With an ever-growing and changing digital world, planning a digital marketing strategy for 2021 will take time and introspection. Strategies you implemented in 2015 won’t be as effective for the year to come as new technologies, platforms and social norms have changed. Take data-driven marketing for instance. This concept, which was then considered too far-fetched, is now the core of any successful digital marketing plan.
With an in-bound digital marketing landscape, Brain Space has decided to give your company insights on how to plan your 2021 strategy!
Draw A Digital Marketing Map
Before I start with tips on how to plan and what to look at, ask yourself what you want to achieve. For example, is your main goal to raise awareness around your brand? Did you recently developed an e-commerce and need to drive traffic to your website? By answering these questions and understanding your 2021 digital mission, you can move on to planning! Start with your budget. Setting a budget beforehand can help you better strategize your marketing plan.
However, with planning comes self-reflection: you need to understand the map of your digital marketing footprints of 2020:
- Evaluate your channels and platforms: the ones you are currently using say a lot about what your next step should be. Firstly, look at your website. Sometimes, you will find that your UX/UI design aren’t optimized, and your website, not SEO-friendly. Secondly, rethink your social media pages. Are they consistent with your brand’s image? Are you leveraging them as much as you could? Lastly, analyze the performance of your channels and platforms. In other words, some channels might be costing you lots of money with little in return. Understanding and measuring your digital marketing efforts will help you optimize your future strategies!
- Target personas: in order to successfully achieve your goals, you will need to target personas. In fact, switching from out-bound to in-bound digital strategies is the right way to go. In the past, businesses aimed for mass marketing but nowadays, personalization is key! And luckily, data-driven marketing helps you understand who your personas are. By digging into social listening tools, for instance, and looking for affinity categories, past behaviors as well as in-market segments, creating personas is possible. Don’t forget to segregate your users based on where they are in the sales and marketing funnel!
Expand Your Horizon
The digital world is, as I already said, ever-evolving, and this is an opportunity you shouldn’t miss. Lots of new trends are surfacing every day and some new digital tricks are actually proven to be more efficient as ever. Let’s discuss some of them:
- Discover new platforms: take a look at TikTok, for example. It has grown in popularity over the last year in KSA, and big brands are now advertising on it. I can assure you that, as I am writing, new platforms are also being developed, so stay on the lookout! However, you need to keep in mind that with new technologies and platforms comes new advertising techniques. And, in order to optimize your ads and ensure the platform is right for you, start by testing the waters. Take your digital strategies on new channels for testing. You can either test your campaigns at a low budget or A/B test different visuals and caption. The sky is your limit!
- Video marketing: whether you are targeting single audiences (B2C) or even businesses (B2B), video marketing is the right way to go. Using this format will make it easier for you to highlight the benefits and features of your products. Moreover, with video marketing comes video advertising. In fact, more than 50% of consumers say that they purchased a product because of a video ad they saw online.
- Content-oriented: when setting personas for your strategies, you can’t not oversee the content of your pages and ads. Being content-oriented is crucial for your digital strategy in 2021. You need to create content your audience will relate to. Content that speaks to your target directly is the key to increasing your posts’ engagement rates.
To Sum It Up
The key takeaway points you need to remember are the following:
- Set your goals and your digital marketing budget
- Evaluate and understand your previous digital strategies
- Create personas for the different stages of the marketing funnel
- Stay on the lookout for the latest trends, and start implementing them in your digital 2021 plan
Brain Space remains your trusted partner for any digital marketing activity you wish to implement. Contact us today and see how we can help you grow!
