As we near the end of January, chances are you’ve already made and broken your New Year’s resolutions, so why not make some marketing resolutions you can keep.
Although marketing objectives, goals and strategies have long been used by businesses to define their marketing plan, setting marketing resolutions implies trying something new and beyond your normal marketing approach.
Here are a few suggestions of marketing resolutions that are easy to implement.
1. Fine tune your marketing strategy
Before you embark on any new marketing activity, review your marketing objectives to see whether they are still relevant or whether they need adjusting to help you reach your desired end result. Make sure you set SMART objectives as you’ll have a better chance of achieving them. For advice on the SMART principles, read my blog Goal setting for business and pleasure.
2. Improve your website SEO
Is your website copy optimised? Check your search engine placement and page ranking in Google. If your website doesn’t appear on page 1 of Google for key terms relevant to your business, editing your website copy could be the best marketing investment you make this year.
If you don’t know what keywords and phrases are most relevant to your business, check your Google Analytics to see which search terms visitors are using to find your site. Then integrate these search terms into your website copy.
As a rule of thumb, you should aim for a maximum of 10% keyword saturation. That’s no more than 30 keywords or phrases on a 300-word page. If you’re not used to writing search engine optimised web copy, it can become stilted, so take your time and try and write as fluidly as possible.
3. Start a business blog
If you haven’t got a blog, this is the year to start one. According to research by HubSpot, 57% of companies that publish a business blog have acquired a customer from a blog-generated lead. In addition to lead generation, a blog can also do wonders for your search engine ranking, provided you SEO your blog copy.
The key to blogging is to publish posts regularly and consistently. The most common frequency for business blogging is weekly. So this year get blogging and blog regularly.
4. Choose your social media platform wisely
From my experience, when businesses resolve to get social they start with Facebook or Twitter, but not all social media platforms are right for all businesses. Before jumping feet first into social media, work out what you want to achieve and then select the platform that best meets your objectives.
If you’re undecided, have a dabble at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but if you find one platform isn’t working, don’t agonise over it, put it to one side and concentrate on the social media platforms that are bearing most fruit.
5. Invest in a mobile-friendly website
Mobile access to the internet is growing rapidly and is expected to exceed desktop usage by 2014. Although you might think that’s plenty of time, mobile share of internet access in the UK is already 7% and those businesses that are investing in mobile-friendly websites now will benefit from the upward mobile trend.
You may be questioning why I’m giving advice about something PRG hasn’t followed itself, but even marketing agencies need to set marketing resolutions, and investing in a mobile-friendly website is one we’ve set ourselves for 2012.
