Author: Jennifer Burleson

Looking to breathe new life into your marketing strategy? It’s easy to feel stuck using the same messaging or the same tactics over and over. But, there are subtle ways to reinvigorate your advertising without reinventing the wheel. 

Here are five easy ways you can refresh your digital marketing strategy and approach to better reach your audience and optimize campaign performance. 

Step 1: Adjust Your Audience Targeting

Digital media strategists need to place audiences at the cornerstone of their planning. As campaigns perform, evaluate if you are reaching your target audience in the most efficient ways. 

Continually review your target audiences through a combination of research, performance analysis, and product/service feedback to understand who your best customers are. Once this is established, your digital media agency or in-house operations team can build on these learnings by activating relevant first, second, and third party data sets available across platforms to reach their audiences on channels where they are known to engage and are available to target.

Note: Be vigilant about staying ahead of shifting policies and privacy laws that impact platform targeting capabilities. This will become more prevalent as cookies diminish. 

Step 2: Keep Your Creative Fresh

Everyday, consumers are bombarded with ads across every digital platform. To help break through the clutter, update creatives every three to six months and carefully monitor frequency. If your audience is constantly seeing the same creative, ad fatigue is likely to set in and even negatively impact your reach. By rotating in new creatives, you can keep engaging content in front of your target audience.

If you’re not using video ads, incorporating this medium is a perfect way to invigorate your advertising. 

Why? Because videos are: 

• Attention-grabbing – the motion and sound of videos captures attention driving higher engagement 
• Engaging – videos convey more information and drive higher engagement than static images
• Versatile – video creative can be adapted for use across various channels such as YouTube, Connected TV, and social media 
• Shareable – users are more likely to share entertaining or interesting videos on social media giving your brand greater exposure 

Step 3: Authenticate And Test Your Messaging

Make sure the message you are sharing is relatable to your audience. This doesn’t mean you have to constantly be coming up with new ad copy and creatives. Instead, use a test and learn strategy. You can use AI optimizations  to find the best combinations of existing creative and messaging for your core audience groups. 

A/B testing various creatives and headlines also allows you to utilize your top best performing ads to guide future collateral, bringing informed ideas to each marketing touchpoint. 

Step 4: Audit And Optimize Your Website User Experience

If you are sharing a different message in your advertising than on your website, you will quickly lose user interest or, at minimum, confuse your customers. Analyze your messaging as well as your customer’s journey. Make sure ads have cohesive messaging that aligns with the corresponding website landing pages. This not only allows for a positive user experience, it also helps with relevancy score to help martech platforms prioritize your ads. 

Additionally, with the ever-increasing number of users on mobile, prioritize design, targeting and optimizations for a mobile-first environment. Creating this seamless user experience will help guide your audience down the funnel towards conversion. You can use Google Analytics or other web analytics platforms to understand website behaviors and make adjustments based on where consumers are abandoning their journey with your brand

Step 5: Be Bold And Adopt Relevant, Emerging Channels Early

Set aside a portion of your budget for testing new channels and platforms. Run test campaigns to see your audience activity and engagement on new platforms. Once you find the top performing channels and tactics, you can meet your audience where they are most active. You can also keep an edge on your competitors by being a first-mover with new trends. 

Some emerging advertising channels to consider testing include:

• Influencer marketing
• Emerging social platforms: TikTok, Twitch, Reddit, Clubhouse, etc..
• Podcast advertising
• Digital-out-of-home
• Connected TV/OTT advertising

This can also be as simple as testing a new ad format in a platform already included in your media mix. 

In the fast paced world of digital advertising, marketers cannot afford to be complacent. Always keep an eye on your marketing strategy and how it aligns with your company goals. Not all strategies need a full overhaul to stay competitive. Making a few small adjustments can make a big difference in staying relevant in the advertising space. Use these five steps to analyze, update and refresh your digital marketing strategy on an ongoing basis. 

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How to Build an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy