Most people think about their New Year’s resolutions on a personal level each year, but what about from a business perspective?
The way you market to your audience is constantly changing. Consistent advancements in new technology give marketers a challenge. It’s hard to keep up with the regular developments.
Still, keeping up is vital if you want to stand out among the competition and get noticed by buyers.
To help you navigate your marketing efforts in 2016, here are 5 important resolutions you should be making to keep on top of your A game
1. Get a Grip on Your Marketing Data
Big Data has made it easier than ever to track the effectiveness of your marketing activity, understand the behaviors of your target market and how to interact with your buyers.
This year, experts predict that we will see a rise in the need to better optimise the customer experience through advanced customer segmentation and marketing automation. Data will provide marketers with the important information needed to make these real-time decisions.
In spite of the prolific availability of data, some marketers find analyzing the facts and figures an overwhelming challenge.
Psychologists and personality theorists believe there to be differences between the right and left side of the brain. Right-brain thinkers are more emotional and creative, where as left-brain thinkers are more practical in nature and better at analyzing the facts. This plays a big role in how you market your products, according to an infographic by Marketo, The Right Brain vs. Left Brain of Marketers.
Could it be that a large proportion of marketers are naturally right-brained and therefore shy away from the numbers side of marketing? Or, is it because analysing data to this extent is a relatively recent development and marketers haven’t learned how to do this effectively yet? In either case, Big Data cannot be ignored.
Your data tells your buyer’s story. It shows you what you need to know to increase conversions in your campaigns. By using tools to monitor your automated marketing efforts and track your campaigns, you can gain invaluable insight into the mindset of your buyers. With this, you can tweak your marketing to make it leaps and bounds more effective.
2. Implement a Strong CRM System
One of the tools businesses are using to track customer interaction is a CRM. Although it’s great for the sales team, there are golden nuggets of data hidden within the CRM to help marketers improve campaign performances.
CRMs allow you to make smarter strategic decisions. With the data from these tools, you are better equipped to scale and improve your marketing efforts. Ultimately this is how to increase your bottom line.
But, this can prove challenging to some due to the sheer scale of the data.
Cloud based business intelligence tools are starting to mature. 2016 will see more developed CRM Software to aggregate and analyze data. Armed with this information, you’ll get a faster 360 degree view of your customer, helping you make smarter decisions in half the time.
Finding the right CRM is sometimes another challenge. A good quality CRM System should automate your marketing and sales functions, assist with customer support, produce reports and analytics to assist with forecasting, and have the ability to integrate with social media and mobile. We like Infusionsoft for this.
3. Super-Charge Your Content Marketing. Go Interactive!
It’s not a secret that content marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate audience engagement, differentiate your brand, attract better quality leads and increase sales.
But with the rise in content marketing comes the challenge of standing out amongst the noise of others.
A report produced by Ion Interactive suggests a solution to this struggle. Marketers can achieve a higher level of engagement, consumption and conversion by transforming static content into interactive experiences. In this study, 88% of marketers said interactive content was effective at differentiating their brand.
So what is interactive content? It can take a number of different forms on a digital level. It includes the ever popular quizzes, surveys, assessments, e-books, calculators and competitions. Any type of online activity, which encourages participation from its reader, is considered interactive content. You can utilise this interactivity to collect data about your audience in order to further enhance your marketing.
4. Make Time to Plan Your Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy
Although obvious, this resolution is one that’s often neglected.
51% of businesses don’t have a strategy, according to Smart Insight. In the words of Benjamin Franklin; ‘If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail’!
Marketing is quickly becoming more complex through the use of interactive content, marketing automation and an increase in the number of marketing channels available. This makes effective planning more important than before.
Consumers need numerous interactions with a brand, through a variety of mediums in order to convert to paying customers. Planning how this is going to happen is very important.
Using your CRM Software to analyze previous data and evaluate the success or failure of past efforts will help. With this tool, you can eliminate activities that were unsuccessful and expand on those that worked well.
5. Get Mobile Savvy – No Excuses!
Mobile marketing isn’t new. Still, the statistics show that many businesses are still not optimised for mobile marketing in spite of 68% of Americans now have a smart phone.
Mobile has overtaken fixed internet access with US users now spending the vast majority of their time consuming digital media within mobile applications. Ignoring the potential of this captive market is a marketing death sentence.
Marketers need to ensure content is optimised for viewing from a smart phone while also looking at the best ways to exploit this marketing channel to its full potential. There are many ways to accomplish this through clever mobile marketing strategies.
- Advertise in popular apps among your target audience
- Optimize your website to be responsive to mobile devices
- Turn on iBeacon technology to target customers when they’re close to your store
People ingest content on mobiles in a different way to other devices. Think about how your buyer uses her mobile device. Then, customize your content and marketing strategies to match her behavior.
Mobile marketing should be at the top of your list this year when developing your multi-channel marketing strategy.
Takeaways
Resolve to form a deeper connection with your audience in 2016. By analysing Big Data, tapping into your CRMs statistics and creating a better user experience, you could see tremendous growth in your marketing.
Now it’s your turn. What resolutions are you making in 2018?
