New Year’s Resolutions: Digital Marketing Edition (Updated For 2022)

Wow, 2021 was something else, wasn’t it? Thankfully, it’s almost over.

That magical time of the year has come around again. Yes, it is time to make your new year’s resolutions.

To help you get started, the talented team at DOM has put together our favorites for digital marketing.

Below, we’ve compiled 14 resolutions from our team of digital marketing professionals to help you improve your campaigns in the coming year.

New Year’s Resolutions 2022: The Digital Marketing Edition

1. Spend Less $

Check Your PPC Campaigns for Broad Keywords Today

From Nikki Powley, Director of Operations

Reviewing an account for broad match keywords is one of the first things I do when completing a Google Ads account audit. They are one of the biggest offenders in the wasted spend category.

There are three keyword match types: exact, phrase, and broad. Straight broad match keywords allow ads to show for your keyword and any variation of the keyword that Google believes could be similar.

For example, you add the keyword “shoes”. Your ad could display for searches of women’s shoes, tennis shoes, or even horseshoes.

If you want to reach a larger audience, but not horse owners, utilize the fourth match type (I know I said three, but stick with me). Modified broad keywords are created by adding a + before words. This requires a user’s search phrase to include a synonym of each word in the modified broad keyword. For example, +womens +shoes allows ads to trigger for variations of women’s shoes like ladies’ shoes, but ads will not show for unrelated terms like kid’s shoes or horseshoes.

Check out 8 more of my cost-saving PPC tips!

2. Save More $

Leverage SEO For Your Top Converting Search Queries In Google Ads

From Jonathan Bentz, Senior Digital Marketing Strategist

If you have been running a Google Ads campaign or any other paid search campaigns, then you can review your list of top search queries in the account and use that information to customize a results-oriented SEO strategy.

Here’s an actionable step by step process:

1. Download your list of top converting search queries from your advertising campaigns
2. Sort the list by the search queries with the highest volume of conversions
3. Improve your keyword rankings in organic search for the top converting queries by optimizing
   • Page title
   • Meta description
   • Content on the page
   • Image alt tagging
4. Search the other pages of your site with an “intext” search operator in Google to uncover keyword rich link opportunities.
   • Here’s a sample search query – site:directom.com intext:”Google Ads”.
     • This search will uncover mentions of your top converting queries inside the body of content across your entire domain.
   • Adding these internal links will improve the relevance of your page for the converting keyword, and reduce the likelihood that Google will consider another page on your site to be a better result.

Historically, studies have indicated a potential lift in clicks of as much as 53% when a brand appears in the top positions of paid and organic search. While those numbers may have changed some with Google’s current layout, the opportunity is still there for the taking to improve your conversions and traffic from organic search in 2020.

Launching a new online learning course as one of your new year’s resolutions? Here’s 20 ideas I’ve curated for how to promote a training program.

3. Lose Weight

Let Go Of Keywords You Love If They Aren’t Getting You Conversions

From Leland Reed, Senior Digital Advertising Strategist

Losing weight can be tough. Letting go of bad habits that are impeding your progress is one of the hardest steps to committing to weight loss. The same can be said about making changes to your PPC account.

You thought for sure that the keyword was going to work, right? You just needed to find the perfect combination of ad text and bidding. As the days and weeks go by, the keyword is getting plenty of impressions but no clicks. You know with a little more TLC, you can make it work.

If this sounds like you, maybe it is time to let go of that keyword and start fresh. Don’t be afraid to get rid of anything in your campaigns that are not working. By cutting out poor performing keywords, you can save money and time which will allow you to try new, exciting things in your account.

Is revitalizing your Google Shopping campaigns one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Here’s 5 ways for you to do that!

4. Travel More

Take Advantage Of Every Feature In Your Google My Business Listing

From Stephanie Mahnken, Senior Client Success Manager

Throughout the last few years, Google My Business (GMB) has really ramped up the game for local businesses, making it easier than ever for you to get in front of local customers. This is a good thing as roughly 46% of all Google searches are seeking local information! Not to mention that “near me” or “close by” searches have grown by over 900% in the last two years.

And the best part? GMB is free!

Here’s a list of just a few of the new features added to GMB in the last few years:

• Google My Business Shortnames
  • An easy to remember URL that brings users directly to your business profile
    • Makes review solicitation much easier for small business owners
• Online Ordering Now Available for Restaurants
  • Google now owns the transaction
  • Multiple food delivery partners
• Google My Business Product Editor Expands to Most Categories
  • The Product Editor is for small- and medium-sized individual businesses
  • Don’t pass up this opportunity for free Google real estate! Get Creative!
• GMB Welcome Offers
  • A great way to thank new customers for following you on Google!
• Google My Business Messaging Feature: “Request a Quote” 
  • A sure-fire attention grabber in bright blue
  • Appears on mobile and desktop SERPs

• Service Area Business Updates
  • Limit of 20 service areas
    • Can include cities, counties, states, zip codes or metropolitan areas
  • SABs using a service area radius were automatically updated to the closest named areas above
• Google My Business Marketing Kit 
  • • Create images from existing customer reviews
    • Free posters & window clings for brick & mortar businesses

While it can be time-consuming, completing and updating your listing consistently is absolutely worth the effort.

Bonus tip: Google wants to show the best possible results to its users so remember to be thorough, honest, and don’t try to add a target keyword or geographical keyword phrase to your business name if they are not part of how customers would identify you!

Want to generate more visibility locally as part of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Here are 5 more local SEO tips you can learn from the pizza industry giant Papa John’s.

5. Grow Professionally

Look At Core Metrics Less And Focus On Long-Term Growth

From Dana Schumacher, Senior Digital Analyst

When you focus on increasing long-term growth rates, you are looking at the rate of change of core metrics over an extended period of time. Growth does not always mean an increase in total revenues, as that growth in revenue also depends on the size of your industry and the interest of your search queries over time.

Short-term clients should expect to see an increase in linear growth, while long-term clients can expect to see an increase in logarithmic growth.

Need to improve goal tracking on your own website as one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Here’s a simple step-by-step guide I created for Tracking Buttons Using Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics so you can better monitor your progress this year.

6. Keep Your Resolutions

Tidy Up Your Ads

From Ryan Norman, Digital Advertising Account Manager

Get Ready for the Sunset of ETAs in Summer 2022

Take the leap and embrace Responsive Search Ads because the old standard—Expanded Text Ads—are going away.

Google has announced that you will no longer be able to create or edit Expanded Text Ads within standard search campaigns after June 30, 2022.

Any Expanded Text Ads that you currently have running (or create before the deadline) will continue to serve after June 30, 2022. You will also maintain the ability to pause and resume Expanded Text Ads.

Responsive Search Ads will, therefore, become the primary ad type available to advertisers in search campaigns.

If you don’t have the time, inclination, or people to run your own A/B tests of ad messaging, then RSAs are a boon. You can give Google some headlines and descriptions, and then sit back and relax while the algorithm tries to sort out what’s the best-performing ad copy.

Read our blog to understand why RSAs matter more than ever.

7. Learn Something New

Try Coding!

From Jim Foreman, Senior Content Specialist

The web is still where we do most of our activity on the ol’ internet, and as long as we digital marketers have to make content for it, we’re going to be doing it with our old friend HTML. It might be on version 5 now, but it’s not going anywhere. You’ll be surprised how a little snippet of code can save your day. If that’s not enough to convince you to learn HTML, check out my whole dang blog post about it.

Coding HTML is one of the easiest entry-level coding languages you can learn, and you’ll be able to see the results instantly in your browser. Who knows, it might even make you so excited about coding that you’ll start looking into other languages, like CSS or Javascript.

8. Be Creative

Create Videos To Show Off Your Business Or Brand

From Carl Zappa, Digital Advertising Account Coordinator

It’s never too late to start being creative. Make 2022 the year your business stands out with a short video that shows who you are.

Why don’t you make more than one? Show what you sell and why your product is different from the others!

Then, test TrueView videos as a part of your PPC strategy. With video advertising, you choose the audience that (might be/is) interested in your product and you decide how much you want to pay. You can run different video formats and lengths. Your video will appear on YouTube and throughout the Google Display Network.

Doing more online video advertising as one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Let us help you settle the great debate between YouTube and Vimeo for your video hosting needs.

9. Enjoy Life To The Fullest

Get The Most Out Of Your PPC Campaigns With Some CRO

From Mike Criswell, Digital Advertising Strategist

This year, ensure that you are getting the most out of your PPC campaigns by doing a bit of conversion rate optimization.

A great start would be to run A/B or multivariate tests on your PPC landing pages. Test your current landing pages against as many variants as you can to ensure that your landing pages are top-notch and getting you as many conversions as possible.

Also, don’t forget that just because you get improvements with one variant does not mean that there is no better option. Always keep testing!

Just getting started with CRO but want to make this one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Check out my beginner’s guide here.

10. Become More Engaged With Clients

Gain More Best Friends

From Robbie Netz, Senior Client Success Manager

During this past year, I’ve learned it’s more important to develop meaningful relationships with people. I love the friendships we’ve built with clients, but I want to continue to help them grow. Here are some important takeaways I’ve learned:

1. Treat your client as a friend. I love getting to know what everyone does on the weekend, how their pets are, etc. It allows us to connect on a deeper level so everyone looks forward to our calls vs. “ugh, I have to go speak to that agency again.”
2. Brainstorm out-of-the-box ideas together. It’s always fun to chat about ways to meet their goals on campaigns, but even better to discuss new ideas….like TikTok!
3. Work together as if you’re in the same building. Even though we’re sometimes halfway across the globe, it’s great to use tools to work together as a team. Some of the best projects have been when we communicate via Slack or message one another back & forth in Asana.

Is improving the response of your consumers to your brand one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Click here for a comprehensive list of email marketing strategies.

11. Spread Your Wings

New Year, New Advertising Platform.

From Adriana Parra González, Digital Advertising Account Manager
If you are looking for a new tool to advertise this year, LinkedIn Advertising could be for you.

This platform works well when you are looking for other businesses to buy your service or product from you. It lets you target by job titles, company size, job function, industry, and more.

Do you have content pieces and don’t know what to do with them? What if you use that content in exchange for the lead information?

LinkedIn Advertising is growing over time and it could be a great way to capture the leads for your business in 2021.

12. Keep Your Eyes On the Prize

Conversions Matter Most

From Carla Waters, Digital Marketing Coordinator

While optimizing landing pages or blog posts for keyword targets, I often focus on the keyword by creating a new title, meta description, headers, internal links, adding semantic terms to the copy, adding FAQs throughout, and CTAs. But does this page I’m working on convert? I need to continue to ask myself this question.

This year, I want to focus on the user, their navigation path, and if I have accomplished clear next steps to create a conversion while improving the on-page SEO.

13. Trust Your Instincts, But Confirm With Data

Lose That Gut!

From Jason Ohsie, Strategy and Analysis Department Manager

The days where gut-feeling marketing dominated the competitive landscape have long since passed by the wayside. No matter your niche, if your company is relying solely on the direction of your company’s HiPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) without regard to a strategic, data-driven approach then your company is running at a significant disadvantage versus the top players in your respective industry.

Much like diet and exercise, a commitment to this approach requires discipline in the following ways:

• Commit to properly tracking and measuring your marketing efforts
• Understand what KPIs matter for your business
• Focus on the mission-critical aspects of your marketing efforts that drive the most impact
• Listen to both your existing customers and your biggest haters
• Be open-minded about what the data tells you

A failure to do this often manifests itself in the following ways:

1. A website redesign that looks aesthetically pleasing but has resulted in markedly lower conversion rates.
2. A sudden drop in organic traffic to your website without an understanding of why this change occurred and how much this has impacted sales.
3. Wasting ad spend on PPC campaigns that just won’t convert properly.
4. Stagnant growth or loss of market share despite an investment into marketing.
5. B2B marketing efforts that have resulted in poor lead quality.
6. Top-of-Funnel marketing efforts like blogs and webinars that fail to gain traction or engagement.
7. Poor ROI overall in digital marketing channels.

Sound familiar? A strategic approach to digital marketing that is not rooted in data can result in failure for even experienced marketing professionals. Proper benchmarking and conversion tracking, clearly defining the KPIs that actually matter for your business, rigorous testing, and the proper mentality should provide the framework for your marketing efforts.

14. Make Sure You’re Looking Your Best

Short Animations Are Excellent Attention-Grabbing Tools

From Matt Merlino, Graphic Designer

If we’ve learned anything throughout the course of the ongoing pandemic it’s that it is perfectly acceptable to sit around and do nothing in our free time. While there’s not necessarily anything wrong with staying still, we should at least try to get up and move after that streaming service continues to prod if we are “still watching.” The same can be said for your next set of creative pieces!

When creating your next set of ads, consider testing some animated HTML5 assets against some of those static ads. A subtle bit of motion is a great attention-grabbing technique to drive more clicks.

Just make sure not to go too crazy or all of that sudden movement could be painful. You’ll want to keep basic design principles in mind to refrain from cluttering your ads and hurting your conversion rates.

• Refrain from Hard-to-Read Fonts
• Construct a Strong CTA that Directly Relates to Your Imagery
• Keep Brand Colors Prominent and Consistent
• Use White (Blank) Space to Your Advantage

It may seem daunting, but you can do it! Push the text in, make the button pulse, or have some fun with the imagery. Whatever you choose to do, add that extra movement to captivate your viewers and take your next campaign to new heights.

Now Go Get Started!

This list doesn’t only include tactics you can use as a New Year’s resolution, almost all of them can be implemented today and included in your digital marketing strategy at any time of the year! You can also check out the rest of our blog for more tips and tricks. To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

From the entire DOM team, Happy New Year and best wishes for a successful 2022!