When it comes to digital marketing, the landscape is constantly changing. This can be overwhelming for those new to marketing, and understanding the ebbs and flows of digital marketing is important to ensure you don’t overcommit or neglect any one area. 

An important realization is that the idea of hiring a “marketing person” is a fallacy. Marketing requires an expert combination of detail-oriented professionals collaboratively working on content, design, MarTech, strategy, performance and user experience. This carries through within market gaps as well, revealing the need for companies to fill not one, but many gaps in their niche market. 

The key to strong digital marketing in 2021 is an in-depth understanding of the dynamic nature of markets. Customer demands, responses and engagement will constantly shift, but if you can zero in on your strategy and integrate marketing automation into it, your performance will more consistently improve. It might be scary at the start, but it’s crucial to experiment with content formats, templates and styles. Once you’ve released it (or at least tested it), you can analyze revenue, reach and engagement based on the analytics of the content at hand. 

Old school thinkers may hesitate to adopt new marketing techniques, but it is crucial to understand these two main points: 1) that marketing is not solely about content, but about performance, and 2) sales and marketing must collaborate for the best results. 

Collaboration is Key

Many marketers isolate themselves in a separate corner of the room from the sales team, but the power lies in collaborative work between the two specializations. The key to growth and success in digital marketing is to develop a level of comfort with being uncomfortable, allowing you to expand in new directions without being limited by old ideas.

When trying new ideas, concepts and strategies, most companies will fail to consider the impact of these “pivots” on their teams. This is because, as marketers, we often perceive the customer experience on a macro level, zoomed out from the content itself. However, it can be crucial to consider how strategy pivots can affect your internal teams, because if you’re asking your designers to recreate hundreds of templates for a market pivot, there must be a good reason. 

Dig Deeper

Segmenting your marketing strategy into pieces that serve various corners of the market can be extremely beneficial and help in targeting your intended audiences, but it can also put an immense amount of pressure on your teams to learn or relearn platforms and create new content each and every time you pivot.

Lots of movement within the strategy is common among low-level or junior marketing teams, and this isn’t a bad thing. If anything, it keeps their work exciting However, parsing out your strategies based on market shifts can put an extra workload on your teams. If you let the development continue past the superficial level and stop trying to constantly change with the market, a cascade effect will allow you to dig a bit deeper into each market segment and see what works and what doesn’t. 

That said, it’s all about balance. Be careful not to get so carried away in one aspect that you neglect the others. The market will only work with you as long as you work with it. Because of the expansiveness in marketing within today’s businesses, there is no segment where you can enter and expect to immediately dominate the market, be a leader, or otherwise succeed right off the bat. Marketing strategy is a learning curve that is constantly adjusting, and digital presence is a full-time job for companies to “get right,” even when they’re not prioritizing growth.

We encourage you to experiment with strategy in ways that are safe for your company. Try to find the balance of digging deep and pivoting when necessary, and focus on the performance of your content as opposed to its substance. 

Need help with your own marketing efforts? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.