New year, new you! Or, rather, new year, new approach to business! If you’ve been reluctant to try something new, whether because you’re busy or settled into your routine, the new year can be a great time to change things up to grow your business.
If business growth is among your new year’s resolutions, you can’t go wrong by upping your marketing game. Whether you need to increase brand recognition, customer engagement, or awareness of services to achieve greater revenue, marketing can be the key to unlock that success.
Brand recognition
We know that consumers are search-driven. What happens if they search for your products and services? Where do you show up? If you don’t, you just don’t exist as far as your (potential) customers are concerned! With a relatively small investment, you can change that by investing in search engine advertising, tied to the types of terms that your customers search for to find your products or services.
Is your website pulling its weight? If you do show up in search but your clients land on a non-responsive website that doesn’t work well on their mobile devices (we’re living in a mobile-first world!), they will bounce outta there! If you don’t explain your services clearly on the landing page, offer a good experience and do a good job of selling your expertise in the first few moments, you will lose them. A decade ago, a website was optional; these days, it’s a digital business card and it needs to represent you professionally.
Your website can also work for you on the search front by demonstrating your thought-leadership in your area of specialty. A good blog, focused on topics relevant to your business, can help search engines better understand what you do. Resolving any technical issues (slow loading pages, duplicate content) can boost your ranking, too.
Customer engagement
Maybe you’d like to engage with customers more, to show off a bit more of your company’s personality, to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and demonstrate why your customers should be spending their money on you.
First, consider your social media presence. Social is a great way to engage with your customers where they live. Showing up in their Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter feeds helps to build your relationship with them. But be careful not to use that platform to exclusively offer a “hard sell” – a balance between hard sales pitches (you need to buy this thing from me!), soft sells (look how happy these people are with the new thing they just bought from me) and value-add information (“giving away” how-to info on something in your area of expertise, demonstrating your knowledge and experience) is the winning combination to dial up engagement.
Another great way to engage your customers is via email campaigns – keeping them aware of what’s going on with you between their visits to your store, success stories from other clients, and deals or sales that may interest them. By letting them behind the scenes, you put a face on your business, showing your involvement in their community and reminding them why they liked dealing with you in the first place!
Awareness of services
Maybe you’re introducing a new product or service and you’re eager to share that news with the world. Marketing to the rescue!
In addition to getting it on your clients’ radar through your website, search advertising, social and email, you can reach out to new customers by digital advertising. Once you’ve determined the right platform on which to advertise (the one most likely to put you in front of your future customers), you can target your audience very narrowly and get your new product or service in front of them easily. Compelling copy, visuals and a call to action will drive the behaviour you seek (for example, visiting your website or store, calling your company, booking a meeting, and so on). Track and measure your advertising, adjusting as required to make sure you’re maximizing your advertising dollar and getting the results you want.
Of course, you can do all of these things yourself – the tools exist to help guide you to set up social accounts, advertising and email campaigns. Or… you can entrust that work to an expert, and focus on the skills and expertise you can offer to your customers!
If you’re ready to explode into 2019 and take your business to the next level, contact us today!
