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How To Foolproof Your Digital Marketing Strategy

YEC Women
POST WRITTEN BY
Simonetta Lein

Being in the industry for over six years and publishing my first book has taught me a lot about digital marketing. As an influencer, I’ve worked with hundreds of brands, a great number of fellow influencers and scores of digital marketers. One thing my career hasn’t afforded me yet is the ability to foresee what will happen in the industry tomorrow (I’ve asked around, no one knows).

By looking at trends, however, you can predict what will happen in the coming months, if not years, to a certain degree. Below are three things you can do to help your brand thrive in the constantly changing digital marketing environment.

Recognize The Changing Environment

Complacency is your enemy when it comes to digital marketing. It’s never been more appropriate to say that what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. Due to a range of factors, the biggest of which is changing consumer perspectives, smart marketers know how to identify obsolete strategies and adjust accordingly.

For instance, dogmas such as “sex sells”or “content is king” have either had to be rethought or abandoned altogether. In 2014, American Apparel had to learn the hard way that sex no longer sells when it featured up-skirt shots of models clad in schoolgirl uniforms. The internet collectively threw up.

Instead of creating content hoping users will need it, brands are now providing content when the user needs it. This is a whole new approach to content marketing that requires a more detailed strategy than just blindly churning out content.

Creating a future-proof strategy will certainly take a lot of work and a mix of different techniques. I’m particularly bullish on three main elements, which must be well-represented in any successful strategy: artificial intelligence (AI), social media and the customer. For instance, I use apps on Twitter and Instagram to help me to better engage with my targeted audience, even when I am sleeping. On Twitter, I find the SaaS tool Jooicer particularly useful. It will follow accounts I am interested in and help me to increase my targeted tribe, among the vast Twitter world. On Instagram, I use GetRiver to optimize my post reach.

At a closer look, the three elements influence all the notable trends, such as augmented reality (AR), influencer marketing, analytics, video marketing, personalization, native advertising and content marketing.

Personalize Your Interactions With Your Audience

According to a Digital Trends report, 73% of customers will want to do business with your brand if you make their shopping experiences more relevant to them. Hardly anything will reach your consumer without a personal touch. I’ve seen this firsthand. Personalizing my communication with my audience greatly helped me connect with it. Here are a few tips that worked exceptionally well for me:

• Personalizing emails by making sure the sender comes across as a human

• Modifying templates so they don’t appear robotic

• Segmenting the email list on the basis of persona: I find it helpful to assign a character to new signups. Individual signups are segmented into categories based on character. I also personalize templates to address my readers by their first names and tailor content to their needs.

• Using the recipient’s name whenever I can

• Responding personally on social media: Twitter makes this incredibly easy, but all platforms allow you to do that. Irrespective of different views, I still find the initial auto-response helpful. It has to be original, inspiring and should avoid any selling tactics. That initial connection is important. When you have a big audience or you are not savvy, it becomes difficult to keep track of everything. AI will help you to start a conversation, but you and only you have to interact with the people who respond.

Work On Your Network

Last but not least, gather the knowledge and experience of others in your field or related fields. Just like in building other aspects of your brand, your network can determine how low you fall when times are tough as well as how high you soar when times are good. Most importantly, it can prevent the fall caused by unanticipated disruptions in the industry.

Thanks to the network I’ve built over time, I know where to go when I need to brainstorm ways to approach my next big challenge.