As we enter the beginning of a new year, we’re all starting to think about our New Year’s resolutions for 2023. In your personal life, you might be thinking about getting fit or learning a new skill, but what about at work?
If 2023 is your year for making your digital marketing a success, you need to set goals for the new year in that area too.
Small business owners could benefit from our list of New Year’s resolutions to get your year off to a good start.
1) Create (or Update) Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Your first New Year’s resolution should be to take a look at your digital marketing strategy and update it for the upcoming year. If you don’t already have one, it’s time to make one. This is your chance to consider new strategies and plan how to get new customers.
When approaching your digital marketing strategy, be sure to include plenty of research and analysis. The more you understand your current position in the marketplace, you’ll be able to gauge how you stack up against your competition.
But don’t stop there with your research. It’s important to ask and answer questions about your current customer base, whether those relationships are solid, and if so, how you can acquire more “lookalike” customers.
As marketers, we have to feel comfortable not knowing everything there is to know about our competition and your customers. But we also have to be resourceful and use a bit of creativity to gather the data that’s necessary to build a strong and effective digital marketing strategy.
2) Be More Social on Social Media
Social media is a fantastic tool, but how social are you on it, really? Posting and replying on social media daily or at least a few times a week will help to improve brand visibility and grow a positive reputation. This is the type of interaction with customers that engenders trust. And trust leads to brand loyalty, which is what most businesses want. Dedicate time to making social media one of the main platforms where you can engage with your audience.
Is cultivating a very social presence on social media time consuming? It certainly can be. So, to make the most of your investment in time, look into using a social media calendar or other digital tools to help you create, deploy and chart the course of your social media engagement. If this isn’t something you feel comfortable doing, speak with the digital marketing professionals at The Social Firm.
3) Focus on Quality Content
Many digital marketing efforts are focused on content and its ability to engage customers. Therefore, any content you put out needs to be high-quality to engage your target audience. Make sure you post engaging content and share it across multiple channels for the most impact.
But what exactly is engaging content and how can it be used to grow your small business? That depends on what was gleaned from the research and analysis you conducted about competitors and customers when originally putting together your digital marketing strategy.
Be creative. As the saying goes, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Customer response as well as your overall business plan, marketing goals and budget, will in some ways dictate the content and provide you with a sense of what your consumers view as truly relevant content.
4) Use a Greater Range of Content Types
Do you typically stick to blog posts? Funny images? Contests and giveaways? It’s time to branch out into other digital content. You could find you’re more successful if you create videos, share photos and even consider publishing podcasts.
Among the growing list of popular forms of content you might want to consider are blog posts, infographics, e-books, short-form video on Youtube, podcasts, live chats, case studies and white papers, to name a few.
Keep in mind that content created for one purpose can be utilized on other platforms to gain more social media exposure. Always track the performance of each post. Be especially aware if posts lead consumers to your website resulting in new sales. If you find this is the case, begin creating more content of a similar nature.
5) Make Use of Paid Media
Don’t just stick to organic search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Paid media such as pay-per-click (PPC) ads will help you with promoting your brand and services.
PPC can immediately boost your website traffic. Also, PPC ads are typically targeted to consumers searching the internet for your specific product or service. If you have a local business and can focus your paid media within specific geographic areas, you can easily increase sales in short order. Plus, with PPC, ad performance can be gauged in real time, thus allowing you to make essential adjustments to your campaign and budget if necessary.
6) Look Closely at Your SEO Strategy
SEO isn’t just a one-and-done thing. You need to stay on top of trends and constantly look at what you should be doing to keep your website performing well in search engines like Google.
SEO success starts with your website. The success of your business depends on whether customers can find you. No matter how beautiful your website is, if your customers can’t find you to make a purchase, your website might just as well hang on the wall of a museum because it’s nothing but a beautiful piece of artwork.
Indeed, one of your most important New Year resolutions should be to have your website fully optimized. This may involve writing new content, adjusting usability and certain processes. However, the result will be a website that begins to ascend the search engine rankings. Think of it this way: New Year + New Goal = A Better SEO strategy. If you need help elevating your website’s search rankings, contact the team of SEO experts at The Social Firm for help.
7) Get More Email Signups
Email marketing has an excellent ROI, so investing in building your mailing list is a great idea. There are few tools more useful to marketers than email. Email marketing strategies are a mainstay in most digital marketing campaigns for several very good reasons.
A Personal Touch
Email allows you to have a personal relationship with your customer that’s quite unlike broadcast marketing. Email marketing isn’t a one-and -done situation. It’s a relationship-building process that is inexpensive and easy to manage. It just takes consistency and proper management of list hygiene.
Targeted Communication
Email also has the advantage of being targeted. Lists can be easily segmented, filtered and refined based on responses and engagement further giving them the appearance of being “tailor made” for the recipient. In addition, great information is often available about who opened the email, when, if they shared it with others, and so on. This is all good data to be used for future outreach.
Email is Here to Stay
Email isn’t going anywhere. With its popularity among your product’s audience members, its high ROI and low cost to maintain, it will continue to support customer outreach, promote meaningful connections, and generate sales.
You Own Your Email Lists
Finally, you own your email lists. As such, you have the ability (and it is highly encouraged) to grow your lists. Be mindful, however, that with ownership comes responsibility. Using email lists responsibly is key to getting the most out of your lists and the most out of the trusted relationships you’ve built with customers via your email lists.
The future success of these relationships (and your business) depends almost entirely on the level of respect you show your customers when using their email information, and the amount of trust you create by making the correspondence relevant and of value.
8) Make B2B More B2C
There are differences between Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Customer (B2C) marketing, but it’s important to remember there are people behind businesses. It’s important to look behind the company at the intent that the buyers have.
B2B marketing is generally thought of as being about building relationships, while B2C has typically been geared more toward transactional interactions. But that’s changing. Or, perhaps more accurately, they’re becoming more as one.
All relationships – B2B or B2C – are built on trust. Sure, some customers will purchase from you right now based on convenience and availability. And while a one-time sale is great, a relationship that results in brand loyalty and future sales is even better.
9) Try New Tech
Look at emerging technologies and how they can help businesses to improve their digital marketing and get more customers.
Technology is not only constantly changing, it’s also constantly challenging. It challenges us to remain aware and accepting of whatever the new trends are. Why is this important? Because as these trends emerge, your customers will gravitate towards them. In order to remain competitive and in pursuit of revenues and relevancy, companies have to be willing to try new technologies to enhance their brand appeal and meet their customers where they are, especially online.
10) Manage Your Time Smartly
As a business owner, you only have a certain amount of time. If you don’t manage it smartly, it can become overwhelming. Schedule your time well, outsource tasks where needed, and work with trusted employees to get the work done.
Be willing to use both tried and tested techniques as well as new technology to enhance your digital marketing success.
Now is the perfect time to review these tips and make them your resolutions for the new year. Start thinking about taking your small business to the next level with better engagement in the new year.
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