Digital Marketing Tips to grow your sales in 2022.
2021 is over and we’re all looking forward to a brighter and more prosperous 2022.
To help you jumpstart your sales in 2022, we’ve curated a list of digital marketing tips from three of our top experts within Optily.
The experts we spoke with cover a wide range of areas within a business from leadership, sales, and client services. The insights they provide in this article are sure to help your eCommerce business grow in many different aspects.
Get ahead of the game and kick off your digital marketing strategy strong in 2022!
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10 Digital Marketing Tips to Jumpstart your 2022 Sales
Just before the holidays, we released a blog titled Top 7 MarTech Solutions for Growth in 2022. This article outlines the best marketing technology solutions to help your business grow in the new year.
To build on that article we decided to speak with people who have years of experience in the industry.
#1 - Performance without Pixels in 2022
Digital Marketing Tips with Brendan Hughes
As the dust settles in 2021, paid media teams are taking stock and wondering how to set themselves up for success in 2022. We’ve seen two major trends emerge amongst the most resilient DTC and eCommerce brands in response to a world where third-party cookies are all but dead.
Both trends see advertisers taking back control over their data and reducing dependency on any single platform or solution.
1. First-Party Data
First-party data is data a company directly collects from a customer, with informed consent, and which they own. Because the company owns the data, they can use it in a myriad of ways that are not permitted when the data is owned by a third party. Examples of such data include:
- Customers’ behaviors on your website or app, including purchase history and information from loyalty programs.
This type of information is powerful as it enables us to connect in a meaningful way with our customers based on everything we know about them.
2. What are successful brands doing?
Successful brands are now offering up data capture features across their owned and operated assets as well as via the ad platforms. Examples include:
- Newsletter modals offering discounts on first purchases
- Surveys and quizzes to elicit information on interests
You can expect anywhere from 3-20% of website visitors to interact with such features, thus turning a significant volume of anonymous visitors into known consumers. Within the ad platforms, we’re seeing greater use of lead gen ads, typically the staple of B2C brands, to harness opted-in contact details together with product interests which can be leveraged for marketing purposes.
DTC brands that are investing in third-party data are seeing meaningful incremental returns.
Ultimately, this type of data enables brands to better understand campaign effectiveness by segmenting and shaping future investment decisions.
2. Unified Performance Data
With the greatly reduced availability of reliable performance data from third parties and the increasing silo-isation of the industry, marketers are facing tough challenges.
Digital marketing has hooked business leaders on the belief that all marketing impacts can be measured. As the measures are diluted, so to the investments in marketing are curtailed. It is therefore not surprising that marketing budgets have dropped to their lowest levels in a decade down to 6.4% of revenue versus 11.0% in 2020! (Source: Gartner 2021)
4. The ultimate digital marketing tip?
Ad platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Snapchat, and Tik Tok, provide rich data about consumers’ behaviors within their own siloed environments but are increasingly struggling with measuring off-platform performance. Similarly, eCommerce platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce, hold valuable customer insights but have never specialized in marketing attribution.
Combining the disparate data sources is like weaving a tapestry. The individual strands of data and insight can seem disjointed and near impossible to decipher. In the hands of the weaver, today’s data-led digital marketer, the strands combine and the customer journey starts to become much clearer.
Understanding how all these components work together for your brand and your consumers is the superpower that marketers in 2022 will need to develop!
#2 - Essential Design Tips for 2022
Digital Marketing Tips with Claire Murphy
1. Make time to review your creative assets from 2021
As 2022 begins, a digital marketing tip is to focus on is a retrospective on your creative assets. Look at what worked well, what didn’t, and what needs an overhaul for 2022. Starting the year with a design to-do list will be a big head start when your brain is a little foggy after the holidays. Having completed your review of the year, the planning for 2022 will become a lot easier.
A clear plan for January and beyond will set you in good shape for the entire year!
2. Look for ways to speed up production in 2022 with templates
If you have at least a year under your belt in business, you will know the busy pain points during the year. Understanding when you’ll be busiest allows you to plan ahead of time.
At Optily, we have a good idea of what we need to do in the coming year, based on last year’s data. Getting some video, social, and display ad structures in place, finalizing the copy and imagery early in January, will not only speed things up but also means that you can react to current events on social media as they arise in 2022.
3. Build a network of Creative Freelancers and Agencies before you need them
Make your New Years’ resolution to meet people!
January is a perfect time to grab a coffee or have a video call with potential agencies, freelancers, and other vendors that could help you grow your offering in 2022. The trick is to meet them before you need a task completed urgently!
Build a friendly relationship and become familiar with their pricing structure and timelines. It might even be a good idea to start with a small trial job to see how you work together before starting a big design project that you are investing a lot of your budget in.
#3 - Upcoming 2022 Digital Marketing Trends
Digital Marketing Tips with Amy Coyle
1. The Rise of Social Commerce
I predict that some social eCommerce is going to kick off big-time, live shopping streams. This is a prediction based on trends in 2021 and we’ve already seen some early adopters such as &OtherStories. This has been a growing trend in China for years and has generated billions in revenue. 2022 is certain to see even more social eCommerce.
2. A Continued struggle for Paid Media
Paid media will continue to struggle with privacy challenges, which will drive up CACs (Customer Acquisition Costs) especially Facebook (Meta 🙄).
I believe that brands should diversify their marketing mix, ensuring that they are not putting all of their efforts towards driving new customer acquisition. Paid media can be used to re-engage existing customers too.
3. Email is as important as ever
Email is still so important, especially for re-engaging customers with abandoned carts and for welcome email flows as these will generate quite a bit of revenue if done right.
Focus on getting these types of emails right first and then automate like crazy before paying attention to testing general subscription emails.
4. Focus on optimizing conversion rates
Optimizing conversion rates and increasing AOV is crucial, especially with paid media costs rising ever higher. Make sure conversion rates are optimal to ensure as much of your traffic as possible is converting when they get there. Simple strategies to increase AOV can also be implemented like cross-selling an item as an add-on at add to cart stage.
5. Boost your website speed
Lastly, but probably the most important, is your site speed. This is the single biggest thing impacting eCommerce store performance.
Brands should be regularly checking their mobile and desktop speeds. Settling for a less than average score means revenue left on the table.
In 2022, make sure that you are constantly monitoring and improving your website speed! Check out this article, The Complete Guide to eCommerce SEO, for tools to help this process.
Conclusion
There you have it. Three experts providing invaluable digital marketing tips and tricks to grow your business’ sales in 2022.
Implementing the strategies mentioned above early in the year is a sure-fire way for your business to experience incredible growth this year.
I know you want to grow your business in 2022, so these expert tips right here are the perfect place to start!
