With 2015 just around the corner, many businesses have already begun planning for what’s to come and needs to be executed for growth in the New Year. More specifically, marketing should be at the top of every business owner’s mind – from planning to tracking the ROI it will have on overall profit.
Where should you start?
Begin by looking at your current assets understanding what worked well, what didn’t and what the upcoming goals are. Then, take it a few steps further and dive into the following:
- Historic analytics
- Which channels brought in the highest-quality leads to your business?
- Which channels brought in leads with a longer life-time value?
- How much did you spend?
- What was the ROI?
- Audience changes
- How has your target audience evolved?
- What type of content engages with them most?
- Are they growing with you or outgrowing your company? (I.e. are you providing services and products that meet their pain points, even unforeseeable ones?)
- Is the “why” people should buy from you going to withstand in the upcoming year?
- Competitor analysis
- Which competitors gave you a run for your money?
- Are there any new competitors entering the marketplace?
- How much market share do you have over your top three competitors?
- Who has the domain authority?
Next, push forward by looking at items that you should be ready to face such as:
- Market share. Realistically plan out how you will gain market share over the upcoming quarters and why you believe you will achieve that authority. Further, look at the entire marketing funnel and understand its incremental as well as direct impact on revenue. A holistic build out will be instrumental to your success, so don’t narrow in on just one aspect of digital marketing; rather, focus on integrative multi-touch points along the purchase journey.
- Content marketing still wins. Positioning your thought leadership, gaining earned media, and proliferating your brand presence with co-marketing partnerships need to be a high focus. Every piece of collateral involves content. Therefore, the key to succeeding here is how well you promote that content such that it resonates with your audience as well as influencers.
- Take SEO seriously. Implement keyword research and narrow in on the additional 50-100 keywords you plan to gain market share with. Get even more specific by highlighting which keywords are lead producing, sales converting and traffic producing. This will help with segmentation.
- Hyper personalize email marketing. Speaking of segmentation, your email marketing strategy and tactical executions need to be customized to each buyer persona per their stage within the buying lifecycle. Not sure how to find those numbers? Work with your sales team and make sure that the integrative approach of sales and marketing are set.
- Track social media ROI. Here’s the thing that still sucks about measuring your social media ROI, it’s hard. However, begin to employ efforts that are absolutely measurable – tying in with your content marketing efforts all the way to your paid search efforts. Break out your reporting into three buckets: brand awareness, soft conversions and hard conversions. Even then, understanding what it means to grow your brand awareness is key, so leverage your amplification rate as a starting point.
Lastly, know that the key to growing and moving beyond your previous successes are to ensure that you keep testing, embrace failure, improve and don’t give up.
Have more to add? Do so in the comments section!
