A successful marketing strategy in 2021 requires clear goals for what you want to achieve online (in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones). Without clear goals, these strategies will not perform, and competitors with relevant plans and tactics already in motion will be ready to grab your customers.
Here are seven reasons you need to rethink your 2021 digital marketing strategy and take advantage of the surge in consumer spending in the second half of 2021:
You don’t know your online audience (or market segment)
You are underestimating actual customer demand for your online services. Additionally, and more importantly, you don’t understand your current online marketplace reality. The dynamics of an online audience are markedly different from what they were 18 months ago. There are significant differences in customer profiles, behaviors, competitors, and options for marketing communications.
Existing and new competitors are gaining market share
Suppose you’re not committing enough resources to be digital or taking an ad-hoc approach. Your competitors WILL out-position you with your target buyers in these scenarios and successfully move these consumers’ money to other businesses both today and in the future.
Your work isn’t integrated
In the digital marketing space, it is common for activities to be siloed. It’s easier to package ‘digital’ into a convenient and separate segment. Doing so, however, is significantly less effective. Digital marketing works best when integrated as an omni-channel approach. We recommend developing an integrated digital marketing strategy that, once complete, will be part of your overall marketing plan and a regular part of your business.
You won’t have the resources or budget to do digital work
You are devoting an insufficient number of resources to devote to the planning and execution of your digital marketing efforts. Therefore there will be a lack of the specific specialized skills needed. Without these resources, it makes it difficult to respond to any competitive threats effectively.
You are duplicating efforts wasting money and time
Redundant efforts and purchases are frequently seen in larger companies where different parts of the marketing organization purchase different tools or use different agencies to perform similar online marketing tasks. Still, this waste of time and money adds up quickly and can be resolved by taking a holistic look at your marketing strategy.
You can’t be agile enough to catch up or stay ahead
Suppose you look at any top online brands (like Amazon, eBay, BestBuy, Costco, Target, Etsy, or Walmart). In that case, they are ALL dynamic – constantly experimenting, assessing, and benchmarking new and different approaches to gain (or keep) their online audiences.
Your initiatives won’t be optimized for performance.
Any company with a website will have analytics, but digital marketing teams do not review and act on them. Having a solid strategy enables you to get the basics right and then make continuous improvements on its key aspects (like search marketing, site user experience, email, and social media marketing) as the market dynamics evolve.
Conclusion
Ultimately, if you don’t have goals with intelligent digital marketing strategies, you likely won’t allocate enough resources to reach those goals. If you don’t evaluate through analytics whether or not you’re achieving those goals, you risk wasting your time and money on efforts that will not bring the results you’re looking to achieve.
If you’d like to build a stronger and more cohesive, and effective digital marketing strategy, we’d love to be your partner.
We love solving these problems for the organizations we partner with and look forward to helping you drive the results you seek for your stakeholders and business.