The start of a New Year is often a good time for companies to evaluate their marketing strategy, and there are a number of ways your organisation can look to improve in 2013.
By the myBusiness techblog team
As we start 2013, it’s time for businesses to start looking ahead and see how they can best take advantage of the latest marketing tools to promote their products and services, improve customer engagement, and ultimately boost sales. Here are five steps that you might consider taking to sharpen your marketing efforts in 2013:
1. Evaluate and refresh your brand identity
For any business to keep up with the times, it is always important to refresh your branding to appeal to an ever-evolving customer base. Evaluate how strongly your current brand identity is resonating with your targeted audiences, including new and potential customers. And after assessing the extent to which your business brand needs to be revitalised, decide on the best approach — whether it makes more sense to just fine-tune your existing brand elements or to adopt a more extensive overhaul. Great examples of how local brands have refreshed their brand identities include jewellers such as Poh Heng and F&B brands such as Owl coffee.
2. Raise the level of engagement with your customers
Across industries and businesses of all sizes, there is an increased focus on leveraging the reach and immediacy of today’s digital marketing channels to foster deeper customer engagements. While platforms such as email marketing remain highly effective in reaching out to large audience segments, you can also consider how your marketing communications can be integrated with more interactive platforms or adapted to increase mobile outreach for your business. Consider including an online communications channel like a chat-based support platform, or a mobile app, can improve the way you engage your customers.
3. Commit to creating fresh content and keeping your website updated
A simple rule of thumb when it comes to effective digital marketing is to keep your website regularly updated with compelling content that is relevant to your customers. Always ensure that your website content is closely integrated with social media platforms — be able to drive visitors to a great new piece of content published on your website through a Facebook update, for instance.
4. Refine your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign
Besides refreshing your website, it is just as important to assess the effectiveness of your current SEO campaign in driving traffic to your site. From optimising your meta descriptions to tracking how your customers navigate around and use your website more closely, there is a variety of methods you can adopt to ensure that your SEO strategy stays relevant to your marketing objectives. You can find out more SEO tips by reading this article.
5. Ramp up your social media strategy
Social media will continue to be instrumental in helping businesses carve a niche in the congested online marketplace. Start exploring how your organisation can utilise social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to maximise the reach of your marketing campaigns and generate buzz for new product launches. The rich visual possibilities of image-based platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest have also significantly transformed how online retailers are making use of social media to establish brand familiarity.
As you plan your marketing plan for the months ahead, it is helpful to bear in mind that it is a dynamic process — your business needs to regularly review and keep tabs on how far you have achieved on each of the resolutions you made. Don’t be afraid to try out new or radical ideas and to adopt new approaches that aid your marketing efforts and help you stand out from the competition this year.
Do you have any marketing tips that you wish to share? Please leave a comment in the comment box below.