The Road to Digital Marketing Success in 2017 Begins Now

As the long, hot days of summer continue, it is the perfect time to take a moment in the shade to review your digital marketing strategy. Though 2016 is now more than half over, there is still time to analyze your campaigns and make adjustments before year-end. More importantly, however, now is a great time to start planning your digital marketing strategy in earnest for 2017.

Why Advance Planning is the Smart Move

Since digital marketing campaigns encompass so many different platforms and channels, it is wise to think ahead to see where you can improve your brand messaging for the upcoming year. According to a report from eMarketer, in 2017 total digital ads spending will surpass television ads for the first time. Is this fact reflected in your own digital strategies?

Laying the groundwork now for your 2017 digital campaigns is essential to success. Thinking about next year's campaigns today can be likened to a half-time strategy session in football. Why is that an accurate analogy? Aslan's "What Football Teaches Us about Selling in the Second Half" notes: "Football teams review what their opponents did in the first half to get clues about how they can adjust their strategy." For digital marketers, taking a look at year-to-date analytics reveals patterns and trends in customer behaviors that will inform 2017 marketing strategy.

Things to Consider Now for 2017 Digital Marketing

Data-Driven Marketing: Now more than ever before in marketing history, data-driven marketing is both possible and imperative for success. A recent B2C article notes: "In the last couple of years, we've seen enterprises consciously working on and embracing data-driven business strategies. It has been declared as one of the most important evolutionary steps in marketing history as you can understand the data you acquire, you can get the data you desire, and organize it to gain certain business objectives. This is exactly what will revolutionize digital marketing in the days to come."

Taking advantage of the analytic tools at your disposal, use the data you collect to make decisions now about the direction of your marketing message in the coming year.

Customer-Centric Campaigns: The trend toward a more customer-centric approach to marketing is likely to continue unabated in 2017. The simple truth is that your customers, now more than ever before, expect and demand a high degree of personalization in your marketing messages.

Reaching your customers when, where, and how they want to be reached is the gold standard for customer-centric marketing. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that customers receive the same user experience regardless of where and how they encounter your brand.

Bolstering Your Brand Message: Since your target audience likely interacts with your brand across multiple channels, platforms, and even devices, your 2017 digital marketing strategy must be versatile while still brand-consistent.

Why is brand consistency so important both now and in the future? A recent Ground Report article notes simply: "Building a good brand can produce free and low-cost leads along with improved sales."

Now is an excellent time to ensure that your branding message is consistent across all digital channels. For instance, you can assess whether your social media marketing campaigns integrate fully with your website content. Ask yourself, "Does a customer coming to my website from a social media link see the content he or she expects to see, or is my marketing message muddled?"

Harnessing the Power of Video: Now is also an excellent time to review your plans for video production in 2017. According to Hubspot, video in an email leads to a 200-300 percent increase in click-through rates, and including video on a landing page increases conversions by 80 percent. If you are not taking advantage of the power of video to engage your customers, now is the time to begin.

The Bottom Line

With 2016 on the way out, it is time to focus attention on winning digital strategies for 2017. Making data-driven marketing decisions, choosing a more customer-centric approach, bolstering your brand, and employing video in your campaigns are all components of a strong digital strategy for this year and beyond.

For more tips about digital marketing trends, please contact us today. We look forward to partnering with you to design and deploy digital campaigns in the coming months that will set you up for even greater success in 2017.