Back-to-School: Brush Up on These Digital Marketing Best Practices You May Have Forgotten

| 2060 Digital

When it comes to digital marketing, one thing you can be sure of is that nothing stays the same forever. With technology evolving at a breakneck pace, many times what worked well last year may be completely disastrous for your business to practice this year. You have to stay agile, and remain in a mode of constant learning in order to maintain your edge. But there are also some tried-and-true digital marketing best practices so effective they’re essentially timeless. Read on for some things that will never change.

1. Always shoot for quality over quantity.

As any basic economics class will tell you, whenever there’s an oversupply of an item, the demand for that item tends to decrease; this principle holds true in the world of digital content creation as well. As the popularity of content marketing began to surge in recent years, it unfortunately led to many brands participating in a digital arms race, where the objective appeared to be to flood the Web with as many blog posts, white papers, infographics, videos, etc., as humanly possible. This naturally led to a reduction in the availability of high-quality content, prompting many consumers to actually pay less attention to what was being published.

If you want your content and message to stand out in the crowded field of digital marketing, you need to develop a laser-like focus on thoroughly understanding the needs of your target audience, and then resolve to deliver exactly what they need. Make up your mind that you will operate only with that specific purpose in mind, and that you will never cheapen the quality of your content just for the sake of being able to pump items out with more frequency.

2. Device compatibility is always a good thing.

Your website, your ad creatives, your email campaigns and every other aspect of your online presence needs to be compatible with the widest range of devices possible. This means you’ll need to pay attention to the latest developments in compatibility standards, and then adjust your digital content accordingly. Test your content on as many different devices as you can (e.g., desktop, smartphone, tablet, etc.), and be sure to plan new projects with responsiveness and device compatibility in mind. 

3. Split test, split test, split test.

You never know how one adjustment in the color of a button, or one alteration in a line of text, or one image swapped out in favor of another, might ramp up your click-through rates and conversion ratios by orders of magnitude. Try your best not to assume anything, but instead, split test (or A/B test) everything. A handful of small tweaks here and there might make all the difference in your digital campaign performance.

4. Pay attention to your analytics data.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. There are tons of hidden gems that can be found in your website stats and campaign analytics, but it will require some intentional investigation and serious study for you to mine the value out of this information.

Pay attention to bounce rates, click-through rates, click-to-sales ratios, keyword performance, the list goes on and on. By doing this, you’ll be able to pinpoint areas of improvement, as well as capitalize on emerging opportunities. This is not only one of the most eye-opening activities you can undertake, but it’s also a cornerstone best practice of practically all successful digital marketers.

While new and improved best practices for digital marketing will continue to emerge, departing from important fundamental practices can put your business on a shaky foundation. Keeping the above best practices in mind will help your business remain immune to any adverse changes in the digital landscape.