How has the past year changed your business?
No matter how important digital was before, it’s the only way to grow and thrive today. If you don’t have the right digital marketing skills in place, you’re sure to be left behind.
But what does that really mean? You have a website. You have a profile on sites like Facebook and Instagram. You’ve even thrown a little money at Google, hoping to rank well when people search for what you do.
But are you doing all you can do?
Understanding consumer behavior
This probably comes as no surprise to you, but studies show that 81 percent of consumers conduct online research before finalizing a purchase.
Here’s another statistic to keep in mind. Here in 2021, 18.1 percent of all retail sales purchases will be completed using ecommerce. Almost one in five worldwide are now shopping and hitting the buy button from their desktops and mobile devices instead of heading into a store.
Does that shift the way you approach your own business? How would you change your digital marketing skills if you knew one in five of your shoppers would buy from you online this year?
It’s time to ask yourself some important questions
As a marketer, it’s essential to dig deep to find what your customers are looking for, to align your brand with their desires. You can’t create based on what you want, you have to mold your marketing around what your prospects desire.
With the majority of consumers now doing some form of research online before making a purchase, it’s more important than ever to refine your digital experience to provide solutions along a consumer’s journey. That means you have to ask the tough questions regularly.
- What do my customers want?
- What channels do they use to learn about new products and services?
- What do they like to consume?
- What forms of marketing we’re producing get the most traction?
- How can we gain more traction?
- Where are customers dropping off?
This isn’t a one-time ask. Instead, it’s a part of the marketing process, especially as the way consumers shop morphs and changes.
What digital marketing skills do businesses need as we move forward?
As a marketer, most of us think in terms of tools. We look towards the hot marketing trends that promise us access to millions of people, all with a rank or a click.
But truly developing your digital marketing skills goes beyond that.
If you’ve been in business for a while, you might have used more traditional marketing tools: print advertising, postcards, billboards, door hangers. Reaching customers was more difficult because the demographics just weren’t there. But there were ways to hone your skills, clarify your message, and get better at the prospecting with every tool you used.
Digital marketing requires the same level of skill, the only difference is you can pinpoint on an even deeper level.
The world is changing. We’re getting even better at crafting our messages, at a time when consumers are getting even smarter at weeding through what companies have to say. If you don’t take the right path, they can ignore you at best, ruin your reputation at worst.
To be truly effective at digital marketing, you need strength in these skills:
Data analysis
With more companies jumping on the digital marketing bandwagon, it makes your job even tougher than before. No more throwing content out there and seeing what sticks. Now is the time to start measuring your campaign’s performance and understand the data behind it in order to tweak it and make it that much better.
If analytics has never been your strong suit before, this is where you start. Developing an analytics team to help you make sense of the numbers can push your marketing results to new heights. Having numbers allows you to ask better questions and convert them to better performing ads. Data helps reveal what consumers like, what messages convert, and what empowers them to take action.
Analytics can also help you determine which platforms are best for your marketing messages. If you watch the data closely, you’ll find your core audience and learn quickly how they use the information to influence their buying decisions.
Social listening
It’s a social world, but we didn’t have to tell you that. Chances are you have various accounts on social media platforms, even if you’re not quite sure what to do with them.
The easiest way to get active is just to start posting. The best way to grow is to start listening.
Find brands that closely resemble yours. Stretch farther and find brands you love and use yourself. Then watch them. See what they post. Watch how they interact. Read the comments they get from their audience. Learn from what they do.
Those simple acts can help you become better at planning out your own campaigns. They can help you become savvier with your digital marketing skills, and refine every process you take.
Refine your technical skills
Ever thought of becoming better at the technical side of marketing? If that’s not your strong suit, you might have pushed it away before. You’ve never coded in your life; why start now?
But technology is only getting better, faster, smarter. It’s no longer optional; it’s a part of life.
What better time to refine your skills and learn more about some of the things that could help you reach out to your audience even more. What about using your phone to take photos to share? Once you’re well versed in that skill, how about making a video or two?
While it may benefit you to leave the copywriting skills to your marketing team, there’s no reason you can’t understand a little more about the craft. Your marketing team may understand how to get behind the scenes and dig deep into your site, your profiles, and your content … do you? What if you see an error and want to fix it? What if you want to jump in and get things done yourself?
It’s time to learn new skills to be even better as they ramp up in the future.
Take this time to improve
We’ve learned one thing well this past year – things can change quickly.
The best way to ensure your company stays relevant and your brand continues to reach out to larger target audiences is to gain digital marketing skills to help your business grow.
Do you need a partner to help you get there?
