Digital Marketing Best Practices (5 Tips for 2022 and Beyond)
The internet revolutionized marketing and democratized access to customers. In the past, the budget to market on traditional channels like radio and TV stations made it expensive and difficult for smaller brands. Nowadays, the focus is on digital marketing, which has its perks for businesses of all sizes. There’s no denying that as the online world grows, cutting through the competition can become daunting. Here are five digital marketing best practices for 2022 and beyond.
1. Online Reputation Management
Customers can have endless expectations from brands. An ambiguous tweet can cost you as much as an erroneous bank transfer in today’s cancel culture age. Businesses need to be very critical of their reputation online. Online reputation crises can happen in various forms, including making a distasteful joke or an uninformed political support message.
Sometimes, a public apology may suffice. In more critical cases, you may have to invest in draining PR damage control efforts which can be exorbitant and bad for businesses. It pays to be extra careful with your reputation online. For example, if you’re running a political campaign, first ask yourself “are political texts illegal?” or “How would the customers take it if you send a political text?” These are a few questions you can use to reassess your digital marketing plans before implementation.
2. Personalize Your User Experience
More than 70 percent of consumers become frustrated when a business’ digital content has nothing to do with them. The survey additionally reveals that more than 50 percent of consumers are willing to spend more if a company personalizes its experiences to their needs.
It’s not surprising that companies that personalize their content see a significant boost in their engagement, about 20 percent sales increment and 18 times more revenues. Personalization leverages customer data for a deeper understanding of your customers’ preferences.
3. Be Visual
Telling customers about your great products and services isn’t enough. Believability is crucial. You need to create narratives about your products, ensuring customers resonate with your products. Short-form storytelling and creating visually appealing content on your digital platforms come in.
If your posts are high quality and form a particular narrative about your brand, digital platforms can favor your posts in search results. The art of storytelling on digital platforms can apply in various forms. This includes but is not limited to the use of memes, videos, and infographics. The benefits of visual marketing are endless. Studies have shown that memes afford companies 60 percent more engagement, while infographics can increase a company’s website traffic by 12 percent.
4. Automate Customer Interactions
Automation is the future of efficient digital marketing. Sometimes, keeping up with customer queries and messages can be stressful. The more you delay with customer interactions, the more room you give customers to switch to other competitors who prioritize their customer service. Chat robots, or ‘chatbots’, can be an effective solution in this regard.
Using customer chatbots opens your business up to 24/7 availability. Using chatbots can even be your best shot at personalizing your conversations. You can trust chatbots to address each customer by their first name regardless of the customer volumes. They are not only efficient, but they’re also cost-effective. They can free you from expenses like recruiting more customer service staff as your business expands.
5. Be Search-friendly
It’s 2022, which means that 90 percent of all purchases begin with a search. You may be missing out on a ton of traffic if your business isn’t discoverable on popular search engines like Google. Investing in digital marketing strategies like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is almost non-negotiable.
All in all, digital marketing is home to many evolving trends, even beyond this year. Feel free to combine multiple strategies, adapting them to these best practices to improve your results.
