Finding untapped growth in your Digital Marketing plan

Digital marketing is rapidly evolving alongside constant updates to search engine algorithms, consumer shifts and technological progress. The global digital advertising market is expected to grow from $178.29 billion in 2022 to $185.17 billion in 2023. But even the best digital marketing plan isn’t perfect. The key to beating your competitors is to identify and maximise the untapped growth areas in your strategy.

Use AI and automation in more innovative ways – As AI and automation become more advanced and widely adopted, I think we can expect to see even more innovative and sophisticated uses of these technologies in digital marketing. In a market where attention is highly valued, we will see marketers go beyond existing ad metrics by turning to AI tools that measure attention paid to ads and using automation to improve campaign performance based on attention metrics.

Contextual advertising and direct data collection – with the phasing out of third-party cookies expected to start happening in 2024, marketers will need to look at alternative ways of collecting data to improve and personalize the customer experience. This in turn will create a shift from targeted to contextual advertising, since contextual advertising uses the context of the webpage or app where the ad is displayed to determine its relevance to the viewer. This approach can effectively reach the right audience without the need for cookies or personal data.

Use of visual search and AR/VR tech – While these technologies are still quite new, as they become more advanced and widely adopted we can expect to see more marketers using them to engage and convert customers. AR and VR allow users to experience products in an immersive and interactive way eg. to let customers see how products will look in their homes, like Wayfair and Ikea do, or on their bodies, like Target does.

Optimize your YouTube channel – Video marketing is here to stay so get on the bus or get left behind. Like a content necessity to rank your website on Google, YouTube remains the search engine for videos. Implement digital marketing strategies on YouTube to promote your product, service, or brand. Some unknown secrets to include in your YouTube marketing strategy are:

1. Use metadata – Metadata is a short description stuffed with the right keyword that provides information about a website or a video through a title, tag, or description. Using the correct and relevant metadata will help your video stand out.

2. Competitor research – Performing complete research on your competitors is an essential digital marketing strategy to stand out from the crowd. With a complete analysis of your competitors, build interesting YouTube content to engage your audiences.

3. Link to your website – By either including an annotation in your video to your site, or building a website link on the description, it is important to link your video content to your site to maximise traffic and uplift the ranking of your videos.

4. Run YouTube ads – Paid ads are a powerful way to improve your YouTube SEO and video rankings so don’t ignore them.

In reality it isn’t always possible or viable to implement all of the above channels or changes, but you can start small by picking one or two and your business will soon reap the benefits.

Onwards and upwards!

Daniel Gross – CEO