If you considered ramping up your digital marketing strategy, but you’re not sure how, 2022 is a good year to start. Maybe you already have a digital marketing strategy, but you’d like to expand and get ahead of new trends. In this blog post, we’ve taken the most popular and powerful digital marketing trends of 2022 and distilled them into four simple, step-by-step digital marketing shortcuts to help you get started on a new aspect of your strategy.
4 Digital Marketing Shortcuts to Jumpstart Your Strategy in 2022
More people than ever are finding goods and services online. They’re looking on social media, through search engines, and even through videos. These digital marketing shortcuts can help expand your strategy started and allow you to enter new markets. As you expand your strategy, consider what might fit best with your skillset, your brand, and what you’re most excited to try. Start slowly, and be consistent—a consistent effort over a longer period will net better results than a big effort that loses steam later on.
1. Local Marketing Shortcuts
Who can use this digital marketing strategy? Anyone with a local business! No special skills required.
How long will it take? Give yourself a couple hours to get started, and at least fifteen minutes a week to maintain.
A local digital marketing strategy works best if you have a physical location. If you have a brick-and-mortar business and you haven’t looked into local SEO or localized digital marketing, 2022 is a great year to start. About a third of online consumers in the U.S. use the internet to search for local businesses on a daily basis. With a local digital marketing strategy, you can turn these searches into visitors, and sales. Here are a few digital marketing shortcuts to help you jumpstart a local marketing campaign.
Use Google My Business
Do a search for your business. What comes up? If your location doesn’t appear, you’ve picked a great digital marketing strategy to start with. Since Google is the most popular search engine and the go-to resource for most local searches, start here. Make an account on Google My Business to ensure your business appears on Google Maps. Make sure your information is accurate, including your address, phone number, and website. Add some pictures, too. This shows customers what to expect when they’re considering a visit. You can get even more value out of your Google listing by using Google My Business’s other features, like showcasing events or special offers.
Find Local Groups
To get more out of your local digital marketing campaign, it’s a good idea to take a look at other online resources, besides a local search. Nearby customers might also find your business through social media. Take a look at Facebook groups or Reddit pages with a local focus, as well as local publications’ pages, and local hashtags residents are using on Instagram or Twitter. Choose one, or a few, of these that you’re comfortable with, and that you don’t mind spending a few minutes each day or each week to keep updated.
Make a Rough Social Media Plan
For this aspect of your local digital marketing strategy to be effective, it’s helpful to have at least a loose social media plan beforehand. Consider what type of social media content your audience might find helpful or interesting. While it’s great to promote your own events, new products or happenings, remember to engage with other users, and other businesses too. This way, your audience won’t get overloaded with promotional content.
Local-Focus Digital Marketing Shortcuts: Key Takeaways
A local digital marketing strategy is ideal for brick-and-mortar businesses
You’ll need to use and get familiar with Google My Business
Identify local online conversations you can be a part of
2. Search-Based Marketing Shortcuts
Who can use this digital marketing strategy? Anyone with a website! You may need some assistance at first to speed up your site and start creating content.
How long will it take? You’ll need at least a couple hours to start with, and maybe an hour a week to dedicate to new content.
Enter a search that you think a customer might use if they were looking for your products or services. What comes up? Do you see your website anywhere on the first search engine results page (SERP)? If not, a search focus is a good digital marketing strategy to try in 2022. These digital marketing shortcuts will help you dive into search-based marketing.
SEO: Site Speed and Targeted Content
Search engine optimization (SEO) makes it easier for users to find your site through a search. There are many aspects of SEO, most of which fall into two categories; your site content and how quickly your site functions. If your site loads slowly, improving your content is unlikely to help. Use Google Search Console to see how you can improve your site load speed and functionality.
Similarly, a fast website will only help so much if you don’t have content on your site that customers are searching for. Do some keyword research to see what customers are searching for related to your business, and take a closer look at your competitors’ content too. Once you know what customers are searching for, you’ll need a way to create this content and a place to host it, like a blog section on your website.
Use Narrowly-Focused Search Ads
Digital advertisements can also be a valuable way to improve your website traffic and gain more customers. When you purchase search ads through Google, you can pay your way to the top of many SERPs. These top spots are sold on an auction basis; Google determines how much a spot is worth based (partially) on how many businesses want the spot and how often a term is searched. As you might expect, more popular search terms will be more expensive to win a top spot. The most effective search ads use a carefully calculated budget to ensure the resulting sales actually deliver the desired ROI. The search terms should also be carefully selected; long-tail terms will have less volume, but may indicate a higher search intent, which can mean more sales.
Search-Based Marketing Shortcuts: Key Takeaways
Anyone with a website will benefit from a search-focused digital marketing strategy
Improving your site speed and content will help improve your SERP position notably
Digital ads, with a carefully planned budget, can also be a powerful tool
3. Social Media Marketing Shortcuts
Who can use this strategy? Social media can be effective for any business, even B2B, when used appropriately.
How long will it take? You’ll need a couple hours to get familiar with a platform and do some research, and at least an hour a week to maintain your strategy.
More users spend more time on social media than ever. Though there are certainly negative effects of social media, and social media should be used conscientiously, it can also be a valuable tool for businesses to reach customers. If you’ve been curious about social media marketing before, but you weren’t sure how to get started, try these digital marketing shortcuts in 2022. Be mindful that results won’t be immediate; you’ll need patience and consistent effort to see a payoff.
Choose Your Platform Wisely
To get started, you’ll need to choose the right platform. Consider what platforms your audience is using, or what platforms you already have experience with. Once you’ve picked your platform, do some research. What do businesses in your industry create content about? How do users interact with them? Are there groups, threads, hashtags, or other organizing elements that you should know about? When you know how to use the platform in an optimal way, you’ll be able to engage more effectively.
Throughout your research, you may have noticed that certain types of content are more effective than others. Consider what type of content your audience might engage with, and how you can create it. If the platform primarily uses pictures or video, you might showcase your products, events, or storefront. Text-based content might focus on instruction or information. Before you get started, brainstorm some content ideas, so you’ll be able to post consistently as time goes on.
Use Narrowly-Targeted Social Ads
Paid advertisements can be a powerful part of your social media digital marketing strategy. While each platform has different ways to optimize ads, a few principles can help, regardless of the platform you choose. First, budget carefully. You can estimate how much an ad is worth to you by estimating the value of a sale and multiplying it by the likelihood that an ad will result in a sale. Second, use narrow targeting. Most social media platforms have highly-specific ad-targeting options. When you target users that are most likely to buy, you’ll be able to spend less on each ad and benefit more.
Keep the social aspect of social media in mind as you try this digital marketing strategy in 2022. Social media is meant to be conversational; engage with users and other businesses while also producing promotional content.
Social Media Marketing Shortcuts: Key Takeaways
Research your platform upfront so you can be sure you’re spending your time wisely
Narrowly-targeted social ads will help extend your reach fast
Share your own content, but engage with other users and businesses too
4. Video Marketing Shortcuts
Who can use this strategy? Business owners with some video experience, or the desire to learn.
How long will it take? Getting started depends on your existing level of experience, but you’ll want to commit about an hour a week to creating new videos once you get started.
Video has become an increasingly important part of an online digital marketing strategy in 2022. Today, 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. Google has prioritized video results for many searches, creating video snippets and video carousels to answer many users’ search queries. While many businesses have capitalized on this opportunity, many others have been slow to start. If you notice that popular searches in your industry don’t have video results, this may indicate an opportunity. These digital marketing shortcuts can help you get started and get ahead.
Use Short Videos on Social Media
Your videos can be long or short. Shorter videos, usually less than a minute long, are ideal for sharing on social media that specializes in short-form video content, like TikTok or YouTube Shorts. Once again, for this strategy to be successful, it’s important to provide content that is engaging for your audience, and it’s important to engage in a conversation. Post regularly, be consistent, and use markup or tags available on the platform to help users find your video. In addition, you can add these short videos to your landing pages to improve your chances of reaching a top SERP spot.
Use Long Videos for Information Sharing
Long-form video, usually three minutes or more, can also be useful, particularly if your audience is well-informed and looking for detailed, informative content. This type of video content may be ideal for businesses engaged in B2B marketing, or those providing specialized or technical products. Longer videos also give you a better chance of reaching a top SERP position. Using the right markup, you can tell Google what your video is about. Each section of your video can appear in a search, and informative video content tends to improve your overall SEO.
Video Marketing Shortcuts: Key Takeaways
Match short videos with the right social media platform to engage new audiences
Use longer videos on your landing pages to improve search traffic
Post regularly and be consistent for the best results
Local, search-based, social media or video marketing are all great places to start your digital marketing strategy in 2022, and these digital marketing shortcuts will help you jump in. These trends aren’t going away any time soon, so you’ll be able to continually build on them and see even better results. Take your time to learn and see what works. Remember that consistency is key. As you perfect your strategy and engage more customers, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.