Digital Marketing Strategy: Website Resolutions for the New Year

2019 has blazed by, and 2020 is already just around the corner. If you aren’t already, now is an excellent time to take a look back at what your business looked like this year. What were your benchmarks? Did you hit them? What ended up differently than you thought? What audience did you reach the most?

If you’re looking back on some of those benchmarks and coming up short, take it as an opportunity to figure out why and tighten up your game for next year. Here we’ll go over some ways you can do exactly that. Even if you crushed it in 2019, it can’t hurt to look through and see which of these digital marketing best practices could help you do even better next year.

3 New Year’s Resolutions for Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Regardless of what kind of business you run, there are a few tips and trends in the digital marketing space you could probably make use of. Whether you’re an online clothing retailer or a mobile food truck business, consider the following website resolutions for the new year and see if they can help your marketing efforts.

1. Lean Into Video

Video has steadily grown in popularity in the online space, especially in the last few years. And it’s only going up from there. In fact, around 80% of all online traffic is projected to be video in 2020, according to a white paper by Cisco. That means if you aren’t using video, you’re missing the boat.

High-end video production can definitely be costly, but depending on your business, you may not need incredibly slick videos right away. Start with what you have, and work up from there. The point is to create video content related to your business that captures the audience’s attention. If it’s interesting, it can be recorded on a cell phone and still work.

The Cisco study also shows that smartphone traffic will exceed PC traffic, so don’t think you have to confine your video efforts to something consumable from a home computer. Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok all offer great channels to get bite-sized videos to your audience.

2. Trim the Clutter, for You and the User

Take stock of where you’re allocating your time. If you’re putting out marketing content on multiple platforms, which ones have been pulling in the most users? In 2020, try cutting away the platforms that aren’t converting and spending more time on the ones that show results. Maybe you don’t need that Twitter profile and a Pinterest page.

Look over your website to see how you can improve the user experience. Are they hit with five pop ups as soon as they visit? Trash them. Does your navigation menu clearly state what’s on every page and is it easy for users to find? If not, redesign it. Just making it easier for users to get around your site can increase your conversion rate going forward. Take the new year as an opportunity to change your style with a fresh, clean new appearance that’s both more attractive to visitors and more functional.

3. Use Web Tools to Be More Responsive

No one likes to be kept waiting. At the same time, you might not have all day to respond to inquiries or check in on employees in person to make sure things are getting done. Chatbots are a great way to streamline your customer service efforts by having more common questions answered automatically, making sure only the ones that truly need a human to deal with them get routed to you.

Tools like Slack can let you communicate with employees while out of the office, or if you have someone working for you remotely. Zapier can automate data sharing across multiple tools so you can share information more quickly and efficiently behind the scenes. If you know where the right information is, you can get back to the customer more quickly. Automating your social media marketing efforts with a tool like Hootsuite can also save you time and stress while getting maximum content online.

New Year, Better Strategy

Plug these guidelines into your next marketing campaign and see how they work for you. Pay attention to feedback, iterate accordingly, and you could see some seriously beneficial changes in 2020. Need help implementing some of these ideas? Contact us today and let us help!