It’s a brand new year, which means it’s time to go over your online marketing plan to make much-needed changes. You can use business development consulting to help analyze and evolve your strategies as well. Having a team of experts is key if you want your marketing to succeed. This includes having professional SEO service providers and content managers.
Besides having the right people on your team, you need to ensure your methods are up to par. Knowing what works and what doesn’t is essential, and another reason consulting with a business development expert is recommended. You don’t want to continue on making the same marketing mistakes that you were making last year. However, the only way to avoid this is to identify what’s wrong.
Marketing is all about enhancing your brand and growing your business. Here’s how you can do just that.
Focus On Generating New Business
Choosing an area to focus your marketing efforts on can be difficult. While retaining customers is a must for growth, so is obtaining new business. If there’s anything you should focus on in 2017, it’s finding ways to bring in new customers.
There are different tactics your company can use to increase your reach, such as by building your reputation, using PPC management services and improving your web design and functionality. You can work in tandem with an SEO service to put together a branding strategy that will engage your audience.
Set Goals and Budgets
Once you’ve created a focus for your marketing efforts in 2017, it’s time to start setting goals. Your goals will help you to determine what your budget will be. Obviously, your budget for PPC marketing would be different than a budget being set for content marketing. Knowing your goals and the tactics used will help you to determine your spend.
It’s important to include customer value in the formula when calculating your budget. For example, if your customers typically spend about $1,000 annually on your products and the lifetime of customers is five years, then $5,000 is the lifetime value of your customers.
The idea is to identify how many new customers you need to obtain in order to make a return on investment from your marketing campaigns. If you’re spending more than you’re getting back, then there’s something wrong.
Be realistic in your expectations as well. If gaining 100 new customers in 2017 is out of reach, then lower your goals. It’s better to be modest and exceed expectations than to underachieve.
Putting Together Your Campaigns
You’re goals and budgets are set, now it’s time to start planning your campaigns. The good news is that you can use a variety of methods to get word out about your brand and products. Here are some of the things you want to include in your online marketing strategy:
- Social media: This definitely needs to be in your plan. It helps to build engagement and spread word about your brand.
- SEO: If people can find your web site in search engines, then there’s a higher chance of folks buying from your site.
- Email marketing: Hopefully, you’re building a list. If not, you can create a lead magnet to help convince people to give you their name and email address. Use your email campaigns to connect with customers and promote to them. Just make sure all of your emails aren’t promotional.
Your content marketing absolutely must be on par. If it takes hiring a professional service to get that, then do so. If needed, try consulting with a business development professional about your marketing plan to see if it is valid for reaching your goals.
