As a part of new year resolutions for your business, you have pledged to finally invest in digital marketing. You’ve established a general budget, and have some clear goals in mind, but have not yet committed to a start date. You may be tempted to wait until you’ve padded your account with a few weeks of revenue before beginning, but there’s a risk to putting it off any longer. With each passing week there is opportunity lost, along with new threats entering the fold. Below is a breakdown of why you should start your digital marketing campaign immediately.
Four Pressing Reasons to Begin Your New Year Digital Marketing Campaign Right Away
I. Your Competitors Aren’t Waiting
FORBES reports that 2021 was a record year for digital media spending, with social media and search engine marketing leading the charge. 2022 is on the same trajectory. Experts state that for the year ahead, digital marketing will account for over 60% of corporate ad spending as companies continue to ditch traditional channels. Canadian firms are leading the way along with the U.S. and UK in this capacity. For instance, 70% report an intent to increase spending on social media marketing for 2022.
The digital marketing industry is seeing unprecedented lifts in investment across nearly all product and service categories. Your competitors are taking immediate acton and putting their money where their stated resolutions are. If you wait to do the same, they will enjoy a head start and chip away at market share until there is nothing left but scraps.
II. Your Customers Aren’t Waiting
A new study has found that approximately 50% of consumers use social media as a form of product/service support. More importantly (for the purposes of this article) they demand a quick response. 47% of Facebook users, 50% of Twitter users, and 55% of Instagram users expect a reply to their product/service complaint or query within 3-hours. Three hours! If you don’t have someone at the helm to answer their questions, comments, and concerns across all primary digital platforms you will lose them as customers. In 2022, consumers expect you be on the very same digital channels as they are, and be active in real time. This absolutely requires you to push the “Go” button on your digital marketing campaign today.
III. Google Updates Its Core Algorithm in Real Time
There was a time when Google let online businesses know when an algorithm update was coming. They issued alerts on their Search Central blog platform. It’s still a helpful resource center, but they no longer give businesses a heads-up about the biggest of their algorithm updates – the CORE update. This is because the core update (and others) run in real time. Google now crawls and evaluates websites and backlink profiles on an ongoing basis. If your website has not been recently audited by an expert SEO, real time algorithm updates may cause an immediate drop in rank. You will be left scrambling to recover. But by starting your digital marketing campaign today, you will gain expert SEO insight that will audit and correct what makes you vulnerable.
IV. You Need to be Able to Adapt Customer Acquisition in Real Time
If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen. A health crisis, natural disaster, etcetera. As a business you require the flexibility to adapt and adjust your customer acquisition strategy in real time. If you can’t, you may not be able to make it through unanticipated events to come.
Remember when the lockdowns first occurred in 2020? The same ads persisted on outdoor billboards, public benches, and bus stops for months, all of which marketed promotions that were no longer valid. Brands were locked into ad deals, and could not adjust to change their promotions. This is not a problem for digital marketing, which can be altered in real time to account for any change in the marketplace, be it a weather event or dramatic shift in consumer interest. If you have not yet started your digital marketing strategy, you cannot adapt to what happens today by tomorrow, or even next month. However, when you do begin today, you’ll be ready to pivot your customer acquisition strategy immediately.
Ready to get started? Let’s begin with a friend conversation about your goals for the year ahead. Contact Strategis Consulting Group today.