With a new year (and decade) upon us, this is the perfect opportunity to put a new strategy in place for your digital marketing.
You may already be advertising across various digital platforms or you might just be starting out. Either way, the following guide will break down everything important that you need to consider for your 2020 Digital Marketing Strategy.
Review
Don’t put the cart before the horse: you can’t build a strategy without knowing what your goals are.
Take the time to look at where you currently are and where you want to be. This might be based on standard KPIs like profit or sales, general brand awareness and market positioning, or even internal growth.
It’s also important to take the time to review your target market. You may feel that you are currently targeting the correct market segment, or maybe you want to branch out into another this year. This decision will influence the direction of your strategy going forward.
Once you have your goals and targets laid out, it’s time to look at key areas your strategy should focus on in 2020.
Mobile
Underestimate mobile at your own peril.
As of this year, it’s expected that the number of smartphone users will reach 2.87 billion globally, with 40% of online transactions and 80% of internet searches occurring on a mobile device.
With more people choosing mobile over desktop, it’s imperative that your website experience is set up with mobile users in mind. If you have an app, it’s crucial that it supports the same functionality and ease of use as the website (within reason).
If you’re not optimised for mobile, this should be a top priority for your marketing strategy.
Social Media
This seems like a no-brainer, but many brands shy away from social media because they don’t believe it’s worth it, or that they won’t be able to reach their target audience. This is the wrong move.
It’s true that not all social media platforms are created equal, and not all of them may be relevant for your business. But you should aim to have a strong presence across at least 2 different platforms in 2020.
It might seem like a waste of time to post regularly but it’s a strong investment in your overall brand awareness — especially if you keep at it consistently.
Digital Ads
With people spending more time online and less time engaging with traditional media platforms, digital advertising is the way to reach people where their attention is focused.
Google & Facebook each have a range of advertising options available in order to best meet your specific business goals and directly reach your ideal target market. Your strategy might benefit from combining the two — creating a consistent message across both platforms.
It’s important to note that turning on digital marketing does not mean you need to turn off any traditional marketing that you may have running. As long as the message is consistent across channels, they’ll work hand-in-hand.
Analytics & Tracking
Data is everything when it comes to business.
Ensuring you have analytics and goal tracking on your website is something you need to include on your 2020 digital marketing strategy. Installing a tool such as Google Analytics on your site allows you to keep track of your visitors over time, how people are interacting with your site, the amount of sales & revenue your online store is generating and what countries your users are coming from.
You can even use these analytics platforms to set up specific goals like contact form submissions on your site, which will allow you to track your site’s performance over time.
Any data and results collected from your digital marketing can be connected with Google Analytics — think of it as your website’s information hub.
SEO For Voice
With the steady increase of mobile and home assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google Home) voice searches and queries are becoming more and more widespread.
While these may currently be limited to simple queries like “What Is The Weather?”, it’s notable that these phrases are set out as questions rather than being keyword based like most current searches (“perth weather”).
What does this mean for SEO? Using question phrases where possible — such as in subheadings — will make it easier for search engines to match the voice search with that particular page.
It’s still early days for voice search, but it’s still something that should be considered as part of your 2020 strategy.
