Do You Know What’s Missing from Your Marketing Strategy?

As you watch 2018 ride into the proverbial sunset, now is the perfect time to look at your marketing strategy and ask some critical questions. Are you focused on an omnichannel approach? Have you figured out your target audience’s buyer personas? These are areas that may be missing from your current marketing roadmap. Keep these marketing strategy recommendations in mind as you ask yourself, “How can I improve my marketing strategy for 2019?”

Think Omnichannel

Buzzy as it may sound, omnichannel marketing simply refers to delivering the same general user experience (UX) across various platforms. A customer must feel at home when using your mobile app, mobile-optimized web page (about 75% of purchases are now made via mobile devices), or a traditional landing page. The look and feel must be consistent. Brands that have mastered the omnichannel philosophy experience better customer conversion metrics, such as a lower rate of abandoned shopping carts.

Understand Buyer Personas

It isn’t enough these days to simply segment customers by demographic groups (i.e., 18-25 year-olds) and expect real insights into buyer behaviors. Smart brands create, understand, and segment buyers into various personas to “learn their language.” For example, don’t segment by 29-year-old female professionals alone. Expand to 29-year-old marketing manager, married, one child, travels twice per year for fun, three times for business, and drives a 4-door sedan.

This detailed persona enables brands to analyze how this particular customer would react to their various marketing campaigns. In short, the more you can get to know your consumers, the better you’ll be able to market your business.

Optimize Site Content

As brands continue to find innovative ways to market to consumers and businesses, the basics of optimizing static and dynamic site content tends to fall by the wayside. Instead of ignoring or minimizing your existing site content, ensure your content is fresh, relevant, compelling, and of high quality. Even smaller steps like rewriting or enhancing product descriptions can improve the performance of your e-commerce site.

Additionally, studies show customers form an opinion of a business’s site in less than 1/10th of a second. Make sure that yours is easy to navigate, intuitive, resonates with the target audience, and moves them along the sales cycle in an expedient manner.

Get Big on Remarketing

The easiest customer to convert may be the one who has already shopped with you before. Encourage repeat sales transactions by engaging in targeted email marketing campaigns. You can gently nudge undecided customers into refilling their shopping cart and clicking “buy” through timely emails offering free shipping, coupons, and other bonuses.

Remember, $1 spent on email marketing historically drives $44 in ROI. Customers all but expect brands to use past shopping behaviors to drive new sales, marketing, and advertising offers.

Stay Social

Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter are still the big dogs. Invest in a variety of marketing strategies across various platforms and profiles to help ensure you reach virtually all of the consumers in your target audience. Dedicate a good amount of time to honing your brand’s social persona, while also taking advantage of paid social media advertising and organic posts to help drive awareness of your brand.

The majority of U.S. consumers say social media greatly influences their buying decisions. According to data provided by Hubspot, consumers casually discuss brands at least 90 times per week. 90% of people believe in friend recommendations of brands and 70% believe consumer opinions.

As you continue to evolve your social marketing strategy, think about if influencer marketing is a new tactic to try. If you already engage with influencers, how can you tweak your strategy to work best for your audience?

There are endless ideas to consider when crafting your 2019 marketing strategy. However, keep these five key components on the top of your list and you’ll be better positioned to leapfrog the competition in the coming calendar year.