It is never too early to plan your marketing strategy for next year. Even as a small business, it is crucial that you already have an outline of your objectives and what you will need to do to achieve them for the next year if you want to get ahead of your competition.
If you look at the emerging marketing trends for the last quarter of 2012, you will see a few classic strategies, but also a lot of fresh new innovative ones being used by small businesses. Since we are about to end the year, these strategies will probably be at the forefront of the best marketing strategies for 2013 marketing. Below are some of these strategies which you might want to adopt yourself.
Securing the right goals
Look at these statistics from komarketingassociates.com and you should notice that the goal of most businesses remain the same today. Targeting customers and getting leads are still the main of objectives of most, if not all companies. However this is not enough.
What about adding more goals? Technology has broadened our marketing playing field with the Internet and mobile devices. Why not expand our goal list as well with these tools in mind? Widening our goal perspective will open up more doors of possibility in terms of methods you can use to connect with your customers. Big companies are combining traditional media with online and mobile ads to build brand awareness and establish a more personal relationship with new and existing clientele. In today’s fast evolving technologies, both goals will surely prove worthy to be added to our primary list of goals.
That is why for your marketing strategies, take a long hard look at your goals first. It is also important to see what your competitors are setting their sights at. A broader and more multi-faceted approach to marketing and marketing goals is important as direct advertising is no longer enough these days to win your customers over.
Increase your social media marketing efforts
It’s been long known that social media and mobile marketing efforts are on the rise. We hear about some new company almost every week coming up with some new technology that new businesses would want to get into and almost every day, we’d hear about so-and-so brand jumping on the social media bandwagon. Statistics from contently.com show the rise of social media over time. You will see that in the contently infographic, as 2012 ends, there are a lot more social media marketing activities from businesses than ever before.
What does this mean to you? It simply means that if your business continues to ignore the advantages and possibilities offered by social media, it won’t be long until your competitors have outraced you. It would prove to be unwise not to consider the effects social media has on businesses and if you have not yet explored the opportunities offered by at least Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, you should start now. Form a small team and start planning for a comprehensive social media marketing campaign. Make sure you have plans to be heavily involved in popular social media portals like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even multimedia type social networks such as Youtube and Pinterest. The more involved you are in these channels means more exposure for your business.
Mobile Marketing
Are you paying attention to the mobile market these days? This infographic from ansonalex.com will show you that mobile smart phone usage is slowly rising. For the small business owner, this means that you have to divert some attention towards your mobile marketing efforts. From the statistics shown, more and more people are accessing the Internet through their phones, instead of their computers alone.
What does this mean for business marketing for 2013? It means that you will need to optimize your business website, not only for different computers, but also the mobile platform as well. Your website design must be “responsive” and mobile friendly. You have to optimize both web and mobile layouts and at times even modify copy to be more suitable for mobile users to increase your chances of success in mobile marketing.
Local Print Marketing
Yes, local print marketing is still very much a factor in marketing for 2013. This infographic supplies numbers and evidence that print is still very much a part of the future of advertising. Although this infographic is labelled “print marketing is not dead“, traditional media, like printed postcards, posters and brochures, are still relevant channels that are still very much a part of today’s business marketing campaigns due to the qualities they possess that digital ads don’t. The advantage of printed media is in their printed nature which puts them significantly at an advantage over digital ads.
Though they lack the immediacy of social media and accessibility of mobile marketing, they are enduring representations of your brand long after your $3,000/month online ad has gone. Aside from their enduring characteristic, print marketing provides the tangibility and credibility that doesn’t come with online advertising. It is for this very reason that online printing companies like PrintPlace.com are still thriving even if digital ad spending have rocketed increasingly over the few years. As is shown by the statistics provided by the infographic above, the future of marketing is a combination of new and old methods, online and print. Links to websites and QR codes on printed postcards or flyers will help people quickly access the rest of your marketing message. At a local level, these efforts will increase your chances of success because of the proximity of your business to your printed ads. And as far as trending goes, local print marketing has for a long time been part of fully realized marketing strategies that are mandatory all throughout the next year.
These are factors you should keep in mind when planning your 2013 marketing strategy. You need to set the right goals, go social, invest in mobile marketing efforts and compliment your online effort with printed marketing materials. The more you got covered, the wider net you cast in getting customers for your business.
