Digital marketing strategy has evolved at dizzying speeds, and experts say some formerly effective strategies are now underperforming. Here’s a review of outdated digital marketing trends to replace this year.
As marketers continue to adopt new technologies, a few under-performing, overused tactics are on the chopping block for the coming year. Hubspot Blog Contributor Jasz Joseph reviews eight outdated digital marketing trends you might consider trading in for strategies that more effectively boost brand awareness, attract qualified leads, and increase revenues. What’s on the way out?
Impersonal Drip Campaigns
Generic drip campaigns to a large email contact list typically result in low engagement rates. For best results, target your messages to match your audiences. Marketing analytics platforms make it possible to detail market segments and personalize email campaigns based on demographics, online behavior, and recent engagement.
Text-Heavy eBooks
As mobile technology continues to advance, more people are browsing the internet on their phones instead of desktops. This means your PDF format eBook and other wordy marketing messages will need to evolve to formats better suited for audiences with shorter attention spans. Try moving to mobile-friendly tools, like video, animation, interactive landing pages, quizzes, and surveys.
Blogs: Quantity vs. Quality
Online audiences are becoming more sophisticated, and their sensitivity to rambling clickbait content is high. Keep your content focused on purposeful, problem-solving topics that support your audience’s needs and position your company as a viable go-to resource.
Overly Complex Lead Scoring
Keep your lead scoring algorithms simple to avoid slowing down your analysis and response time. Focusing on a couple of measurements, such as demographics and online behavior, can help you avoid overly complex or misleading combinations of point values.
Marketing Automation Overdose
Marketing automation is among the most effective of digital marketing trends, if used judiciously. Carefully consider appropriate use of automation for internal vs. external marketing. Engagement marketing, which delivers personalized and relevant messages at scale, will take the lead over marketing automation strategies that deliver cookie-cutter content across multiple channels.
Organic-Only Facebook Strategies
Facebook’s organic reach continues its steady decline with estimates of only 2 to 6 percent visibility. Take advantage of Facebook’s cost-effective boosted posts and advertising to increase your targeted reach and click-through rates.
Email-Only B2B Outreach
Tired of throwing out a bunch of B2B email ads in hopes that something will stick? Instead, use account-based marketing tools that allow you to target accounts and decision makers with messages and ads that match their personas. Instead of relying solely on email, these tools place targeted ads across web, mobile, video, and social channels.
Relying on Text-Based SEO
As mobile technology use evolves, so does consumers’ appetites for multimedia content. Include optimized video, images, and audio files in your SEO strategy to keep audiences engaged at multiple access points.
It’s time to ditch your outdated digital marketing trends. Digital marketing agency, San Diego-based Parallel Interactive can help you create a digital marketing strategy that builds brands, delivers qualified leads, and gets results. Contact us today.
