Digital marketing is ideally suited to the current commercial landscape. Consumers are increasingly technologically savvy and enthusiastically embracing digital tools. In 2021, global e-commerce sales surpassed $5.2trillion, showing the continued rise in customer confidence in online sales. This all represents a rich and exciting range of opportunities for marketing professionals to thrive.
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However, success is far from guaranteed. Markets, consumers, and technology are certainly prone to change. If you are unprepared, you can find your business experiences significant disruption as a result. This means you need to dedicate time to understanding where you can be more robust and adopt effective mitigation processes.
Let’s take a closer look at future-proofing your digital marketing strategy.
Keep Planning
Planning is a key to effectively future-proofing your digital marketing strategy. If you’re largely improvising your approach or simply maintaining older practices, you miss out on opportunities for agility. In essence, you’re only able to react to the unexpected rather than effectively preparing for it.
You should, therefore, build regular planning meetings into your marketing processes. Gathering your team together to map out customer journeys can help you gain better insights and keep on top of changes. Be thorough in reviewing your competitors in the market and all aspects that affect the road to conversions. Importantly, assess mistakes you and your team have made since the last planning meeting in an open and productive way.
From here you can start to build a fresh plan for the campaign period. Use your SEO forecasting to identify potential additions to your target focus so you can best take advantage of shifts in the market. Arrange robust contingencies and solutions for any challenges you currently face and those you predict.
Understand Human Behavior
One mistake many marketing teams make is in focusing just on the technical aspects of a campaign. Algorithms and keywords can certainly be important elements in any strategy. However, no matter how digital your marketing methods are, you are still dealing with humans. People are fickle, prone to change, and can be influenced by trends and events. As such, future-proofing your strategy must include a knowledge of human behavior.
Focus on capturing insights into the habits and interests of your target demographics. Companies are increasingly utilizing user behavior analytics (UBA) to gain better visibility of how people interact with content and applications. This is usually in the form of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven software that uses machine learning to accurately monitor behavior.
There are various applications in business for UBA — but in digital marketing, UBA can provide real-time insights into any alterations in behavior and growing trends in what consumers are responding to. Access to this information means you can more appropriately adapt your marketing plans and take advantage of key changes.
Be Cognizant of Risks
Risks are an inevitable part of business. No matter what sector you’re operating within, you will likely face daily hazards in your operations. To future-proof your marketing strategy effectively, you need to be able to prevent and mitigate any risks that could derail your actions.
Your success here hinges on regular and robust risk assessment procedures. Your review needs to consider various areas, including:
Industry Risks
These are hazards related directly to the digital marketing industry. These might involve significant changes in how demographics respond to certain marketing tactics. It could be new technology, methods, or user interface (UI) trends coming onto the market that supersedes those you’re using. Even changes in companies investing in digital marketing may pose a risk to you.
Internal Risks
It’s not pleasant to think about, but some of the biggest risks can come from within your own organization. As such, you need to assess elements such as the risk of staff or executive theft or corruption. Assessing the ethical standards of your culture can highlight risks of shady behavior to affect both your campaigns and your reputation. Reviewing the financial practices of your organization also provides insights into potential cash-flow issues that might disrupt campaigns.
External Risks
Working in the digital landscape can leave your marketing strategy vulnerable to external risks, too. Cybercrime, in particular, is a prevalent hazard both to your company and to your campaign materials. The economic stability of your country of operations can also have a knock-on effect on your strategies. As such, it’s important to review these in your regular assessments.
Maintain Inclusivity
Maintaining high inclusion standards is not just an ethical duty. It also has a direct impact on the longevity of your digital marketing strategies. Firstly, consumers are better able to recognize the conscious or unconscious missteps marketing teams make. They’re also more than willing to speak up when they feel marketing materials further oppress marginalized populations. However, you should also remember that a lack of inclusivity on your marketing team impacts your strategies, too. A team with diverse perspectives can boost innovation.
One of the key areas you can bolster inclusivity is through accessibility. Adopt and maintain accessibility best practices to ensure all consumers and staff members are able to meaningfully interact with your business. Assess for and remove any physical barriers in your workplace to those experiencing mobility challenges. Make certain all your web materials are easy to perceive, navigate, and understand. If in doubt, consult the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for the minimum guidelines, but you should always seek to go beyond these.
It’s also important to recognize that inclusivity isn’t about accommodating people but empowering them. Wherever possible, make certain your strategies are led and influenced by a diverse range of contributors. When people from a range of backgrounds have the freedom to be creative, your campaigns are likely to be more agile and relevant in the long term.
Conclusion
A bright future is never guaranteed in any business. However, making efforts to future-proof your digital marketing strategy places you in a solid position to succeed. This should include regularly reviewing and improving your campaign planning and gathering data on changes in consumer behavior. There will always be risks to your business, too. Assessing and safeguarding against these can boost your staying power. Don’t forget that a commitment to inclusivity helps you better connect with consumers and improve the possibility for innovation. Your ongoing efforts in each of these areas tend to represent positive campaigns for you, your staff, and your target demographics.