Just like Taylor Swift is asking us all to do in her recent hit “Shake It Off”, there are some habits you need to shake off this year. These bad habits could be holding your business back in a big way, yet you may not even know you are doing them. Quitting these habits will make you a more efficient marketer; helping you save time and achieve better results for the efforts you put in.
This article will discuss some of the marketing practices you need to leave behind this year:
Marketing as a Necessary Evil
Marketing doesn’t necessarily have to be your favourite part of conducting business. However, if you’re approaching email marketing or social media marketing with the view that it is a chore rather than something that you’re excited to be doing, then you are going to be found out pretty quickly. The good thing is that you can get the help of an seo agency who specializes in social media and email marketing who can take care of the work for you.
Given that having a presence for your business in the online world is important, you need to view marketing as a way to connect with people who are interested in the product or service you are providing. Your marketing materials should be written as if you’re talking to your best friend. Show your audience how well you know them and base your marketing materials around your relationship with them rather than blatantly promoting your business at every opportunity.
No Plan? No Hope
Starting a marketing strategy with no plan is business suicide. You can’t base your marketing strategy on hope because you’ll either find your results will go backwards or you’ll get no results at all.
Your marketing will likely be made up of components such as your website, email, and various social media channels, so it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. This is why having a plan in place is so important. It gives your strategy structure and an idea of where you’re spending your time and what you’re working towards. Any marketing agency will tell you that having a plan in place is important to your results. Your plan needs to have very specific actions and what you are planning to achieve by performing these actions. Including actions such as send more emails to customers is vague and doesn’t really add to the plan. If you want to add that in, that’s fine. But you need to choose specific frequency, a schedule, plan around key dates and holidays, and how your different marketing channels can work.
Doing Everything by Yourself
As previously mentioned, having a clear and specific plan in place is a great foundation for your business. However, if you’re having a hard time executing your plan, it might be because you’re trying to do it all yourself.
If you Want be on Social Media
social media agency that is fine, but you don’t have to be on every platform. Research your audience and find out what social media platforms they are typically on and get an account on the same ones. Chances are they will be on Twitter or Facebook or both, so that is a good start. With regards to emailing your customers, if you were a customer of yours how often would you want to be emailed? Sending out an online survey is a great way to find this out. Spamming is an absolute no no and will lose you customers very quickly. However, if your customers are reading your content and using it for their advantage, then multiple weekly emails are okay.
A Mobile Responsive Website
As everyone has a smartphone these days, it’s important that your website is mobile responsive. Research has shown that 65 percent of emails are open on a mobile, while a further 70 percent of social networking takes on place on mobile as well (have you found an appropriate social media platform yet?).
With that in mind, there’s a good chance your audience is also looking for your business on their smartphones, which means it’s important that your website is mobile responsive. To determine whether it is or not, start testing how your website, emails, and other marketing materials look on a mobile. If you have to squint your eyes to read information or it looks disjointed, you are missing out on that all important connect with your audience. First impressions last and if a user’s first impression of you is poor, then you may never win them back.
It’s a new year and sometimes that can mean a fresh start. Take a look at your marketing plan and review your processes. If you think there are some things that need working on, don’t be afraid to do so. Who knows! You might improve your overall results and that can only be a good thing.