Digital marketing involves understanding the business and catering to the target audience's demands. A marketer snoops into the market to understand the buyer's persona in-depth. But that's not the main aspect; utilizing that information to grow your brand is where the strategy steps in. Digital marketing agencies all around the world are focused on touching the pain points of the audience in a creative and strategic manner, thereby generating more leads and conversions. 

1 - Importance of Digital Marketing Strategy

A digital marketing strategy involves everything from segmenting the audience to deciding the region to target. It guides marketers in monetizing and optimizing other marketing wings, including social media, search engine optimization, content marketing, email marketing, and paid marketing. 

A strategy gives direction to the companies with a clear and achievable goal. It helps understand the market share involving the dynamics of the online marketplace. It adds value to your marketing campaigns. Among these, some of the roles of a strategy include:

• Helps avoid time and resource-wasting 
• Helps avoid risks that come with the disintegration
• Gives a better understanding of the customers 
• Helps in penetrating the market to surpass competitors 

2 - How to Create an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

The changing tech industry has greatly influenced buyers' persona. It's important to be aware of the latest trends and follow the changing demographics of every platform. However, one thing to be conscious of is not to stick to just one plan; instead, be flexible and adaptive. The criteria and perception you had at the start of the year may not remain the same as you reach the quarter or the near end. Hence, here are some top picks to make your digital marketing strategy for 2023 the most profitable one with these trends, you can create an unmatched footprint. 

2.1  Create An Engaging Customer Experience 

The Temkin Group conducted a survey indicating that companies can expect 7x more profit by investing in customer experience within three years. 

So, what is it all about? The strategy to generate more leads has shifted from convincing buyers to purchase products to providing an engaging experience that can eventually compel the visitors to make a favorable buying decision. 

When you focus on building a stronger relationship with your customers, you connect with them more effectively. You create a long-term bond with them and gain their trust. It's not about customers being impatient, but they would love to be served tacos on a silver plate with some refreshing presentation. Hence, customer experience is all about offering the best quality products in the best possible way. 

2.2 Story-Driven Content Visualization

Do you know 65% of online visitors are visual learners? Using colored visuals increased the desire to read the content. With the innovation of voice search and smart speakers, people are more inclined towards visually appealing content. You must not neglect the use of visual content to tell your brand's story. Image-focused platforms, reels, and short-lived videos provide some profitable means to generate leads. Add videos to your texts, and use infographics, short explainer videos, interesting reels, and stories to keep your audience engaged. 

2.3  Put Personalization At The Heart Of Marketing 

You know that when customers plan to purchase a particular product, they get multiple options from different brands. So, how can you win the lead? You need to amp up your game of personalization. Understand human psychology to garner attention. Psychologists tells that humans love to hear and see their names. They are instantly drawn and attentive if they hear their name. 

Hence, email marketing is one best technique that many top digital marketing companies use to boost conversions. You can gather prospective leads and expand your clientele efficiently. Moreover, you can integrate personalization into your content marketing strategy. Segment your audience and target their specific pain point. Make relatable content and show them how much you understand their concerns and challenges, and you will find your revenues growing. 

2.4 Create Interactive Conversational Marketing

Gone are the days when sales and marketing pitches used to sound robotic. Digital marketers have adopted a more informal way of interacting with their audience. You need to go a step ahead of it now. Incorporate conversational marketing into your strategy. Chat like a friend. Do not just go flashing your product; get into their shoes and highlight the concerns your audience experiences. Make sure your product comes as problem-solving and fits right for their needs. Human-centered interactions are more fruitful and ensure long-term goals for marketers. 

2.5  Ensure Strategic Marketing Transformation

Strategic marketing transformation is a process where the business evolves following a strategic plan to improvise and change the existing business processes and procedures. Taking into account the unstable economic conditions, it's important to evaluate your true business potential and set new goals. You need to work around boosting brand awareness and enhancing your reputation, thereby breaking through the barriers to stabilize your company better than before. 

You need to gather BigData and analyze it to create a transformative strategy. Identify the roadblocks and define newer ways to reach your targets. Your strategy should not be limited to marketing; it should target processes, operations, and even your workforce. 

2.6 Optimize and Push Notifications 

The changing demographics of email marketing and the increasing use of smartphones to do business are two influencers in increasing the use of push notifications in digital marketing. Emails are becoming a means of effectively connecting the prospect to the brand and so making sure your notifications are optimized enough to get a good response is necessary. 

According to the statistics, a huge percentage of customers allow push notifications to stay informed about their favorite brands. Hence, you need to make sure your notifications are engaging and captivating to strengthen your relationships with your customers. Nowadays, brands are going for personalized and interactive notifications to instantly capture the customer's attention. 

2.7 Featured Snippets In Google Search

Search engine optimization continues to grow in the digital marketing industry with its effectiveness in helping brands gain enhanced visibility. To provide ease to visitors, Google now provides more than 60% of the search results through snippets. With these new features, brands do not have to wait for their visitors to navigate to their sites to explore more about them. 

Visitors get the basic information through the featured snippets. However, what you need to work on is to make sure your content gets the snippet. That only happens if you provide an informative piece written purely to provide value to your visitors. With featured snippets, there is a higher chance to get a lead. 

2.8 Social Commerce Is A Must 

The popularity of social commerce is growing enormously around the GCC region. In the midst of the growth, UAE-based social and conversational commerce websites are expanding their horizon in the region to gain an increasing share of the market. 

Brands are becoming savvier than ever when it comes to leveraging influencer marketing and creating engaging ads to take over the social feeds of the audience. The rise of integrating E-commerce platforms with social media accounts is yet another development that has taken place in recent times. In the UAE, TikTok and Facebook are the top two platforms to accelerate the social commerce trend. For influencer marketing, TikTok is one of the leading platforms ensuring thousands of followers within hours.

2.9 Voice Search Optimization

By 2021, around 20% of the searches were voice search driven. However, the market predicted it had crossed almost 50%. Considering that, the pace is slow but steady. By 2023, voice search is predicted to become a major brand technique. Moreover, 61% of consumers between the age group of 25-65 are inclined towards it due to convenience and ease. 

Here's a key takeaway for those brands whose adverts are not prepared for smart speakers, make sure to make your content optimized for voice search. You should set a long-term goal to grow your visibility by serving the queries of the visitors in the right way. 

2.10 Video Marketing

Cisco carried out a survey indicating that video accounts for more than 82% of online traffic. As you may know, videos are 53x times more likely to generate SERP's first page rankings; it gives brands a vital push to ground themselves and give a beat to their rivals. Hence, you need to make sure to create more engaging and customer-centric videos. 

Try to connect with the emotions and use user-generated content in your videos. As stated before, reels are one of the great techniques too. With the rise of TikTok, and the latest integration of the feature on Facebook and Instagram, brands are leveraging it to garner attention and accelerate lead generation. 

Wrap Up 

Tech is evolving, pushing the boundaries of every industry ahead. In times like these, you need to have a partner who can help you grow, stabilize and expand your business using the right technology and strategy. ConnectIn Digital is a promising  digital marketing agency in the UAE that has years of excellence and expertise to help you reach your targets.