3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Neglect Your Digital Strategy

Digital isn’t marketing’s wave of the future. It’s the present. If your brand hasn’t devised and implemented a comprehensive digital marketing strategy by now, you’re way behind the crest.

If you do have a digital strategy in place, don’t count on riding that particular wave forever. Customers are constantly accessing digital content. If they like what they see from your brand, they’ll return for more, and they’ll want to see something new every time. That’s why your digital strategy needs constant care and attention.

Here are three major reasons you shouldn’t neglect your digital strategy, no matter how well it’s doing right at this moment.

1. Digital Is the Here and Now

It’s a digital world. Technology has ushered in new ways of reaching target audiences demanding fast-food consumption of information and instant gratification. If your digital presence only constitutes a website, you won’t be found. You and your brand will be irrelevant.

Adding a few random channels, such as a Facebook business page and a Twitter account, won’t cut it either. You should develop a cohesive digital strategy over time, layering on the channels your target audiences are using. As you add a new channel, don’t neglect the ones you’re already using, especially if they’re producing solid results.

Remember that quality content is what makes you relevant in your industry and to your customers. Your brand should be routinely auditing how your content is performing across all channels to stay on top of performance. Did a piece of content get read more often, or did more people watch the video format? How long did it keep readers or viewers engaged? How many clicks, likes and shares did it get?

Although digital marketing is here to stay, factors such as algorithms and keywords change frequently. There are a variety of tools you can use to track search engine rank page volatility, so invest in one. More importantly, use it constantly to inform your content, adjusting it as often as necessary to keep your ranking high.

It’s obvious that not having a digital marketing strategy is an error. But neglecting it once you do is just as egregious. Digital is the way your audience is consuming information now and likely will be forever. Give your strategy sufficient care and feeding every single day.

2. Digital Has Kept Companies Afloat During the Pandemic

When the world went digital at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses had to quickly devise and execute a digital strategy. Brick-and-mortar shops on Main Street America needed to offer more than their Facebook business page. If they didn’t, their shops would fail — and many of them did.

Those who stayed in business had to pivot to online sales and figure out how to deliver orders, whether via curbside pickup or shipping them to customers. In roughly 42 days in March and April 2020, small business online sales platform Shopify saw a whopping 62% increase in customers as retailers looked for help with a new digital strategy.

For certain, the jump to online sales was spurred by the pandemic, but it’s safe to say it’s here to stay. Customers are now accustomed to the convenience of shopping online. Moreover, they’re excited about having the option of digitally supporting local small businesses instead of behemoths like Amazon and Walmart.

For businesses of all sizes to thrive in whatever world comes next, they need to constantly improve on their pandemic digital marketing strategies. When Salesforce surveyed consumers in mid-2021, 61% said they’re planning to spend more time online, 88% expect businesses to accelerate their digital presence and 69% insist that companies find innovative mechanisms for product and services delivery.

The people have spoken. To respond, keep your brand on the cutting edge of digital by developing strategies that continue to keep you relevant. Adopt successful strategies used by others in your industry but make sure you do so in a way that’s congruent with your brand. Monitor customers’ reviews and input and adjust to their needs and wants. Digital might have kept you afloat during the early days of the pandemic, but now you need to swim like a champ.

3. Digital Will Continue to Evolve

Amid constant uncertainty, businesses have adapted to one unchanging truth: Digital strategy, if done well, will always serve others. No matter what happens in the future, there will always be an online world to serve. Serve its citizens well, and you will do well in return.

The specifics of the evolution of digital marketing success are unknown, but the critical steps necessary to evolve are constant. Step one is learning how to effectively market your brand digitally. Watch what successful companies are doing to respond to their customers’ ever-changing demands. A reputable agency that helps you develop strategic content and SEO tactics will enable you to stay on top of this as well as step two, which is creating winning digital marketing strategies.

Step three is executing those strategies well and monitoring results. Step four? Repeat successes and eschew failures, which essentially returns you to step one.

Customers not only want the right content at the right time, but they want it delivered in a format they can consume easily. During the height of the pandemic, when many were spending nearly every waking moment in front of a screen, the popularity of podcasts skyrocketed. This evolutionary rise meant brands needed to reformat their relevant content to suit the preferred delivery method.

You can’t know for sure where customers will lead your company in the future. However, you can learn some valuable lessons from trends they established during the pandemic’s height. Brands will need to keep an eye on these trends in 2022 and beyond. Digital marketing’s underpinnings, such as content, speed, and SEO, aren’t going away anytime soon.

Digital marketing firmly entrenched itself from the beginning of Covid. It continues to evolve as brands get increasingly good at listening to customers and responding to their demands. Now is no time to neglect your digital marketing strategies. It’s time for your business to catch a wave that will leave you sitting on top of the world.