growth marketers strive to boost their businesses through tangible results. 

It is also possible to succeed by increasing customer retention and getting more qualified leads, even if that usually means sales. 

There is no magic formula for achieving these outcomes. However, well-executed plans and strategies lead to them.

Nonetheless, plans and strategies often need to be revisited and fine-tuned. To make improvements, experimentation is a crucial component of any growth marketing strategy. 

You must be willing to test out new ideas and follow the data to be able to level up your line of attack. These steps can make your growth marketing strategy and efforts more effective in 2023.

Conclusion

Keeping up with digital marketing best practices adopted by other high-achieving marketers will keep you on the fast track to success in 2023.

To ensure your digital marketing is on point for 2023, you need to focus on a few key things. First, revisit your campaigns and see what worked well and where there’s room for improvement. 

Also, take some time to research the latest digital marketing trends to keep your strategies fresh and up-to-date. Lastly, consider partnering with an experienced agency to help you level up your marketing game for the new year.

Is your digital marketing ready for 2023? Let us know how we can help get you there.