As an entrepreneur, you often have to lead digital marketers on top of wearing several other hats. Digital marketing is a dense and complex field, where it’s challenging to stay up on the latest trends. I’ve broken down five tips that digital marketers and entrepreneurs need to focus on for success.
1. Develop a Voice Strategy
If you’re not including a voice search in your overall strategy, you’re missing out. More and more consumers use voice search on their digital marketing assistants and mobile device. In the past twelve months, 58 percent of consumers have used voice search to find local businesses, according to BrightLocal. What’s more, 76 percent of smart speaker users perform local searches at least weekly—with 53 percent using these devices for searches daily. Yet, a Search Engine Land report showed just 3 percent of CMOs included voice in their 2018 strategy.
Stay ahead of the curve (and even experienced CMOs) and optimize for voice search in 2019. Read this Forbes article for further information on how to execute.
2. Focus on Personalization
More and more, marketers prize engagement overreach (and entrepreneurs should as well). Don’t strive for X number of eyes on a billboard, but rather genuine connections with your audience. Personalization makes for a unique experience that the customer craves. A consumer is 80 percent more likely to do business with a brand that provides personalized experiences, according to Epsilon research.
How do you provide personalization? Here’s how consumers interpret it: customization, customer service, discounts or offers, specific products or services, and convenience. You might not be able to offer all of that, but focus on the ones you can and build it into your customer experience.
3. Strive for Authenticity (Hint: UGC Can Help)
Yes, yes, when it comes to marketing content is still king, but you can’t keep recycling the same boring copy and expect it to resonate with your audience. Recent reports have shown that 86 percent of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support. Focus on creating relatable branding for your target demographic.
Now, more so than ever in an age of content saturation, authenticity will get you that all-powerful share, or re-post by the consumer. User-generated content (UGC) is the holy grail, especially with millennials. If you aren’t convinced, check out these stats:
- 60 percent of consumers say content from friends or family influence their purchases decisions
- 57 percent of millennials have made travel plans based on an image or video they saw a friend post on social media
- 56 percent of millennials have decided to eat at a restaurant because of a friend’s post on social media
4. Optimize for Semantic Search as a Part of Your Digital Marketing Efforts
As digital marketers know, with every year (and every Google algorithm update), search engines are increasingly sophisticated, and SEO becomes even more challenging. This means you need to think about semantic search more than basic keywords in your digital marketing campaigns.
Search Engine Journal defines semantic search as “a search engine’s attempt to generate the most accurate results possible by understanding: searcher intent, query context, and the relationships between words.” Google also uses previous search history to offer better results.
In other words, more people are searching as a stream of consciousness. “Who’s the lead actor in the new Mary Poppins movie? Who is Emily Blunt?” Also, with the rise of previously mentioned voice search, semantic search is all the more important for search engines to render accurate results. All signs point to, the need for entrepreneurs and marketers to optimize based on your targetted user’s intent. Ask yourself, how would your audience logically search? Base your digital marketing strategy on a human, not a search engine.
5. Continue to Make Data-Driven Decisions
How do you figure out how to offer personalized experiences? Or understand your target demographic? Or know how to create authentic, sharable content for your digital marketing experience? Data.
Data should continue to drive all of your decisions in 2019. Every marketer or entrepreneur—from SMBs to enterprise-level—has a wealth of data at their fingertips. Even if it’s not data from your consumers or stakeholders, it exists on the web.
Succeed With Your Digital Marketing Strategy This Year
Entrepreneurs might have a digital marketer that they’re expected to lead, be an acting CMO (along with CEO), or just starting to get their company off the ground. No matter the scenario, to succeed in 2019, digital marketing needs to be a part of your overall business model, and these tips will help you bolster your strategy.
