Here are five best practices to help you win at digital marketing in 2020:
- Go Omnichannel
Successful organizations have adopted the omnichannel marketing approach to guide their prospects through the funnel. Omnichannel marketing is an evolved form of multichannel marketing that helps you provide a holistic shopping experience to your buyers. It’s about delivering the right message at the right time on the right marketing channel.
Being omnichannel means delivering a consistent experience throughout the buyer’s journey. This means your strategy should revolve around the customer rather than specific channels. To build an omnichannel strategy, create a consistent brand voice across different channels. A cohesive omnichannel marketing strategy should consider all digital marketing channels and map their utility at each stage of the buyer’s journey and work on the messaging accordingly.
Example: Starbucks is known for leveraging digital media to improve customer experience (CX). In this particular instance, the Starbucks app lets users find stores, order through the app, pay using the phone, track Stars, and Rewards. Users also get reward points for ordering through the phone, and with their collaboration with Spotify, users can also identify the songs playing in their stores.
Starbucks’ Omnichannel Marketing Experience Through Its App
- Leverage AI in Digital Marketing
AI and ML have enabled marketers to reach out to their target audience with precision like never before. Using AI and ML-powered applications, you can connect with your buyers in the following ways:
- Conversational AI: Conversational AI such as digital assistants and chatbots have become ubiquitous to communicate with prospects and customers. They can deliver content, gather customer requirements, provide customer support, help customers buy an item or make a reservation, and keep them updated on their orders.
- For example, the Wall Street Journal has created a Facebook Messenger chatbot to deliver content right into subscribers’ inboxes.
The Wall Street Journal Uses Messenger Chatbot to Deliver News
- Personalization: The success of omnichannel marketing depends on how well you personalize CX, and AI can help you do that. AI-based tools are capable of understanding and predicting user behavior. This can further assist you in delivering a personalized experience by creating segments of users with similar characteristics.
- Don’t Ignore Email
Email marketing is still a potent digital marketing channel. If you have a sizable subscriber base, you can communicate a message to your subscribers without spending a penny! You can use email marketing to send drip campaigns, onboard new users/customers/subscribers, promote new content, offer exclusive discounts and offers, ask for feedback through surveys, and so on.
For successful email marketing initiatives in 2020, use user-generated and interactive content to generate engagement, keep your emails mobile-friendly, and build an exclusive email community that can act as your tribe.
- Emphasize on Video Marketing
According to the State of Video Marketing 2020 survey by Wyzowl, 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. People prefer videos as they make it easy to comprehend information, and they’re an effective medium to tell stories.
Use videos in your content marketing initiatives to boost engagement and widen your reach. A great way to achieve that is to create videos in diverse formats. For instance, most social media platforms allow you to put ephemeral/short-lived video content. So, while you’re creating standard video content, experiment with short, vertical, and live videos to see what generates engagement and double-down on that.
Example: Moz has a weekly instructional video series called Whiteboard Friday that delves into SEO’s various aspects.
Moz’s Whiteboard Friday Video Series Covers Different SEO Topics
- Create a Cohesive Content Experience
Apart from running ongoing digital ad campaigns and other activities, creating cohesive content experiences can help you get your brand’s eyes. Creating cohesive content experiences means diversifying your content marketing efforts. Create content in as many formats as you can. Dabble into text, podcasts, infographics, videos, gated content, and so on. Each content piece you create should support each other, and that’s where content repurposing comes into the picture.
You can turbocharge the content strategy by supporting it with a smart distribution strategy. If you’ve written a 2000-word blog post, convert it into an infographic, create a podcast episode, and record a whiteboard video. When you do this, you diversify your presence across different platforms and create content according to the user’s convenience.
Example: Leadpages has created a cohesive content experience strategy that covers various content formats.
Leadpages’ Diversified Content Experience Strategy