“If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Whatever role you play in your business, from owner to marketing manager – it’s important that you understand the overall goal you are all working towards. Employ the right knowledge to enable the business as a whole to respond to digital trends and, ultimately, work towards expanding your brands reach in an ever-changing digital environment.

Thinking little just won’t cut it anymore. No matter what sector your business is in you should be thinking big – think globally. The digital age enables a much wider audience reach, whilst working with a similar budget to what you have previously been used to. Focus your budget, understand where your ROI is coming from and plan to move things around. Don’t you want to end 2016 knowing that you understood the digital landscape and moved with the trends?

We know it’s hard to keep up sometimes, but that’s where we come in. We have the expertise and knowledge to guide you along your digital path this year.

PPC

Predictions for paid search in 2016 all point to it continuing to be a big player in any digital marketing strategy. Consumers want, and respond to, advertisements that are tailored to their interests. And this is more powerful than ever before; targeting methods are strengthening, with the ability to target customers by any demographic or behaviour.

ppc advertising

Paid search is definitely here to stay, it’s useful to any business due to its budget-friendly ability to generate fast results by targeting the right people at the right time. PPC and SEO work together in harmony to create digital results that you can really count on. Also, ensure to consider using some of your budget to focus on remarketing, display advertising, specific landing pages and Google Shopping campaigns, as these will help to ensure that your products remain prevalent in your customers minds.

Social Media

Social media networks are broadening their scope this year, bringing out new features and functionalities and each platform will look to align their looks to streamline usability. Have you audited each account you’re working on? Look back on the performance from 2015 analyse what you can be doing differently in 2016 to engage your audience and convert your social media.

Advertising on social media is a hot topic, it’s come on leaps and bounds over the past few years with a continued expansion and development of new features that bring a wealth of benefits to businesses. One particular element of social media advertising that has flourished is the use of paid advertising and sponsored posts on Facebook, Twitter and, more recently, Instagram. By using paid advertisements, you’re able to specifically outline your target demographic and promote content, products or services to ensure that you’re brand remains in the minds of your customers.

olly murs in simon and simon shirt

As a business, you should look to identify key social influencers and engage with them through industry related topics. As social influencers generally have a large social following, it can be extremely beneficial for a business to collaborate with them or engage with your brand as this form of social promotion will enable you to increase both audience size and reach. Though this may come at some form of cost, it’s an extremely useful tactic that can be deployed to instil trust in your brand and your products/services, so this is a great method of increasing brand awareness using social media.

Content Marketing

We hear this all the time, but however repetitive it may sound, ‘Content is King’ (and it’s definitely here to stay). 88% of B2B marketers currently use content marketing as a successful part of their digital marketing strategy, and you should be too.

User generated content is one of the most successful ways of producing unique, shareable content across social media platforms. Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign is the perfect example of this really working. Combining personalisation, this strategy not only increased sales, it heightened their social media usage, you couldn’t scroll through any platform without seeing someone’s name plastered on a Coke bottle.

shareacoke

This was only the first step too, the brand continued to roll out new names every few months, eventually enabling customers to order personalised bottles, and seasonal campaigns were introduced. Coca-Cola’s Christmas campaign is always a huge deal (some people we know even refuse to believe it’s Christmas until they hear that famous jingle), but by including ‘#ShareACoke with Santa’ on a Coke bottle brings the consumer closer to a seasonal campaign, and more importantly it’s memorable.

Preparing your digital strategy for 2016 will help ensure you stay one step of ahead, so don’t fall behind your competitors this year!

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