Mastering Digital Marketing: 5 Essential Elements to Remember
Unlocking the Power of Digital Marketing!
In this digital era, marketing has become more effective yet complicated. Advanced technology has made it easier for marketers to create strategies for reaching niche markets and increasing audience engagement. When I was a digital media planner, I could easily measure and track campaign performance and get the results in real time.
However, it has also overwhelmed marketers with frequently changed and unpredictable algorithms and intense competition to attract shortened attention span audiences. The big question is, how can we create an outstanding digital marketing strategy and reap its benefits despite the challenging environment?
5 Key Points to Keep in Mind for a Standout Digital Marketing Strategy
There are several strategies for leveraging digital marketing, and these are my top 5:
- Define your marketing objective — you don’t want to sail without a map
This is the first and foremost step before deciding anything. When we have determined an objective for our campaign, we have a clear blueprint for what kind of content to create, what tools to use, and what channels to choose. The marketing objective is also essential for measuring the success of our campaign. Therefore, don’t forget to make a SMART one!
2. Embed storytelling to your content — it’s still the King
As the competition in the digital environment gets tighter, we must engage with our audience and get their attention. Storytelling can help us build relevancy and inspiration with our audience and differentiate our brand from competitors, which increases our likability. Some qualities of good storytelling are appealing narrative, attention-grabbing, interactive, and imaginative.
There is interesting science-based research about the impact of storytelling on the willingness to do certain actions, such as donation. Even though this research video was uploaded 11 years ago, it is still relevant for today’s and even future storytelling strategy.
3. Keep up with the news and trends — otherwise, you’re missing out on opportunities
The digital world changes so fast. Keeping up with the news and trends will help us create a strong digital marketing strategy. I recommend listening to Marketing O’Clock, a podcast that curates digital marketing updates and news from social media, SEO, paid marketing, and analytics. From that podcast, I learned that Google and Meta’s ad features change weekly. Consequently, getting ourselves frequently updated is a must.
We also must keep up with social events happening in our surroundings to create a relatable and shareable campaign. Recently, a solar eclipse occurred, and many brands were tapping into this once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. One that I think is quirky and grabbed my attention is Go RVing’s April Fools/solar eclipse ad of their RV-sized solar eclipse glasses.
However, don’t jump to all trends since not all trends are suitable for our brand!
4. Do experiment with creative and optimization strategy — it’s not a one-size-fits-all
Compared to conventional marketing, digital marketing has an advantage that allows marketers to reach niche markets with personalization. Each market has different characteristics and, hence, needs different strategies. There is no one absolute strategy that will definitely work in every market. This uniqueness then requires us to do experiments in finding the right approach.
One experiment that we can do is A/B Testing, where we showcase two or more different strategies to different audience segments with the aim of determining the most impactful version. Nowadays, A/B Testing is getting to the next level with AI integrations, multi-device experiences, privacy-centric testing, faster iterations, and server-side testing. This experiment can be implemented in various aspects, from organic to paid marketing.
5. It’s the era of collaboration that bursts with creativity—a unique approach that sometimes turns into viral marketing!
Brand collaboration is essential to creating buzz, which is the basis of virality! This is a win-win for the involved parties, as they share their market with each other. Brands can also generate fresh marketing ideas that they might not be able to do or even think of without a partnership.
My favorite cross-industry brand collaboration is between personal care products (such as skincare and cosmetics) with food and beverage products. I feel that the resulting products are unique and aroused my curiosity to try them. In the US, one successful brand collaboration is the Meat Sweat Defence Kit by Old Spice and Arby’s, which was sold out in just three hours.
Do you have your own crackerjack digital marketing strategy? Share it with us in the comment box!
Stay connected,
Annisa
