A new year should be the beginning of a fresh start, a new perspective, the implementation of new ideas…right?
Not necessarily! Many of us who run businesses tend to see the New Year as a great opportunity for change and growth. While this can be a great thing, it’s a good idea to really take stock of the changes you plan to make and have a firm reason for them. In other words, don’t change just for the sake of change. It’s important to take time and understand which marketing strategies that you used in the previous year were successful, which were not, and why. You can save marketing time and advertising budget by re-using ideas from campaigns that were successful.
Here are some ideas of things to evaluate before making changes:
· Your social media strategy – Facebook in particular makes this easy. Check out your page analytics from the prior year. You should be able to see some trends. Which months did you gain the most followers, and can you tell why? Those strategies may be worth repeating in the upcoming year. Similarly, check out what you posted in the weeks and months that your page didn’t really grow. You may be making one of the three big mistakes made by small businesses. There lies your opportunity for change and improvement!
· Other inbound marketing strategies – in the prior year, did customers come to you? Inbound marketing is the art of turning someone who seeks out your business for information into a paying customer. One of the best ways to do this is to have quality content for inbound marketing. Before you start developing a plan, evaluate how successful you were in turning these sales leads into actual customers. You can set a goal for a conversion percentage after figuring out how your prior year strategy worked out. The key is – if your prior year’s strategy worked well – keep on doing what you’ve been doing!
· Your sales figures – it’s a great idea to take a long, hard look at your sales from the previous year before deciding on a plan for the New Year. Consider making a spreadsheet or document that categorizes all of the marketing strategies that you utilized and what kind of effect they had on business. Even if it’s not possible to quantify every single sale as far as which marketing type or campaign that it came from, you can make an educated guess. This way, you have a great visual representation of what worked and what didn’t. Then, don’t be afraid to re-use the strategies that worked. Another tip you should use before planning for the New Year is to read up on sales news. Read what things worked for other companies and see if those ideas can be implemented successfully for your company.
The new year can definitely equal new beginnings, but only if that’s what is warranted. Reviewing the strategies that were or were not successful for your business is a critical part of gaining fresh perspective and momentum for the year to come. Don’t be afraid to re-use strategies that were successful, or ideally, tweak those strategies to bring in even more customers.
