Is growing your business and marketing a key focus for you in 2020? Then you’ve come to the right place to learn 6 quick and easy ways to boost your marketing in 2020.
1. Strengthen your brand identity
Your brand identity communicates to your target market who your company is and what it stands for. The factors involved in the brand identity are your company brand, name and logo. The brand identity for your business needs to be very clear and straightforward. Furthermore, it must be 100% clear immediately to your audience who your company is and what it does.
Remember, in the 2020 marketing world you only have 1-3 seconds to entice your audience. In other words, they make their decision in 1-3 seconds either to read more / click or leave it. That’s not very long, so therefore, you need to be fast and concise.
2. Know your customer better than anyone else
If you’ve already read our previous blog post about How to start a marketing plan for a small business?, you’ve probably already designed your marketing mix. Additionally, you’ve most likely already analysed your company and you have a brand identity. All these things are absolutely essential to master marketing in 2020. Finally, you’ll need to take a deeper look into your customers.
Knowing your customers and their consuming habits extremely well is the only way to successful marketing strategies. Find out or track their age, gender, income level, profession, marital status, education, number of children, interests, purchasing habits and purchasing history. Look into your current customer register and analyse if that’s corresponding to your target customer. Ensure your marketing strategies are in line with your current customers as well as your target market.
Is marketing a key focus for you in 2020?
Want to boost your marketing, but not sure how to get started? Got a marketing plan, but wanna see more performance? Contact us to book a free consulting session to get you going with your marketing in 2020.
3. Create a meaningful and converting website
Website is one of the most important components for businesses to do effective marketing in 2020. However, many companies build their website and unfortunately just let it stand there without serving any purpose. Studies show that people researching new products and services often visit company websites before making a purchasing decision.
Don’t be the company who gets clicks to their website, but deters potential buyers away with unprofessional, clumsy and unclear website. Pay attention to the look and feel of your website, content and graphics, unique content, as well as user friendliness. Are you constantly debating whether your website is really serving s purpose? Read our website FAQ’s to find out if your website is really effective.
4. Drive traffic to your website
Organic traffic from Google and other search engines is one of the most important traffic and online lead sources. Even though search engines often change their algorithms to rank websites on Google searches, there are still some universal components that must be present for your website to rank well. Your website needs to be optimised for keywords you’d like to rank on. Additionally, the technical set-up of your website must be optimal, and you need to have unique, high quality content around the topics of your keywords on your website.
Your goal should be to get your website listed on the first page of Google search engine results page, since that will bring you a lot of organic traffic and leads. And organic traffic means free traffic, so you don’t need to pay Google to receive it.
5. Engage with your audience in social media
Social media platforms, like Facebook, Google my business (Google +), LinkedIn and Instagram are a good way to reach, interact and engage with your (prospective) customers. Other social media channels where you might want to be present include e.g. Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you’re not present in social media yet, assess which channel would be the most potential for your field of business. If you’re already present in one or more social media platforms, analyse how well you currently do it and think about ways to optimise.
It’s highly recommended to start off with only one social media network and master it before moving onto additional ones. You might be currently present in several platforms at the time and feel like you don’t have enough time to do anything well. In that case, consider dropping some of them until you master the main ones.
Not sure how to assess your performance in social media networks? Get our free social media checklist. Or not sure where to go next and wanna start from basics? Read our social media FAQs. These resources will help you do better marketing in 2020 and beyond.
6. Make a plan for marketing in 2020
Now that we’ve covered some key aspects of business and marketing planning, it’s time to execute on the most important action items. Based on your marketing mix and marketing strategies, come up with the most important action items. Your items need to be realistic, achievable and concrete.
Try to avoid too high level or clichéish items that you won’t be able to execute. Since your action item list might be long already at this stage, pick the most critical items that you think would make the most difference for your business. Furthermore, list the action items in the order of importance (business impact), as well as planned timelines. Additionally, decide who is/are responsible for executing the important items.
Put all short to mid-term action items (within 1 – 12 months) into a table, from the most important to the least important. After that, place all mid to long-term action items (from 12 months onward) into a separate table, from the most important to the least important.
Remember to involve all key people and stakeholders in your organisation in your business and marketing planning. You can lead the process and do the most critical steps by yourself. But remember, you need your employees and business partners buy into and commit to your plan to make it happen.
When it comes to planning, always remember to follow up regularly to ensure progress. If there are any roadblocks, solve them on a timely manner with your team. Most importantly, make necessary modifications to your plan throughout the year when required. Additionally, add new points and possible action items into your next year’s planning.
Is marketing a key focus for you in 2020?
Want to boost your marketing, but not sure how to get started? Got a marketing plan, but wanna see more performance? Contact us to book a free consulting session to get you going with your marketing in 2020.