We’ve all heard that when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This is the time of year to reflect on your progress, determine what worked and what didn’t, and put into place the resources and tactics that will help drive organizational success for the coming year. For bigger and better results in 2018, here are four resolutions that will shape your marketing strategy and accelerate business growth:
1: Make a plan.
A marketing plan provides a roadmap to successfully promoting and growing a business. A good marketing plan helps answer key questions about your business: How will you position your company in the market? What makes you different from your competitors? How will you communicate with your customers? Beyond that, a good marketing plan helps ensure that marketing activities are directly aligned with your business goals. But having a plan isn’t enough. If the document sits on a shelf without someone monitoring and implementing the plan, it’s just as damaging as not having a plan at all.
2: Boost your long game.
With shortened attention spans and an increase in mobile usage, marketing content should be short and sweet, right? Surprisingly, that’s not always the case. According to research, the longer the content is, the more impactful and effective it becomes. Blog posts over 1,000 words are far more effective than shorter posts. Over 2,000 words, effectiveness leaps up again. Instead of investing resources on many pieces that are just “okay,” refocus resources to create fewer, more powerful content items. You’ll invest the same amount of time and energy, but you’ll get a far greater return on your investment.
3: Build relationships with your audience.
At its heart, marketing is about forming relationships with target audiences. This emphasis on relationship marketing focuses on building brand loyalty through customer satisfaction rather than focusing singularly on transactional sales. Implementing a relationship marketing strategy requires a plan that:
- Provides the right information to your audience at the right time
- Builds credibility, customer commitment and loyalty
- Makes prospects and customers feel comfortable and connected to you.
When relationship marketing is effective, it moves prospects through various stages of the sales process while building a rapport that becomes stronger and more valuable over time. To build solid relationships, communicate regularly with your audiences, provide customer-centric information and enhance credibility with strategic thought leadership.
4: Simplify your message.
For many prospects and customers, the enormous amount of marketing content generated by the marketplace can be overwhelming. And in an effort to differentiate from the competition, many companies create complex messaging. But the bottom line is that consumers are busy people and too much information requires time they simply don’t have. Focus on simplifying marketing messages, especially early in the buying cycle when the goal is to create engagement opportunities with customers and prospects. Once prospects have progressed through the sales funnel and are comparing and evaluating products, it is more appropriate to provide more complex information.
With 2018 just days away, marketers are under pressure to justify their 2017 efforts and plan for even more success in the coming year. Remember that you don’t have to do it all, but you do need to excel in some areas to be poised to accelerate growth. To help keep your New Year’s resolutions alive and have a clear path to revenue generation through a customized marketing and communications strategy, contact Trade Press Services today.