If you’re like most people, you have massive personal and professional goals for 2021 and can’t wait to get started. But then, before charging at the year, it’s essential to take some time and plan. This article contains straightforward advice on how you can optimize your business’ marketing this new year.
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Review what has worked so far.
Before adopting new marketing strategies, it’s helpful to review what you’ve done in the past. Use analytics to compare your goals to the results. A simple side by side comparison can tell you what was effective and an absolute waste of time.
It can also tell you where your strengths are and which points need improvement. With this information, you can put this guide’s tips to better use.
Explore novel strategies.
Once you audit your marketing plan, you can easily decide what doesn’t work. Taking those out leaves a hole in your plan and an empty column in your budget. That’s a great chance to try out novel marketing strategies you may not have explored in the past, like the following.
Podcasts
Podcasts have grown partly because they let you do many things at once. Starting one can be as easy as creating an account on a streaming platform and buying a microphone. More than the tools, you’ll also need great content.
Focus on what your audience wants to hear, like stories about your product and how it has helped people. Users turn to podcasts for knowledge and an escape experience, so salesy content may not be the way to go. It may also help to listen to popular posters for insight and ideas. Try to pay attention to both general knowledge podcasts and those specific to your industry.
Free webinars
Free webinars are another way to give your users value. They are pretty easy to set up, thanks to software like Zoom. You can spread the word on social media and your business’ blog. People are always looking for free information, and they’ll take whatever you give them.
Finding a topic for your webinar shouldn’t be difficult. You only need to check your emails, comments, and social media mentions. The odds are that your users have bombarded you with questions, objections, and suggestions. Put these free content sources to good use.
Offline events
Offline events won’t work for every business. If you own a global e-commerce site with niche customers, these are probably a waste of your time. Likewise, if you live in a different country from your users, you’re better off with an online strategy.
However, if your business focuses on geography, offline events are for you. They can help you raise awareness about your offers to customers you may have missed online. You can equally reinforce your brand presence in their minds, making them more likely to patronize you.
There are several ways to harness offline events. You could hold your own or sponsor other organizations’ events. Organizing your event gives you creative control and the prime advertisement spot. But then, it may be more capital-intensive.
Sponsoring, on the other hand, requires less involvement. You may even get enough traction with renting a booth for your brand. From concession trailers to mobile medical trailer, you can use everything to announce their presence at events.
Video content
People have been turning to video for answers to their questions for a while now. It’s no news that YouTube is now the second-largest search engine in the US, beating out Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. Video content is a great way to capture your audience’s attention and feed them new content.
Video can also help you grow your audience. With the right content and platform, new users can discover your channel, subscribe, and eventually patronize you.
To create video content, you’ll need a killer script, a consistent video strategy, and filming equipment.
Ramp up your SEO.
Depending on who you ask, SEO is the core of digital marketing. With the right content and strategy, you can get tons of free traffic from search engines. Considering how simple SEO practices can be, it’s a surprise that some businesses still aren’t maximizing the opportunity.
You may already be investing in your SEO strategy, but there are numerous opportunities to do better. Here are some ideas.
Audit your website.
A site audit is the first step in ramping up your SEO. The audit will show you gaps in your strategy, as well as the things you’re getting right. An SEO audit may also highlight redundant content, useless pages, and broken links. All of these can hurt your SEO.
There are many ways to perform site audits. You could hire an SEO expert and do it manually or install a plugin.
Optimize everything for SEO.
Potentially everything on your website can be optimized for SEO, from your overall structure to the site’s images. An optimized site structure helps organize the information on your website, making it easier to search and retrieve.
You can also optimize your pages for conversions by creating goal-oriented content. If you want to increase sales, fill your landing pages with compelling sales copy. If you’re going to grow your email list, create products that users can download once they submit their emails.
You can also increase your site’s performance by keeping your pages light. Compress your images with software like Smush and keep all video content offsite.
Invest in link building.
We say invest because valuable links can yield massive dividends. However, it also takes a significant amount of work. There are several ways to build quality links. You could ask for guest post opportunities, trade links, or pay for them straight up. You should know that Google frowns upon paying for links, and you could get penalized if you get caught.
Put it all together.
There are enough ideas here to keep you occupied for all of 2021. Unfortunately, you can’t do them all. Some of these are even non-compatible with others. For example, creating video content, while also running a podcast and writing guest posts, sounds like a great way to exhaust your resources.
It’s often better to select a few reliable tactics and work them into your strategy. Therefore, the final part of developing a killer marketing strategy is to review what you have so far, and see what to keep and what to let go of.