Your Top 6 New Year Marketing Resolutions
Ok, hands up we probably all dream of smaller thighs, defined abs (any abs!), more work/life balance and to give up that one big bad habit, but when it comes to your business, a good marketing strategy is truly one of the best investments you’ll make and really is key to the success of all your efforts.
So, just as you make your personal New Year Resolutions, make a pro-active kick ass marketing strategy one of your goals for 2020 too!
In 2020 why not commit to being pro-active and not reactive, having a proper strategy and plan in place, focusing on your goals and what you want to accomplish, being clear on who you want to target and the best way to find them.
To do this, here’s my 6 tips based on my 20 years of industry experience to follow to help ensure your marketing strategy is set up for success in the New Year:
- Do you actually have a plan?
This may sound silly, but do you actually have a marketing plan? Having a plan with clear timelines, milestones, deadlines and associated tasks is the foundation of your marketing strategy. Sometimes it’s easy to identify ideas and goals, but if no one is owning it, or deliverable dates keep being pushed back for other “more urgent task” you won’t achieve much. Having a clear plan that identifies your goals, deadlines, owners and successes helps prevent things being lost in the juggle.
Your plan does not need to be pages long, some of the best plans are a well-structured Excel sheet– you can have areas down the left side (specific promotions/campaigns, marketing, social media, digital advertising, traditional PR, influencers, sampling etc) and then time across the top and plot all out in the grid. There’s a lot to be said for keeping it simple, especially with plans. The most important thing is to get it down on paper so that its clear to see what needs to be done and track against it.
- Set Goals and Monitor and track your performance – yes that’s success and failures
If you don’t set goals, then how will you know what you have achieved? Setting goals and tracking them is key to the success of any business. I personally always recommend setting big long-term goals (12-24 months) and then a series of smaller ones (monthly/bi-monthly) that ladder up to your ultimate goals. If you set yourself monthly goals and things to measure against, it becomes a lot easier to monitor how you are doing.
For example, your monthly goals/targets may include: I will invite 3 bloggers with +10k followers to try x treatment in my salon each month, I will run a promotional offer each month for my business, I will spend AED 500 per month on FB and Instagram ads, I will partner with one non-competing company to cross promote our brands.
It may be for example that no blogger over 10k followers wanted to come and review, so you can alter for the month after to 8k plus or a new requirement but if you don’t track it to start with, it makes It much harder to optimise and improve month on month.
Remember, failing at something isn’t always bad. As long as you are tracking your performance and have a plan of where you are going you will always be able to review, change and improve.
Ultimately at the end of every month look back and see what you can learn from what happened and what do you need to do more or and less of.
- Make sure you really are putting your customers first in all you do
One of the most important things for anyone responsible for marketing is to be relevant and by putting your customers first, you will ensure you are creating products or services with them in mind and not just because it’s what you want to create.
A customer-first marketing strategy focuses on benefits for your customer with every marketing decision you make, from pricing to promotion to product/service creation. Resolve to put the customer at the heart of what you do and we promise you’ll see the difference.
- Base your decisions on data
I’m a big fan of data and making decisions on what the numbers tell us as no matter how well we know our business, our gut instinct can only take us so far – and we need to learn to trust the data and what it tells us. Data gives insights into how your prospects are responding to your efforts. You can see how much of your website they’re actually looking at, which emails they’re opening, and which offers they’re responding to, how much of your videos and social content they’re watching, and which social ads are driving more conversions. When you trust the data, you don’t have to guess what’s working – you’ll know. Your marketing gets easier when you trust the data to help you make better decisions.
Natasha Hatherall-Shawe
Founder and CEO of TishTash Marketing and Public Relations
@TishTashTalks
www.tishtash.com
Tash has over 20 years experience working in marketing and communications across the globe for lifestyle and beauty brands. Her agency TishTash specializes in marketing and PR for beauty, health and wellness brands and they represent over 60 beauty brands in the region and many spas and salons.
