A digital marketing campaign is a complex endeavor that requires your dedication and attention, from the moment you first conceptualize the campaign till the moment it is presented to your target audience. Digital marketing campaigns have grown to become more dynamic and prone to frequent changes than the traditional marketing methods. A digital marketing campaign is much more than promoting your company or brand on social media and other websites.
In digital marketing, there is a constant or let’s say almost constant exchange of data between the company and the different online platforms on which it is marketed. For example, an essential part of most digital marketing campaigns is SEO. But SEO is not something that you can easily buy or implement with a single go. SEO is an ongoing process, and to make sure your ranking continues to climb up and your competitors don’t outperform you on your keywords research, you need to review the data regularly and assess its effectiveness.
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The current scenario
Currently in this tech driven world, all marketers are under pressure to prove the effectiveness of their marketing investment. ROI has basically grown as a measure to determine the success or failure of your digital marketing campaign and how marketers deliver measurable value to your business.
With an ever-growing number of channels or social media platforms and an increasingly fragmented buyer journey, there are more ways to engage and retain the customers at crucial moments. This is undoubtedly an opportunity as it seems to be, but it can’t be neglected that it is also a challenge. Marketers need to be flexible and agile, and marketing optimization is critical to improving ROI.
Why is it needed to optimize your digital marketing campaign?
As the consumer landscape is constantly changing and evolving, it is important to regularly rethink and optimize your digital marketing strategy. If you simply take a static approach, your brand’s voice will be drowned out by various other significant competitors who are fighting for consumer attention on the Internet.
Let the data speak for itself
In today’s marketing environment, relying on gut feelings, assumptions and experiences is no longer enough. Big data and AI-powered analytics enable marketers to have more relevant and personalized conversations with consumers. A study found that more than 80% of the customers prefer to buy from the company that offers them personalized experiences.
How can digital transformation improve your business results?
Digital technologies are changing the way people communicate, buy and consume products. There are new opportunities for companies to streamline processes, engage consumers and improve the lives of customers on a large scale. Access to data insights can help companies capitalize on new growth opportunities, make data-driven decisions, and improve ROI through more effective marketing strategies.
5 ways to get more value from your digital marketing campaigns
You ought to optimize your marketing campaign for every marketing tactic you use, but you should also get a holistic view of your digital marketing strategy and how to optimize it to improve performance. The following five key areas are critical to optimizing digital marketing and increasing ROI:
1. Discover your competitors’ best channels and set an industry benchmark
In this modern world there are more ways than ever to reach out to your target audience. But an increasing number of connecting paths make it difficult for marketers to focus their efforts on the channels that are getting the most business results. To ensure your marketing investment is dedicated to the areas where it will have the greatest impact, it is important to focus on the channels that drive the most growth and sales for your business.
Tools like Similar Web, Facebook IQ, Ad SEMrush offer great insights into your competitors’ SEO, SEM and social media strategies. Upon understanding how your competitors developed their campaigns and which channels or platforms they are prioritizing, you can optimize your digital marketing strategy to drive more traffic and improve the ROI on your marketing investment.
An in-depth analysis of your competitors’ strategy and broader trends and performance in your industry can provide valuable insight into consumer preferences and key channels. If a channel that you are not currently using is providing a measurable benefit to your competitor, consider incorporating it into your digital marketing strategy.
Giving due consideration to these insights can also reveal those channels or platforms that your competitors might have overlooked and can give you an edge over them. By leveraging competitive analysis and industry benchmarking, you can limit your efforts to channels with the highest growth potential.
2. Identify growth opportunities
Many marketers can generate high growth in the short term, but it is much more difficult and lucrative to achieve sustainable growth over an extended period.
Consistency is critical, but that can only be achieved through continual optimization and exploiting new growth opportunities. The products a business sells are second only to marketing strategies that are designed to maximize sales by maximizing all growth opportunities.
According to some industry experts, there are five core sources of revenue growth that a business can access:
- Leverage existing customer base
- Increase market share
- New sales in a growing market
- Expand into related markets
- Diversification to Independent Markets
Testing and continuous learning is critical to expanding marketing initiatives and making incremental improvements in customer acquisition and retention. By formulating a hypothesis and testing it as soon as possible, companies scale successful initiatives, grow and generate higher ROI.
3. The Technology Stack Matters
Marketing technology becomes more advanced and sophisticated every year. In 2011 there were 150 Martech solutions. Today that number has risen to more than 8,000. The number of solutions has increased and with it the percentage of budget marketers investing in their technology stack. According to the latest CMO spending survey, 26% of marketing budgets go to martech. Marketers spend significant amounts of money on data-driven tools to retain customers and drive growth.
However, the 2019 Gartner Marketing Technology Survey found that marketers believe they are only realizing 58% of the potential of their martech solutions. It is important to take advantage of new technology, but these solutions must be coordinated to avoid waste and provide customers with a seamless and consistent omnichannel experience.
Technology can help you achieve your marketing goals and increase ROI, but it is not a substitute for strategy. A resilient digital ecosystem can be used to streamline marketing efforts, drive growth, and improve ROI when both – strategy and technology can work together.
4. Analyze the competition
Without competitive analysis, your marketing strategy will unfold in a vacuum. It is important to analyze the performance of your marketing initiatives, but how do you know how successful you have been without comparing the performance of your competitors?
You could grow, but your competitors could outperform you in key areas and grow your market share much faster than your company. According to a 2020 survey by Boston research firm Crayon, 78% of entrepreneurs “agree” or “strongly agree” that competitive intelligence is critical to the success of their business.
A good way to obtain and compare knowledge about your competitors is to do a SWOT analysis:
Strengths
What channels / tactics does your competitor use?
Weaknesses
Are there channels that do not work well?
Opportunities
Is there a channel that has been overlooked?
Threats
Is your competitor generating traffic / engagement in the channels you are targeting?
Competitive analysis helps you in identifying the growth opportunities and the areas where you can build or enhance your digital presence. Your competitors can prove to be a great source for providing you with data and insights to support your digital marketing campaigns.
You must recognize the strengths and weaknesses of your digital presence and recognize which areas need improvement as a priority. With a benchmark for your industry and an understanding of how your competitors have done well, you can modify your marketing strategy to increase the ROI of your campaigns.
5. Retain and acquire customers
The expansion of your customer base by the acquisition of more and more customers is crucial for growth, but the increase in sales with existing customers is an excellent way to increase the ROI of your digital marketing campaign. Your current customers already have a relationship with your company, so work upon retaining that relation as well. If you have given them some positive shopping experiences in the past, they already have confidence in your products and services.
You also have more data on existing customers, data that can be used to identify needs and preferences that can improve the customer experience and support your marketing campaigns. Instead of conveying a single message, a successful marketing strategy is about engaging with consumers. It’s much easier to retain existing customers and add value at each checkpoint when a consumer has already interacted with your business and purchased your products.
Listening to your existing customers is important. By starting a two-way conversation, you will learn how you can improve your marketing messages to provide more value and increase customer loyalty.
According to Bain and Company, keeping an existing customer is around 5 to 25% cheaper than acquiring a new one. The same study shows that a 5% increase in customer loyalty can lead to an increase in profitability of up to 75%. Prioritizing customer loyalty can be a great way to maximize the ROI of your digital marketing strategy.
Conclusion
Testing and optimization should be a constant part of your digital marketing strategy. By quickly testing, analyzing, and implementing measures, you can adapt your marketing activities and achieve continued growth. These improvements lead to more targeted traffic, more conversions, and an improved ROI.
As the consumer landscape continues to evolve, it is important to constantly rethink your digital marketing strategy and learn how to improve your digital presence. Daily some new technology comes in the market and gives the marketers the access to unexpected loads of data, but what we mentioned above is how that data ought to be used to improve performance and increase ROI.
