7 Digital Marketing New Year’s Resolutions To Adopt This Year
Are you ready to take 2023 by VitalSTORM? It’s a new year, and a new chance to really dive deep into your marketing strategy. Here are the top 7 digital marketing New Year’s resolutions every business should adopt this year.
1. Get Healthy
Your personal New Year’s Resolutions may be better health – but if you’re a business owner, you should also plan to get your marketing strategy in better health! Some ways to develop a healthy marketing strategy include:
- Build a marketing plan: Having a plan set in place is the best way to be successful with your marketing strategy! When you create an annual business plan, also make time to create an annual marketing plan so you know exactly what goals you’re going to set out to achieve this year!
- Create buyer personas and know your customers: This is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. When you know exactly who you need to target, it’s that much easier to create a marketing strategy that’ll speak to that specific person.
- Set goals: Set SMART goals. SMART goals are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. Learn more about what this means here.
- Do a competitor analysis: Do a little research on your competition. What are they doing? How are they doing it? What’s working for them and what’s not? A competitor analysis can help you learn what’s already working and what’s not for businesses like yours.
- Define your objectives: After determining what your goals are, line out the specific actions you plan to take to meet those goals.
- Measure the success of your goals: Select the right tools you are going to use to measure the success of your goals. There’s no point to having goals if you’re not going to measure their success.
- Audit and plan your campaigns: Inspect your marketing plan often, do an audit to help identify what campaigns you should be creating for your business and what works best for your industry or niche.
2. Get Organized
A marketing strategy is most effective when it’s organized and well thought out! Here are some tips to get your marketing strategy better organized this year:
- Document EVERYTHING: And we mean everything so there is always a paper trail. This will allow you to go back and revisit certain conversations and notes if you need to.
- Use a notebook to write down all your ideas: This way, when you have a brainstorming session with your team, you don’t forget that really great idea you had.
- Use just one to-do list: Determine what works best for you: having a list saved on your computer or a notebook next to your keyboard and only use one so you can stay organized.
- Assess all current marketing efforts: Every quarter, go back and assess everything you’re doing with your marketing and don’t just “set it and forget it”.
- Plan all your content ahead of time and schedule it out: This is a great way to ensure nothing gets missed and you are always staying on top of content. Not only that, but this frees up some time so you can focus on other important matters.
- Track results and progress: Set up a system that allows you to track your results and progress with each marketing campaign. If you don’t track and analyze results, you won’t know what’s working well in your campaign and what isn’t.
3. Read More
Whether it be an article about new marketing trends, or a book about a new marketing channel you haven’t tried yet, read, read, and read some more! Reading provides you with information that can help you expand your knowledge, provide new ways of thinking, and give you new insights into the ever changing world of digital marketing. It really does change – all the time. Luckily, there is so much information out there that helps you stay on top of all those changes.
4. Learn New Skills
Are you someone who has stuck to what you know? You’re not alone there. A lot of business owners stick to what’s familiar and comfortable because it’s safe. This year, try learning something new! For example, let’s say you’ve focused most of your time and attention on radio and TV ads but haven’t spent a lot of time honing your skills in digital marketing – like social media and SEO. Now is the time! There are so many tools out there that can really help you learn and understand different parts of marketing you haven’t touched yet. Not only that, but there are many marketing agencies out there who will not only manage this work for you, but also teach you along the way.
5. Get Engaged
Is engagement in the plan this year? We’re not talking about getting engaged-engaged. We’re talking about getting engaged with your customers! Customer engagement is as important as ever. Why? Because when a brand engages with their customers, their customers are more likely to share that experience with their friends and family. Not only that, but they’re more likely to be repeat customers. It is a win-win for both you and your customer – they get a good experience and you get word-of-mouth marketing (and more business).
6. Be A Good Listener
If this is something you’ve struggled with, make 2023 the time to learn to be a good listener. Understand your target audience so you can write content that people will want to read and engage with. By listening to your customers and hearing their wants and needs, you are able to provide the best and most relevant experience for them! Here are some ways you can be a good listener:
- Ask Questions: Ask customers what they liked and what they didn’t like about their experience, and be ready to listen and take their suggestions into consideration.
- Make A Poll: Make a poll on social media that gets people talking about your product or service.
- Respond To Reviews: Whether positive or negative, always respond to reviews and hear what people say – the good, the bad, and the ugly!
7. Be More Social
Do you consider yourself to be “anti-social”? That’s okay. We’re not talking about going out and meeting new people. We’re talking about being more social with your customers on social media. According to Backlinko, there are approximately 4.48 billion people actively using social media in 2021. Did you know back in 2015, there were only 2.07 billion users? That is an increase in users of 115.59% in only 6 years. So, as a small business, you can’t afford to NOT be on social media! Not only should you be on social media, but you should be active on them as well – engaging with your community, posting frequently, using the right hashtags and more!