It’s hard to ignore the signs that we’re edging closer to the end of 2019. From the crowded calendar to the festive music blaring at the local shopping centre, it’s clear that December has arrived with full force!
Traditionally, the end of the year is the time you start crunching numbers and check on the progress of your business. While it’s important to focus on reviewing financials and general operations, it’s equally important to evaluate your marketing approach as part of this annual review.
With consumer demand growing and customer behaviour evolving, the challenge for every small business is to find an effective and cost-effective way to market to your target audience.
Crunching the Numbers in Marketing
More people than ever before are online. More people than ever before are using the Internet to make purchasing decisions. The growing role of online marketing for small business owners cannot and shouldn’t be ignored. Just consider these online marketing statistics and how they impact your business.
- 93% of online experiences begin with a search term entered into a search engine
- 75% of people NEVER scroll past page 1 of search results
- There are approximately 74 million internet users across Australia
- It’s estimated that Australians spend 5 hours online each day
- 18 million Australians use social media, representing 69% of the total population
- On average there are 15 million active Facebook users in Australia
- Mobile searches now account for more than 50% of all searches
It’s clear that more Australians than ever before are actively engaged online. It’s also clear that small business owners need to develop an effective strategy to attract, engage and convert an increasingly mobile customer base. The fact is, if you don’t have an effective marketing strategy to engage your online audience you’ll lose ground to your competitors.
So, what can you do to position your business for success in 2020?
It’s time to make some new year resolutions!
5 Practical New Year Marketing Resolutions
As we all know, there is no point in making resolutions or setting goals if they are not practical or achievable. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make any at all. These practical resolutions have been designed to help you adopt a strategic approach for your marketing in 2020. Including handy links and tasks to keep you on track, these new year resolutions should be easy to implement and maintain throughout the entire year.
Review Your Current Marketing Efforts
As a starting point, it’s important to review your current marketing efforts to evaluate what is and isn’t working. Begin by asking yourself some fundamental questions. How are your customers finding you? What’s your marketing budget? How are you spending it? What’s your current return on investment per channel? What are your competitors doing? It’s important to understand what’s working and why so you can build on that success in 2020.
Take Action: Use this handy infographic to review your current marketing strategies.
Develop a Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy sets out your marketing goals, making it easier for you to choose tactics, tools, and techniques to get the best results. There’s no point putting together a marketing plan without a strategy to pull it all together as you’ll just be wasting your time. Take a strategic approach for the new year, aligning your marketing efforts to a long term strategy to guide future growth and success.
Take Action: Use this template to put together your own marketing strategy for 2020.
Understand Your Target Market
Don’t get caught up trying to broaden your message to appeal to more people. While casting a wide net might work in fishing, it doesn’t work when it comes to marketing. Instead of trying to appeal to the masses, get to know your target market, those who will get the most benefit from your product or service. During 2020, take the time to understand what appeals to them, talk directly to them, use their language and tailor your messaging to their needs.
Take Action: Use this practical checklist to better understand your target audience.
Create a Clear Brand and Message
Does your brand and messaging represent your business? Are you clearly communicating your value to your target market? In 2020, take the time to review your brand identity and your current messaging to make sure you are clearly conveying your product and services to your target market. This means reviewing your email messaging, website content, social media posts and other marketing collateral for clarity and consistency.
Take Action: Use this 9 step process to review your brand and strengthen your message.
Embrace Analytics
If you don’t already use analytics to continuously monitor your marketing strategy, it’s time to get started. Install Google Analytics and connect your site to Google Search Console to keep track of website activity and understand how customers are finding you. Dig deeper into your email analytics to identify the content that your subscribers love and install Facebook Pixel to keep track of the performance of paid campaigns.
Take Action: Get started by accessing free analytics training from Google.
Keen to get started on your marketing new year resolutions? Don’t wait until January, join our FREE 7-day marketing challenge now to be ready for success in 2020. In just 7 days, build your marketing capability and fast-track your way to marketing success benefiting from our specialised knowledge and expertise. Sign up for free today!
