The world of marketing has changed so much in the last few years. With social media, we have a direct line to our customer’s hearts and minds. We can even track their eye movements as they look at our ads! But what does this mean for marketers?
In this blog, we’ll give you some ideas on how to stay ahead of your competition by implementing these marketing best practices into your marketing plan today!
What does “best practices” in marketing mean?
A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces better results than other means. Best practices are also known for being more efficient, which means you get your work done in less time while still getting the same level of quality on each task at hand!
Marketing best practices are designed to provide sustainable growth for your company’s future, while also promoting long-term, authentic relationships with your customers.
Looking for tips on how to improve your marketing and learn about best practices? Well, these are the eight best practices that we’ve found throughout our experiences with digital marketing.
Know your brand identity
When it comes to marketing your product, it’s important to have a firm understanding of your brand identity. What are your core values? What makes you unique? What is your company culture like?
Once you have a good grasp on these things, you can start to craft a digital marketing strategy that accurately represents your brand and resonates with your target audience.
Having a strong brand awareness and effective brand management will help you make a memorable impression on consumers and allow your customers or clients to know exactly what to expect from the company. In today’s competitive marketplace, a successful brand strategy will help to ensure that customers are able to distinguish your company from others.
Creating your brand identity
It’s clear why having a strong brand identity is important, so how do you create and understand your company’s identity?
One of the most important things you should consider is who your audience is and what they care about. You should also be aware of what your competition’s brand identity is and how they present themselves as a company.
Consider how you can “embody” your brand’s identity within your marketing strategy or your go-to-market strategy by the content you create. Lastly, make sure your monitor your brand’s identity to make sure the digital marketing strategies you are implementing are translating well with your target audience.
Implementing a successful brand management strategy
The brand management process is an essential component of effective marketing and growth. It includes understanding your target market, creating a strategy to reach that market, and executing that strategy by utilizing tactics like social media campaigns, website optimization, SEO strategies, email marketing campaigns, and more.
Some brand management best practices include being cognizant of how you are portraying your brand through content, monitoring what consumers are saying about your products and services, responding to customer inquiries in a timely manner, and proactively addressing any negative feedback. Brand managers should also be aware of what other companies in their industry are doing, and use that knowledge to create a competitive edge.
Know your target audience.
It’s important to identify your audience because then you can focus marketing efforts and dollars on those who are most likely to buy from you. This will generate more business leads for an affordable price!
Knowing your target audience will allow you to discover how to reach them effectively- which is a huge part of marketing success. Knowing your target audience will also help you craft a user experience for your online presence, and wedge in your brand identity into your design system. Click here to learn more about how UX and UI can help in your marketing strategy.
How do I discover my target audience?
As one of the most crucial parts of creating amazing marketing strategies, there are a number of ways to find out who your target audience is and how to reach them.
In our experience, creating buyer personas can be an extremely effective way to understand and reach your target audience. Knowing your buyer personas is the key to success in marketing. By identifying what they want and need, you can create an engagement strategy that will ensure their contact with any product or service of yours!
We’ve put together a blog all about buyer personas and how to create them here.
Set clear, attainable goals
You may have a great inbound marketing plan in mind, but how do you achieve your goals?
To ensure your goals are attainable, you need to set clear and specific expectations. The more specific and defined your goals are, the more likely you will be able to achieve them. Communication plays a huge role in setting your business up for success in your marketing campaigns.
Communicating your expectations will make sure everyone involved on the business side and marketing side is on the same page with campaign management best practices for the marketing campaign you are initiating.
Marketing is a dynamic process that constantly evolves to meet customer needs. Make sure your marketing strategy reflects the goals you’ve set for it, and then after a quarter of operation take an honest look at how things are going with data from this time period.
Take some downtime each month so you have fresh information upon which to build up again next term.
Let data drive your creative
Data is a powerful tool for marketers, and personalized marketing can help you reach your customers more effectively.
Data-driven marketing means using customer information to make better decisions, and it’s a great way of understanding your audience. Check out 8 ways a marketer can use data-driven analytics to enhance their marketing campaigns.
For example:
If you’re trying to promote one product over another on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter but aren’t sure which posts will bring in more customers? You can use data from previous interactions with people who have liked each type of post before they were given an answer! Data-driven marketers also look at what individuals buy online as well how long their visit lasts while there—this allows them to predict future behavior based on past actions.
Personalized Marketing
A new best practice in the marketing world is all about knowing and reaching your audience, and it’s called “personalized marketing.”
This strategy of using data to personalize the brand message targeted at individual prospects has been shown time after time as being effective in increasing conversions on products or services offered by companies that use these strategies – one recent study found out it increased their sales 8%.
In a world of Google and Facebook algorithms, personalization is the key to success. Data and having well established marketing KPI’s are the key to personalization. It helps marketers identify potential customers’ triggers and pain points, so they can provide a more enriched experience for each individual person with whom businesses communicate through their advertisements or other digital marketing campaigns.
Educate with your content marketing
One of the more important digital marketing best practices is to educate your customers with content.
Educating with content helps set your business apart as an industry thought leader.
How to educate with your content
In order to create educational content in marketing, it’s important to clearly know the audience you are targeting. This way you can tailor your content to address a specific problem or interest area that is relevant for people in this group.
There are many tactics for creating educational content in your marketing strategies. You could conduct a survey and publish the results, create informational graphics with professional illustrations and descriptions, write a blog about the industry’s digital advertising best practices, for instance, and share it on social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
Whatever your sphere of expertise maybe there is always a way to transfer this knowledge into education materials that will benefit customers looking for information from you specifically!
Prioritize SEO
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is a marketing strategy that helps websites show up organically in web searches (organic traffic), increase sales leads and boost customer conversion rates. Find out what it means to prioritize your conversion rates here.
SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies out there because it naturally attracts visitors and traffic to your website or business, thus making SEO an unbeatable option when compared with social media campaigns or paid advertisements. This traffic can come in the form of direct or oragnic traffic, it’s important to know the difference and put the proper measures in place to separate the different types of traffic for your marketing goals.
Marketers use SEO to rank higher in Google, which allows them to show up higher in searches and tailor messages for each individual.
Marketers can also use SEO to measure how effective they are doing by looking at their website’s analytics, such as bounce rate or conversion rates. Want to know what’s a healthy bounce rate? Find out here.
Optimize Multiple Platforms
The ability to use multiple social media platforms in marketing is very important.
Social media marketing allows you to communicate and reach your target audience, creating personalized content, no matter where they are, and engage digitally with them in ways that were never possible before.
How do you decide which social networks will help you achieve your business goals?
Once your target audience is known and you’ve set your attainable business goals, you can explore which social networks are a good fit for your company. Whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, all social media outlets offer different pros and cons for your digital marketing strategy.
Develop your website
A well-developed website is an integral part of any business’s most effective marketing strategies. Investing in website digital marketing is one of the most successful ways to help your business grow and gain new leads.
Not convinced websites are all that important for businesses in 2024? Check out our blog!
How do you use digital marketing in website development?
There’s a lot that goes into making sure a website is helping and not hurting your different marketing strategies. We’ve developed a list of four actions to consider when you are developing your website in an online marketing campaign:
Take into consideration website design
A well-developed website is an integral part of a business’s successful marketing strategies, as well as a way to establish credibility and provide information. Investing in website digital marketing is one of the most successful ways to help your business grow because it can potentially attract new leads from around the world and increase brand awareness.
Website design impacts how people interpret and respond to your online presence: colors, images, fonts, and other visual elements (check out our guide on visual hierarchy for websites) all affect people’s impressions of your company – whether they’re here for just a minute or spend hours exploring every corner. Sites with cluttered layouts permit visitors to infer negative qualities such as careless design or lack of organizational skills about their creators.
If you’re thinking about hiring a marketing company that specializes in website design, make sure you know what you want your website to do for your marketing strategy and communicate that to the designer.
Not sure what the difference between web development and design is? Check out our blog post!
Ensure your website is reader-friendly
The readability of a website can influence visitors’ opinions on the site’s credibility and organization skills. Website readability is an assessment of how easy or difficult it is to read a website. This term can either refer to the font size, contrast with background color, font typeface, and text links. Remember, a potential customer’s impressions are formed through every aspect of how your site is designed, not just by content.
Develop a content strategy for your website
Besides web design and readability, producing content that is informative and well-written is a huge part of having a successful site on the internet.
Producing quality content, whether through blogs and press releases, doesn’t just help you show up in search engines- it helps establish you as an industry thought leader. See how you can drive more organic traffic to your website through blogging. That’s why it’s important to develop a strategy to produce quality content to live on your website.
Make sure your website is optimized for search engines
As we’ve stated above, SEO is crucial when it comes to marketing tactics. After all, if you make your site user-friendly and beautiful, it won’t matter if people can’t find it.
If a potential customer cannot find your site when using a search engine, there is a high chance that they will choose your competition over you.
There are many ways to optimize your site for ranking in the search results. Optimize titles, meta descriptions, and tags with keywords as well so you can rank higher!
Frequently Asked Questions
What does “best practices” mean in marketing?
Best practices are the most effective ways that you can carry out your marketing strategy. Your best general marketing practices in each situation will depend on a number of factors: who you’re trying to reach, what message they need to hear, how much time and money you have to spend communicating with them, and more.
What are the 7 C’s of marketing?
The 7 C’s of marketing are branding, communications, customer service, content, curation, conversion optimization, and contract fulfillment.
Do all businesses have same marketing needs, or different ones?
All businesses have the same marketing needs to a degree as they all require a certain level of exposure. However, the type of exposure varies from business to business as well as how many resources have been allocated for marketing.
How can I increase conversions on my website?
The most important thing you can do to increase conversion is to present the right call to action, which is a button or link that prompts your visitors to take action.
Conclusion
As the world becomes more and more digital, marketers will need to adapt quickly in order to keep up. With that in mind, we hope this blog post with some of the best marketing strategies has been a helpful guide for you as you plan out your marketing strategy for 2024! Still have questions? Here are some marketing initiatives to try if you don’t know where to start with crafting a successful marketing strategy.
If you’re looking for help with any of these digital marketing best practices and concepts, or want some guidance on what tactics would work well with your business goals, let us know. Otherwise, check out our blog on the differences between tactical vs strategic marketing.
Our team is always happy to provide additional insights into our expertise so that together we can improve your bottom line by increasing product sales and customer conversion rates!
