02/07/2022
The Top 21 Digital Marketing Tips Fo beginners 2022
If thereโs one thing 2021 showed us, itโs that we need to go digital, now!
While many other types of traditional marketing have been shut down or restricted, the digital world is booming like never before. 2022 is the time to really take advantage of this to recover, and even grow your business in 2022.
To help you smash your marketing goals, weโve compiled the top 21 Digital Marketing Tips for 2022.
Tip 1: Update your Website (ASAP)
Do not start the year with an old dysfunctional website. Doing so would be like wearing an old unwashed uniform to your big first client meeting.
Users spend very little time on your site (about 45 seconds). You donโt want to lose users because your site is not updated or user-friendly.
Tip 2: Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly
Due to the COVID pandemic, the use of mobile devices has sharply increased in 2020. It is very important that your website be mobile-optimized.
It will make the user experience easy and convenient for customers. Time flies when youโre having fun or a good time, and thatโs what you want for your users.
A mobile-optimized website will also help with Googleโs โCore-Web-Vitalsโ, helping your measure speed, visual stability, and responsiveness. In 2021 paying attention to these measurements will help your search rankings on Google as a result.
Remember, you want to be accessible to your customers on mobile and desktop. Most users will find you on mobile devices in 2021 so letโs make sure they enjoy the experience.
Tip 3: Focus on the user experience (UX)
According to Google, users show that they prefer sites with a great page experience. It makes sense because who wants to spends hours struggling online right?
Prioritizing user experience (UX) will mean visitors are likely to stay engaged on your company website rather than visit your competitors.
To help businesses measure the user experience of their website, Google rolled out a new set of metrics called โCore Web Vitals โ that help measure website speed, responsiveness, and visual stability.
Tip 4: Create Content to Answer Your Users Questions
The best and most engaging content always answers your usersโ questions. If a user feels that they arenโt finding the answers to their questions, theyโll leave.
You want this content to either inform or add value to the usersโ experience and ultimately help solve their problems.
Tip 5: Take advantage of Paid Ads (If you havenโt already)
Traditionally, businesses have used radio, tv, print, or other forms of media to boost their businessโ exposure. However, the pandemic has affected the effectiveness of most of these platforms. Digital has been the least affected of these and has in fact improved during the pandemic.
To lower costs and increase returns, businesses are allocating less to their traditional marketing strategies and more to their digital marketing strategies.
Doing this improves the businessโ website traffic, and more traffic means more people finding you, which means more potential sales and profits in the long run.
Tip 6: Try New Marketing Tools
New programs and approaches are helping businesses achieve optimization and streamlined methods.
Consider using these digital marketing tools and platforms in 2021 (if you arenโt already):
CRMs โ Customer Relationship Management Systems: Keep your contact, sales, and customer engagement process well managed.
Analytics and reporting software โ help you know exactly what kind of results youโre getting so youโre spending your time and budget on the right things.
SEO optimization software โ For example, if you are using a WordPress website you can use Yoast SEO or Rankmath. There are many others. We use a tool called Frase at Rocket Expansion as well to help us create great SEO-optimized content.
Tip 7: Automate Your Tasks
Automating your tasks can help you save time and prioritize higher-priority projects. Automation in the right areas can greatly increase the benefits to your Digital Marketing Strategy.
Here is a shortlist of some of the areaโs to consider automating:
Automate Marketing Emails โ Schedule your marketing emails in advance to your selected contacts. You can also set up email seriesโ that get fired off to different audiences to provide personalized follow-up.
Automate Notifications โ These are particularly helpful for follow upโs when someone sends you an email.
Automate Social Media Posts โ Schedule all social media posts on multiple platforms in advance.
Automate Lead Flow โ If a user wishes to download a resource, you can send them an email right away to allow them to download that resource. You can continue to send them scheduled automated emails with additional information o the topic to help them move down along the funnel.
Automate Analytics Reporting โ Use Google Analytics and your CRM to track consumer behavior. These metrics are vital to observe the growth of your marketing activities.
Tip 8: Create Content that people are searching for that helps them
SEO tools and Google Analytics data will tell you what keywords and topics consumers in your industry are searching for.
Use this data to create blogs and resources.
The goal is to make quality, valuable content. Alternatively, you can use these topics to improve and re-purpose the information on your current highly searched blogs.
It is also key to focus on the human connection, instead of selling your product. By providing helpful and very valuable content, youโll begin to gain trust and credibility with potential customers.
Tip 9: Use video on social media
Social Media Marketing is booming in 2021. This is predominantly lead by video-based social media marketing. Consumers are increasingly engaging with image-based content, as well as video content.
Weโve seen vast shifts in almost every social media platform and landscape this past year.
Times have changed and apps like TikTok and Instagram Reels debuted in 2020, making videos likely to be the most popular form of content on social media in 2021.
Any digital marketing agency and digital marketers would agree that video marketing is more effective at generating leads than static posts.
Take it one step further and try adding interactive elements to your marketing videos.
Interactive videos are a new type of content that gives the viewer the ability to interact with the videos themselves creating a user experience like no other.
Consumers prefer interactive video content over other types of video content because it gives them the ability to decide what information they want to view and when they want to view it.
This information is key to your companyโs Social Media Strategy.
Tip 10: Going Local Can Boost your Sales
Marketing campaigns need to be customized to appeal to the local population. Start by optimizing your digital presence for local SEO.
According to HubSpot, 72% of customers did a local search before visiting a shop within a 5-mile radius.
Having a Google My Business page is essential, along with a strong backlinking profile to boost search results.
Next, you may leverage technology such as geolocation services to target audiences. With geolocation data, you can send personalized messages to a small group encouraging action at your nearby local store.
Tip 11: Use tools that allow for digital sales
Consumers always want instant solutions.
People are not willing to spend hours searching for information and with COVID changing consumer behavior, consumers are expecting everything to be handled online.
In 2021, try incorporating a few digital strategies and tools that make it easy for your contacts to conveniently engage with your sales team on their own terms.
Here are some examples of tools to keep in mind :
Chatbots โ Chatbots allow visitors to open live online chat conversations with business representatives on the company website. Businesses can provide support, ask qualifying lead questions, and even convert leads all through a live online chatbot, like Drift Video prospecting: Use video prospecting to help stand out amongst competitors and humanize the sales process by putting a face to the name. Personalize your message and include a call to action to have them schedule a meeting with you.
Pre-recorded demos โ Save time in your sales process by pre-recording your product demos. Youโll provide a great user experience where viewers can stop, pause, and rewatch the demo when itโs convenient for them.
Appointment and scheduling tools โ Use appointment scheduling tools like Calendly to automatically and accurately schedule meetings with leads right on the spot. Hereโs an example of ours.
Online transactions and e-signatures โ Utilize online transactions and e-signature tools like DocuSign to provide a convenient and fast turnaround on purchases.
Tip 12: Build Your Brand, Strategically
Whether you are an industry expert or a beginner, first impressions matter. A lot. The importance and value of your companyโs first impression is the reason you need a kick-butt, rock star brand.
Your brand is more than just a logo on display. Branding runs deep.
Thatโs why hiring a professional to do your branding and logo is key to your success. It is part of what will make you the brand of choice.
Tip 13: Track & Measure Spending
Different online branding and marketing channels will provide different benefits to you and your business. As the old saying goes, โyouโve got to spend money to make moneyโ. Prepare to spend, but be smart about it.
Spend some time carefully analyzing each channel, platform, or tool and what they offer to your business (in-depth). Also, set clear and measurable goals for each activity.
You will want to do this so that you can properly decide where and how much to spend. Spending and digital marketing should be done in a strategic way.
Doing things haphazardly will only yield ineffective and unsustainable results for your business โ youโll effectively be burning money.
One of the strategies we use at Rocket Expansion is to do small test campaigns with any new marketing spend and wait for results. Then, once we see which campaigns are successful, we spend more heavily on those and ditch the rest.
Be sure to continuously measure and have reviews of the results of each of your branding and marketing tactics and promotions.
This will ensure youโre getting the best bang for your buck, and alter or cease activities that arenโt meeting your goals.
Tip 14: Improve Your Online Presence With SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of getting found online through people searching for relevant terms in Google or other search engines.
There are really 3 main aspects to SEO:
researching what people are searching for in your industry
writing valuable, helpful relevant content that answers these searchers questions
getting other websites to link back to this content
With successful SEO, you can expand your reach to new audiences and online communities dramatically. Attract them to your website where you can hopefully convert them to paying customers.
Tip 15: Know Your Customers
Having knowledge about your customers and what their behaviors are will allow you insight into their respective markets.
There are many tools to understand and measure your customersโ purchasing behaviors.
You can create customer personas that will help you build your digital marketing and branding strategy.
Additionally, monitoring behaviors and results using Google Trends will keep you on top of relevant topics.
Tip 16: Create self-service options
Once more, people today want instant gratification.
Create a great customer experience by providing resources and answering questions while customers and prospects are engaged.
Knowledge base:
Instead of waiting for hours (or even days) for your support to reach back, answer your consumersโ questions now by creating a knowledge base with the answers to commonly asked questions.
Your knowledge base should include examples, pictures, explanations, links to additional resources, etc. These are all accessible through Google.
Training videos:
Create a library of how-to videos to help with customer onboarding and product education. This will also help build the companyโs reputation as a brand that cares about its customers.
HubSpot Academy is a great example.
Tip 17: Try account-based marketing
A new digital strategy method to consider in 2021 is account-based marketing (ABM). ABM is a personalized, strategic marketing strategy where key business accounts are marketed directly.
B2B marketers are already zoning in on account-based marketing (ABM) strategies.
According to Information Technology Services Marketing Association, 84% of digital marketing specialists have found account-based marketing to deliver higher returns than any other marketing approach!
Tip 18: Use personalization
Engage with your prospects by sending them targeted relevant messages based on the data youโve gathered from them.
Personalize your messages using the following information collected in your CRM: contact and demographic information, what webpages theyโve visited, which emails theyโve clicked, what resources theyโve downloaded, etc.
Businesses have seen improvements in their content marketing efforts due to personalization strategies.
Here are a few methods to consider:
Continue to send relevant information about their interests โ After a prospect subscribes or downloads a resource, continue to send additional information and resources based on their topics of interest to help move them through the stages of the Buyerโs Journey.
Address your prospects by name โ Emails that personalize either the subject line or email message are more likely to open and click the email. And personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates.
Tip 19: Review your strategy and budget
The coronavirus pandemic has changed consumer behavior, and therefore changed the way we reach our consumers and target our advertising campaigns.
Take a look at your marketing metrics from this past year to understand what worked and what didnโt work. This is key to improving your search engine optimization and paid advertising going forward, and to not repeat any past mistakes.
Make the necessary improvements and incorporate the new strategies mentioned above in your 2021 digital strategy.
Be sure to update your marketing budget to accommodate the digital marketing tools and strategies needed for 2021.
Tip 20: Get On Google My Business
If you are a local business or brand, getting your company on Google My Business (GMB) is of utmost importance.
The great news is that you can set up GMB yourself (or hire an agency for GMB setup
GMB is a free tool that allows you to showcase your companyโs information on Google and Google Maps.
You can highlight your branding elements through photos and posts as well as display important details such as your opening hours, website, address, and phone number.
Tip 21: Be Authentic
One of the most compelling ways to attract new customers is to be authentic. Rather than creating a brand that you think people want to learn about, why be true to your core values and attract customers with similar goals to you?
In doing so, your voice will be heard through your sincere brand storytelling, and your audience will respond in a much more genuine way.
Authenticity will convey a message about your brand that will attract a more relevant customer base to your business.
