Are your business marketing efforts feeling a little stale?
Businesses continue to grapple with the challenges of adapting to a new, increasingly online world post 2020.
It’s understandable that updating marketing campaigns may not have been a top priority over the past few months, with companies instead focused on customer retention and adjusting to increased levels of demand for online service.
Here’s what to do now.
Be Brutally Honest About Your Current Metrics
The first step in refreshing your marketing efforts is to identify what is and isn’t working.
You’re spending good money on your advertising placements, thus, you should feel comfortable with the level of genuine customer interaction being procured.
Facebook ads might be easy to post, but are you getting the return on investment to justify the cost?
Your email newsletters might provide spikes in consumer activity, but are you sending them too sparingly?
Spend some regular time with your marketing reports to understand the full picture of what your customers respond to, and focus the bulk of your efforts there.
Get Some New Perspectives
When was the last time you hired someone new in marketing?
Do you regularly collate and analyze customer feedback from your website or social media channels?
Does Dave in accounting have some good ideas?
Fresh opinions can be found anywhere; all you need to do is seek them out.
Having thoughts and opinions from outside the marketing team ‘bubble’ can be extremely helpful in considering new avenues to explore.
If you’re not getting regular feedback from outside your immediate team, send a survey to customers, or even internal staff, to find out what people in your target demographic really value in marketing.
Choose Your Collaborators Wisely
If all your marketing has been done in-house, an outside marketing consultant or even influencer collaborations could shake things up.
When searching for digital agencies or collaborators, it helps to articulate your goals and ask lots of questions.
Don’t be afraid to ask about their work with other companies in your industry, and in-depth detail about how they measure their metrics and what constitutes success to them.
A well-run marketing agency will have a level of transparency in who’ll be working on your account, and what they’d recommend to make best use of your budget.
If something doesn’t feel right, shop around to find the best fit for you.
Diversify Your Marketing Efforts
The most dangerous words in business are ‘it’s always been done this way’.
What potential revenue streams are you missing out on because your customer base is on Snapchat, while your marketing team still uses traditional advertising?
Look at where the high-value or ‘cool’ brands in your field are marketing—are they doing things differently than you?
You don’t need to go all-in on content creation for the hip new app.
But diversifying your marketing efforts and making your brand accessible on multiple platforms will give you the opportunity to connect with your audience in a way that’s intuitive and easy for them.
Create New Types Of Content
There are almost unlimited ways for potential customers to consume information these days, from traditional print ads and billboards, to social media advertising and even product placement in television.
While getting your product featured in a Hollywood movie might be a touch unnecessary, there’s likely some accessible options you haven’t explored.
High-quality content for search engines or social media, like short videos or stylized photos, can be very engaging for modern audiences who appreciate bite-sized snippets of entertainment and pleasing aesthetics.
Update Your Branding
If you’ve had the same branding for several years and you’re not feeling excited when you look at it, now might be the time for a fresh look!
Your branding, like your marketing messaging, should evoke feelings of pride and enthusiasm in yourself and your customers.
A good graphic designer can work closely with you to create something new and timeless, which will be instantly recognizable to your clientele, and something you would be proud to wear on a shirt out in public.
Be Consistent With Your Customer Engagement
Building and maintaining high levels of genuine customer engagement is the biggest marketing challenge facing businesses today.
Once you’ve gained a loyal following who interacts with you regularly, make sure you maintain that activity.
Create and stick to a consistent posting schedule across all your engagement channels.
For example, you may post on Instagram once per day, post on Facebook twice a week (unless it’s in Facebook Groups), with a fortnightly email to your mailing list (as a sample schedule).
Furthermore, don’t forget to utilize free business metrics on social media platforms.
These can tell you when your audience is most active on their service so you can plan your posts for maximum reach.
Consistently Review Your Strategy
What works for your business today may not work months or years from now.
The scale of technological advancements means that today’s hot, new online platform could be obsolete in a year.
Make sure you have regular marketing reviews set up in advance.
Empower your marketing team to confirm your outreach and engagement is on track, or identify what small changes you may need to make to maintain the level of return on investment that you’re comfortable with.
Be True To Your Ethos
Consumers can tell when a brand’s messaging doesn’t feel authentic.
Do you truly feel that your current marketing is an accurate representation of who you are?
What ethos you live by?
It’s worth having an honest look at whether your marketing is evolving with you, or whether it needs to be updated to better reflect the values you want your customers to feel when they interact with your business.
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re scrapping your marketing campaigns and building new ones from scratch, or simply aiming for an annual marketing tune-up, these are some simple steps you can take to identify any gaps in your current marketing plan and react accordingly.
Every business is different, but the most important thing to remember is that you should be adapting to your customers, not asking your customers to adapt to you.
After all, a company that caters to their clientele efficiently is a business that can’t go wrong.