It seems that 2019 that has just begun, will be a milestone year for all things digital in Cyprus, since the country appears to be starting to grasp the significance of digital economy and of the overall digital transformation of how things are done, not only in business but even society in general. We have already discussed this shift in the public debate and decision making in a previous article, but it is interesting to point out that the reference to reforms, amongst which the establishment of a deputy ministry for research, innovation and digital transformation has been reiterated in a convincing manner in the new year’s televised message by the President of the Republic of Cyprus.
So, if the country is about to embark on the journey of digital transformation then the beginning of the new year seems to be an appropriate timing for you to adjust or transform your own digital strategy as well. Doing so is bound to save you a lot of stress and incredibly improve your sales and profit generation prospects, irrespective of whether you own a business that operates exclusively online or if you simply have a brick and mortar business that maintains a decent online presence.
If you still haven’t given any thought on your own digital marketing strategy for the new year, the tips below will be helpful and a good place to start the whole process.
Shaping a good, solid and effective strategy takes time, so it is a good idea to start early in the year so that you will have ample time to prepare and design your strategy as soon as possible, to lay the right foundations on which to build, expand and develop your actions in the new year.
Having a good long-term content strategy is generally a very effective tool. Once you are certain what is the product or service that you wish to actively and dynamically promote in 2019, you should immediately devise a clear strategy towards this end. To achieve this, you need to ensure that you have a clear and unified framework with regards to the content of your strategy. Remember that creativity always wins, so be prepared to think out of the box, or think in a different box, avoid the easy way out of resorting to one-size fits all or ready-made solutions and recipes and create from scratch, content that is fresh, new, unique and smart. In this way you will be able to attract new traffic and visitors, boost your leads and conversions and, in the end, achieve the new sales and increased profits that you are aiming at.
The start of the year is the ideal timing to analyse, adjust and improve your digital marketing strategy. Use Google Analytics and/or any other tools that you may have available in order to analyse the profile and statistical data that you have at your disposal from your website visitors. This will allow you to identify which are your strong points, which are your weaknesses and which aspects of your online offering has to be adjusted or improved in order to bring you added value.
There’s a lot you can do to fare even better during this evaluation process. If for example you detect that you have a high bounce rate on your homepage, this may indicate poor site performance that need to be addressed or a problem in effectively communicating your messages to your target audience that needs to be rectified. Moreover, you may decide to add to your homepage as featured items some of your products or services that are already very popular, or attract attention to new arrivals or new additions to your offering.
User/visitor stats and data constitute power tools that can help to better understand their preferences and consumer behaviours, while they can also help you identify any unexploited opportunities for further growth and expansion.
A factor that cannot be stressed enough that you surely need to carefully analyse as part of your revamped digital strategy is your actual search engine rankings. Even if you have the best offering around in terms of products or services if none can actually find your website then they cannot know what you have available! Improving your search engine rankings, mostly through properly carried out SEO techniques, will do wonders for your business, so make sure you analyse your search engine rankings well in advance to give you time and opportunity to gain the necessary insight and diagnose any problems or areas that you need to work on and improve.
Another area that you need to focus on is the overall improved performance of your site. Since all market players are fighting to gain the attention of the audience and prospective clients you need to pay particular attention to things like your loading speed. If your site takes ages to load no customer will stick around and wait but will instead turn somewhere else to get the proper service they seek.
A good idea is to use the browsers that are embedded in developer tools or other similar ones such as Yahoo! YSlow in order to evaluate and test the loading performance of your website and also to ensure that your chosen hosting servers can adequately handle and serve the extra load in terms of traffic that you are aiming to gain, without compromising the overall user experience.
Especially if your business venture requires that most of your work is carried out online it is imperative that you have a backup, contingency plan to fall back on in order to compensate for any unexpected problems that might arise, which will also cover you in case of sudden changes in your strategy. A sudden upsurge of data load on your web serve may cause your entire system to collapse that this something you want to avoid at all costs. Being well prepared for such unexpected events and problems and being able to quickly react to them can make all the difference between a successful or failed new digital strategy, especially in terms of customer satisfaction and sales.
The last tip we have to offer for your revamped digital strategy for the new year is to dare to be different and try out new things and strategies that you haven’t used before. This could be in the shape of a targeted update to your website for which you can inform your audience, or an innovative email campaign with special offers and discounts. The start of the year is the ideal timing for new beginnings, new efforts, new attempts and your audience will be more open to accept new ideas and more willing to change their consumer habits in your favour.
If you really want to make a difference this year and give your business a boost to proper it towards further growth and success then perhaps what you really need is a more professional, tailor made approach to devise your new digital marketing strategy. If this is the case get in touch with our expert team today and let us help you turn all your visions into reality in 2019!
