Digital technology is continuously growing and developing. The options for modern marketers are endless – social media, search, big data, email, blogging, etc. Digital marketing strategies are evolving to prevail.

Let us first understand what a strategy looks like in the mind of a marketer: A Digital Marketing strategy is the series of actions that help you achieve your desired goals using online marketing. Remember that your strategy and campaigns are different. A digital marketing campaign is an action within your strategy that pushes you towards the goal.

We have understood what a strategy is. Now let us look at the best strategies that the most successful digital marketers follow:

1. Set a goal. A business wants to grow by raising more customers, gaining more recognition or by striving to be the best in the market. Digital marketing is a great way for businesses to prosper, but going into it blindly can leave them in a mess. Setting a goal helps you know what to focus on. First define your business’ mission. Your digital marketing mission must fit within this mission. Articulate this goal clearly.
2. Analyze the results. Analyzing your digital marketing strategy’s successes and failures can help you focus you on the best practices for your business. Choose a time period you’d like to analyse –  like the past month, quarter or year – and decide what you would like to see happen in the next set of the same time period (month, quarter, year). Question if there is anything else of importance that needs analyzing but has been missed out, and introduce it to your analysis.
3. Meet the expectations of your consumers. Consumers make a business successful by choosing to use its products and services. You know the demographics (age, gender and location) of your audience. Identify their desires, goals, and issues. Keep them at the heart of your digital marketing strategy and show them that you are offering something they’re looking for, by catering to their needs and requirements.
4. Identify your resources and discern their allocation. Determine your budget, digital platforms and team. Make an inventory list of your resources and then evaluate how to maximize these resources. When an element of the strategy is not giving you expected results, review it and invest its allocated resource into one giving better results. Also identify when you need to allocate an increased amount of resources.
5. Make a plan and improvise. The original plan is never going to be perfect as every assumption you make may not be correct. You might have very carefully constructed a plan based on insightful assumptions and analysis, but you still cannot predict how customers will respond. Therefore it is crucial to monitor the performance of your plan and improvise it.
6. Create a digital calendar: Document and highlight each step of your plan and the key campaigns to promote throughout the year in this calendar. Allocate a timeframe for each of them. Share it with your team members, allowing them to edit it where necessary.

Current Marketing Trends for 2023:

1. Word of mouth. According to Nielsen, 84% of customers make purchase decisions based on recommendations from their friends. Offer incentives via referral codes for users to advocate your business to their friends. Uber grew almost entirely through word-of-mouth marketing, which is a very high converting channel.

2. Reviews and feedback. Customers need a solution, not a product, hence focus on customer experience. A positive experience for the customer, who in turn gives a good review of the product and great feedback on services, gains more than a big marketing budget could accomplish.

3. Make customer service easier.  Add useful information that consumers can use, to your promotions. Also, respond to consumers whenever they interact with your online profiles to elevate trust and compatibility.

4. Pay-Per-Click Marketing. PPC marketing uses search engine advertising to bring visitors to your website, and is a powerful tool to generate leads. You can convert them into a customer by offering valuable incentives on their purchase.

5. Search Engine Optimization. You design a website which includes all the services you offer, but there are hundreds of websites in your specialization. How will your website be the topmost result when potential customers search for the keywords relevant to your business? Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a critical role in making that possible.

6. Influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is less expensive, easy-to-implement and builds trust for your brand. Customers will use your brand because of the credibility of an influencer. It focuses on using key leaders to make an appeal for the brand to the market.

7. Content marketing. Content marketing creates beneficial, irresistible, problem-solving online content to influence and convert prospects into buyers. You present them with valuable resources as solutions that they need.

8. Retargeting or behavioral targeting. When a potential customer visits your website, a cookie a saved from their browser. Retargeting is implemented when they visit other websites and the retargeting platform is notified by that cookie. Then they are shown advertisements based on the pages they visited.

9. Make your online presence strong. Potential customers are very active on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. You do not have to be on every social media platform available, but be on the platforms where your audience is interacting with you the most.

10. Add your business to Google Maps.
You can easily improve online visibility by simply adding your business to Google Maps. Your customers can find you easily and leave valuable feedback, which boosts your credibility and attracts more customers.

11. Smartphone video advertising. Mobile video advertising is showing up everywhere and the reason for this development is simple: pair a smartphone with 4G internet service, and users can watch and share high-quality videos wherever they are. Marketers are using video-in-apps to engage audiences between tasks. In most cases, the ad can only be skipped after the user watches at least a few seconds, and sometimes they cannot be skipped at all. They are designed to load quickly and run smoothly on smartphones.

Jacky Lovato has accurately said, “If you don’t keep up, you’ll get left behind.” As modern businessmen, it it vital to keep with with developments in the business world. To sum it up, use the methods and tools that act as a catalyst for growth.