
Here we all are, thinking about what our New Year’s resolution will be.
To lose weight (that’s one of mine!), visit loved ones more often, quit smoking, or is it to grow your business? If it’s the latter then we can help.
Losing weight, definitely not my bag!
Here’s just some of the expectations you likely have for your business:
- To grow your customer numbers
- To increase revenue
- To release a new product
- To expand the business (number of employees, services you offer, locations you serve)
- To create a new identity for your business (rebrand)
- To improve your customer satisfaction scores or customer experience
You know as well as I do, all of these things require you to make more money.
There are a number of ways you can achieve all of these things. But one way for sure that will make you hit these targets is by investing in your digital marketing.
That’s easy enough to say, ‘invest in digital marketing’, but what types of marketing should you and your business be focused on?
And that’s exactly how I’m going to help you in this blog today.
Let’s take a look how digital marketing can help you and what your marketing options are achieve your business New Year’s goals.
How to prioritise your digital marketing efforts
Before jumping straight into any digital strategy, first think about your customers. Ultimately, what they want is more important than what you want to do from a marketing perspective.
- Would they be Googling an issue they have that you can help them with?
- Are they hanging out on social media, scrolling through posts or TikToks?
- Are your customers open to reading and learning about what it is you have to offer?
Weigh up your past marketing successes and failures and really think about where your customers are hanging out and where they go to find their solution.
When you know who you’re looking to appeal to you can then weigh up where you should be putting your time, money and effort.
How do I find out about my customers?
The simplest way is to talk to them!
You can do surveys, look at any data that you have (either on search or on your website), run social media polls, look at past marketing results, or drop some of your existing customers and email or call and chat to them.
You may need to invest in some professional market research.
While doing all of this, make sure to create customer personas.
Set your goals and budget, then weigh up your digital marketing options
Use the SMART acronym to help you set goals:
Specific (to deliver a certain number or percentage)
Measurable (use KPIs to measure your success)
Achievable (make sure your goal is attainable)
Relevant (make sure your goals are representative of business values and objectives)
Time-sensitive (deadlines to hit your goals)
For each goal, state three to five practical actions that will help to deliver your objective.
Once you have your goals and a budget then you can consider the digital marketing you wish to invest in.
Decide on the people you need to invest in
Look, digital marketing requires a lot of work. If you’re a founder, you don’t have time to do all the marketing yourself, you’ve got a business to run. And if you’re the marketing lead, then you have a lot of pies to juggle.
This is why hiring marketing professionals is absolutely essential to your success. Plus, a fresh pair of eyes will do your marketing a whole load of good.
You’ll need to consider additional support to help deliver your marketing strategy:
- New software or website pages being created – you’ll need to hire a software developer or website designer/developer (I can recommend some to you).
- Need a sounding board for your marketing creativity? You should chat with a marketing consultant.
- Looking for some awesome content to be written on behalf of your business? You need highly skilled content writers and freelance copywriters.
Wondering whether to outsource content to freelancers or hire in-house? This guide will help you decide.
Marketing to increase revenue
Consider:
- Search marketing
- Content
- Website design (offer a better user experience online)
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising
- Email marketing & copywriting
If you’re looking to grow your customer numbers and of course sales, then one of the fastest ways to do so is by marketing your business online.
With most customers searching for solutions online every single day, it’s important that you appear when they’re searching for a solution you provide.
Not only will you want your business to be found easily online by customers, but then you want to make sure that you offer them the best shopping experience.
You will want to consider a variety of marketing approaches, including:
Search marketing (Search Engine Optimisation) – The process of making sure your website ranks at the top on the major search engines. Not only that, but ranking for highly relevant search phrases that your customers search. This is a long term approach to make sure you rank for the forseeable future.
SEO is not just about ranking either. It’s about making sure when your website does rank on the likes of Google that you then offer your customers the best possible experience.
You’ll need amazing website content that really speaks to them and keeps them hooked, along with a well designed website that makes looking around so easy.
Get all of that right and SEO without a doubt is the best way to grow your business in the new year. It’s a long term and cost effective approach, offering one of the highest ROI out of all the marketing options in this very blog.
SEO takes the form of technical SEO optimisations and website content. The content element is landing pages and a lot of blogs.
Find out more about SEO and content.
Paid advertisement – Similar to SEO above but a sure-fire way to appear at the top of search results by paying to be at the top. This can be expensive but it could be worthwhile if you can achieve a great return on investment for your products/services.
Social media marketing – Regularly posting quality content on your social media profile will help to grow your following and therefore your customer base.
Email marketing – There was a time where marketers gave up on email marketing, but it’s back with a vengeance. Email marketing is hugely popular and an effective way to reach out to new and existing customers. It’s an opportunity to up-sell and create a brand to remember and follow. All you need is a decent list of contacts (and to continue building it over time) and awesome email copywriting to really appeal to your audience.
Content – Whatever method of marketing you choose you will need to create engaging content that appeals to your target audience. Without a quality message you will struggle to keep anyone’s attention on your marketing let alone convert them into paying customers.
Marketing to expand the business
Consider:
- Search marketing
- Content
- Website design (offer a better user experience online with design and content)
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising
- Email marketing & copywriting
- Recruitment (we can’t help here, unless you’re recruiting marketing and content experts)
Starting a business is one thing, but expanding it is where the difficulty lies. If you’re looking to expand your business further, there are many things you can do.
You need to strike a fine balance between growing internally, still pushing in sales and marketing, all the while ensuring there’s enough profit still being generated. This is why, from a marketing perspective, you need to be smart about what it is you’re going to do moving into next year.
Really focus on your potential customer – where do they hang out and where do they go when they need to find a solution, and what do they search?
Marketing to create a new brand
Consider:
- Logo/brand design
- Website design
- Content (focusing on your new brand’s tone of voice)
How are people perceiving your business online? No matter the industry you’re in, all brands need to look the part. That first glance needs to appeal to the customer, if it doesn’t because your branding is unprofessional or just a low quality then you will lost the customer rightaway.
On top of needing a quality logo, you also need to have consistency wherever it appears. So much so that the customer becomes familiar with the branding.
A new brand and logo will also mean a new website design. And a new website means new website content and a strategy to get your new brand out there.
When people say they want a new brand they make the mistake of neglecting their brand’s message and tone of voice. So do make sure that you not only work on the look of your brand, but also the feel. The words you use to communicate will have a stronger emotional reaction from your customers.
Marketing to improve your customer satisfaction
Consider:
- Content
- Website design
- User experience (Design and content)
- Consultancy (Have a creative outsider provide ideas and support)
If this is more to do with the customer service you and the team provide or the quality of your service/product, then you will need to deal with this internally. But if you’re looking to offer a better online experience for your customers, then we can help.
The user experience (UX) for your customer online needs to be smooth. For example, if a potential customer comes to your website it’s so important that they can easily find what they’re looking for and even better can buy, book or enquire about your product or services.
You can provide the best online experience for customers through website design and UX copywriting & content.
If you’re looking to improve or create an app or platform then again, the UX needs to be on point – customers need your app to be super easy to use.
Need some help in coming up with your digital marketing strategy for 2023?
Whether you have an idea of what you want to do or you need someone to start from scratch for you, I can help.
As the Head of Content here at TJ Creative, I’m a content strategist and consultant. I’ve worked with some big names and I’ve completed just about every type of digital marketing there is.
My digital marketing consultancy is a great solution if you need me to start from scratch in coming up with a strategy.
Or if you have a good idea of the kind of marketing you need, then check out the full list of content marketing services we offer here at TJ Creative.
Have a great New Year and I hope to see you absolutely killing it with your business in the New Year!
Got a question for us?
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