12 Digital Marketing Best Practices in 2022 You Can’t Risk To Miss
The pandemic has made digital transformation the latest business trend. What does that mean? Well, digital marketing is also changing in response to the exponential explosion of the digital population. Therefore, we gathered 12 digital marketing best practices you cannot risk not implementing in 2022. Take a look at your full-channel marketing strategy. Now is the time for a marketing audit if you want to stay in the game.
A sample full-funnel customer journey map (Source: Bright Vessel)
Use a Full-Funnel Strategy
The first advice we can give anyone wanting to pivot their digital marketing in 2022 is to use a full-funnel strategy across all platforms. This includes:
Content
Email Marketing
Social Media Marketing (paid and organic)
A full-funnel marketing strategy covers every step of your customer journey map. The goal is to capture as many critical buying moments as possible. We’ve talked a lot about being present so your potential customers see you. Well, being seen is no longer sufficient in 2022. You need to be present, helpful, and compassionate to your audience through all stages to build an emotional connection that steers their buying intention toward you.
Invest in SEO and Quality Content
You’ve probably heard too much about SEO. We get it. But that just shows you how SEO, especially long-term SEO driven by quality content is.
The Internet is full of treasures and garbages alike. Because many businesses take the easy route and forget they' are writing content for their human audience even if they are appealing to Google. A mindset of “I’m only writing this to rank” is never going to bring you anywhere. And with Google’s new criteria, low-quality content that essentially doesn’t help your audience will cause more harm than merits.
A sample pagespeed result from Google. (Source: Search Engine Land)
Invest in Technical SEO
Every small business owner has had those moments. Oh, we don’t have to optimize every single thing. Well, those codes can stay it’s not that big of an issue. We don’t have the time to downsize and optimize every image on our site at this point, so we’ll just wait.
But that’s not the case anymore.
Users are becoming more impatient every day. And as a result, your page speed, mobile responsiveness, and overall interactivity will have a greater impact on your ranking from here on.
Therefore, you can no longer afford to skip those technical SEO tasks because they’re tedious, or you don’t have the budget for it, or simply because you don’t understand what it’s really doing to your ranking.
Implement Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
9 out of 10 times, people will tell you to go larger in scale. And this is a classic outbound sales thing. It’s like cold calling and cold emailing: if people have a 6% moving forward over a cold call, then calling 1000 people is better than calling 10 and getting defeated. And this is somewhat true in the marketing world: when running ads, we often focus on our reach first, then multiply an anticipated conversion rate by that number. In the end, we’re hoping our conversion rate would hit that mark.
However, that’s not how high-value accounts make decisions. And ask yourself: do you prefer a 10K project where the client sees your value or ten 1K projects that will drive you crazy with small issues here and there (because that’s usually how things go)?
That’s why more companies are incorporating ABM into their marketing strategies where they focus on one account and build a full-funnel campaign structure just for them.
Refine Your Target Audience
With or without ABM, target audience still matters. In the former, you need to make sure you’re only targeting decision-makers of your dream account. In the second, an accurate target audience restricted by geography, demography, personal interest, or a combination of all (usually) would significantly reduce spending and increase conversion.
Audiences eligible for remarketing is another critical piece here. Make use of your website analytics and numbers from previous campaigns. Be sure to configure your analytics tools properly to document and segment audiences by behaviors, channels, and more.
Marketing and sales workflow automation using Hubspot. (Source: Hubspot Community)
Marketing Automation is Key
Sometimes we work with small business owners, and the first thing they say is they think automation is for larger businesses only. But think of it like this: when you’re a small business or even a one-person show, your capacity is limited. There is no way you can cover operations, sales, marketing, and administration all by yourself, and using your virtual assistant as your Dir. of Marketing and Sales has proven to not be working.
Then, why not invest in a good marketing automation tool instead? Forget about sending monthly updates or follow-up emails to your leads. Build automation across platforms to save yourself more time so you can focus on actually growing your business.
Avoid Over-Communication
We have endless things to talk about our businesses like we always have so many good things to say about our kids. We understand the sentiment of wanting to share every promo, every opportunity, and every achievement with your audience, but…
In 2022, everyone is suffering from information overload to a certain extent. Your subscribers have enough promotional emails in their inbox they simply forgot to unsubscribe. And trust us: they’re creeped out by “target ads” that they legit don’t want to see another one unless it made sense.
Therefore, one of the digital marketing best practices in 2022 you should absolutely follow is to not over-communicate. If this means you have to re-evaluate your current content strategy and reduce outgoing emails and social media stories/posts/DMs, do it. Your audiences will thank you. We promise.
Source: Backlink Co
Be Selective With Social Media Platforms
You don’t have to go after every hip, cool platform. Not every business fits on Tik Tok. In the end, it comes back down to the audience you talk to. Where are they? What platforms do they use? Do not forget the reason your business is even on social media: In the end, it’s about lead generation. Then, it only makes sense to go where your audiences are. Go where they exchange information before they make a decision.
Just because everyone else is on Instagram, doesn’t mean you need to get on Instagram as well. If you don’t know what is the right platform for you, go speak to a marketing consultant. It’s worth the investment compared to making all the wrong decisions.
Engage With Your Community
Your community will always be your bottom line. Therefore, invest in hiring a dedicated community manager this year if you want to scale your business quickly while maintaining a good relationship with existing customers. An alternative would be investing in a chatbot that can help navigate customers and answer basic questions. However, keep in mind that a chatbot can never fully replace a human being. Therefore, ask yourself what questions your customers may have, then decide on how you should handle community engagement.
Don’t Neglect Traditional PR
Many small businesses think digital marketing can fully replace traditional methods. However, media relations will always be a core piece in any marketing strategy, whether online or offline. Humans are social animals. Therefore, one way or another, we rely on social proof to guide our decisions. In the end, it’s just like when we check Amazon reviews before buying something. Except for “reviews” from media outlets trusted by your target audience has a stronger impact and instantly boost your credibility.
Therefore, think about investing in working with an independent publicist, or at least create a media outreach strategy in 2022. The results will soon prove to you that you did the right thing.
Balance Short and Long-Term Efforts
With the economy trying to recover from two years of the pandemic, we know digital marketing is going to be a game of patience in 2022. Therefore, it would be smart to balance your short and long-term goals, while focusing simultaneously on sales and marketing. After all, a business cannot thrive without immediate sales that drive revenue and cover expenses. However, focusing only on sales and sales-supportive marketing would quickly burn you out as you’re not paving the road to the future.
Ask yourself: how many more years can you be hustling on the phone, sending out emails five hours a day? Wouldn’t it be nice if soon enough people begin to call you up for work?
Plan By Your Budget
Finally, we know we talk about budget every year, but this digital marketing best practice remains effective in 2022.
As a small business, understated that you are at disadvantage with your budget. There is just no way you can compete against major players no matter how solid your funding is. Therefore, try to focus on your high-priority tasks with at least 80% of your budget, then sprinkle the rest across the less urgent tasks so you have all fronts covered.
Keep in mind your marketing budget should be further broken down into ad spending, hiring budget, and other marketing-related expenses. If you will be handling certain marketing tasks by yourself, the hours you put in should be considered as expenses too. That will help you understand which areas to invest in first.