It’s never too late to sharpen your marketing skills. One way to do this is through market research. Simply ask the following questions:
- Who is your competition?
- What are they doing?
- Which marketing activities worked for you last year?
- Which ones didn’t work? Why?
With answers to these questions, you can quickly create a new marketing plan.
The Plan
Your marketing plan can be short and simple or detailed and comprehensive. Either way you choose, make sure you write it down and give yourself deadlines to complete each marketing activity.
The objective of any good marketing plan is to capture more market share. The plan briefly describes who your competition is and what they are doing. Over time, you’ll be able to see the changes in competition and market presence.
The duration of your plan can last a month, a quarter, or a full year. It describes all of the activities and expectations for that period. You should also indicate how you will measure each activity to know the exact returns on your investments.
Mobile Marketing
Over 95% of consumers use their mobile device to perform internet searches. Because of this, every business needs to make sure their website is mobile ready.
Some of the most popular social media platforms have been developed for mobile platforms. You should consider signing up with them, if your audience is there, of course. These sites include: Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, and Pinterest. When creating posts, make sure you use hashtags in your copy for quicker search results, and update them as frequently as you do with Facebook.
Not all websites are created equally, which means that your company’s digital storefront may need an update. This will ensure that your site is as easy to browse on a smartphone as it is on a PC. If it’s not, you may be missing a large percentage of potential customers.
Email Marketing
For businesses trying to reach consumers, email continues to be a strong performer. According to MarketingSherpa, over 60% of adults “Would like to receive” a promotional email every week. Even more encouraging is the fact that 91% of adults “Want to receive promo emails.” This includes households earning $100,000 or more per year.
Frequency is the key to good email marketing. Spread your promotions out and advertise them on a monthly basis. Successful emails follow some very basic guidelines, and are conscientious about their recipients.
Visual Engagement
This is a great time to consider using video to promote your business. Did you know that users on Facebook watch 100 million hours of video per day? People are more comfortable watching videos than ever before. New technology and availability of video has made it easier and cheaper to put it into your marketing mix.
Think of your videos as “Show and Tell” for your customers. Whether it’s a promotion or special deal, each video should get right to the point. This may be an area to hire a professional, because you want to have a clean and polished look. Professionals can also incorporate graphics to make your video stand-out in the crowd.
Collecting Data
It’s always a good idea to to look at what’s worked in the past and what didn’t. You should also look at the times when you had no marketing activities going and see if it affected your business. Clean up your databases and create new ones for highly focused, target marketing. This allows you to increase your return on investment through data-driven decisions and incorporate it into your best practices for years to come.