A new year always brings a fresh new start for so many different aspects of our lives. There might be a few personal goals that you want to try and achieve next year, and setting some New Year’s resolutions can help you reach these. But the new year is also a great chance to touch base with your business and to see if there are any ways you can improve or develop it throughout the coming year.
Have you already created your marketing plan for next year? If not, it’s really worth taking a couple of hours when you next have time to come up with a new plan for all of next year’s digital marketing efforts. This can help you keep on track while you try and develop your business and its marketing campaigns and strategies. Don’t forget to add all of these points to make the most of 2018!
Work On User Experience
User experience (often written as UX in most articles and reports) has become increasingly important over the course of the past few years, and this is set to continue well into 2018. If your company’s website and any connected apps and other online platforms don’t provide your users with an easy and understandable experience then you should work on improving this. You might not realize it, but your company’s user experience can drastically affect your company’s reputation – that’s because any customers who have a bad experience will be very likely to tell others, and then word about your poor UX will spread through word of mouth.
Get Creative With Content
These days, every company needs a good content marketing strategy, whether you run a small home-based business or own a large startup. Either way, if your content isn’t solid enough, you will find that all of your marketing strategies will fail. So, the first question you need to consider is: is your content creative enough? It should be as this will make it unique and engaging! You will find that creative content is a lot more likely to be shared around the web by users, which can greatly increase all the traffic that makes its way to your company’s website and blog. Don’t forget to pepper your creative content with plenty of keywords so that the articles help improve your site’s SEO!
Be Sure To Measure Analytics
So, you know that you have analytics attached to your website, but do you actually use them at all? Well, if not, that really needs to change – and quickly! Don’t worry, though, you aren’t alone; there are a surprising number of entrepreneurs and CEOs don’t have a clue what all of the data from their analytics means. But, if you take a look adn get to know all the figures, you will be able to figure out things like which keywords are best for your website. Your analytics can also make it easy to see the quality score for all of your Google Adwords. If you try analyzing your analytics and find it all way too complicated, fear not – there are plenty of online guides that can take you through all of the basic things you need to know.
Improve Your Social Media Game
Hopefully, you are already quite good with your business social media. It’s really important to try and get as many followers and fans as possible on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. If they suit your business, you should also branch out onto platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. Trying to increase your follower numbers will mean that you are reaching a lot more people with your posts so, therefore, each post has a great chance of converting followers into customers. Part of increasing followers is creating engaging and creative posts. If you aren’t entirely sure on what makes a good tweet or Facebook status update, it’s always worth outsourcing to a social media manager who can take the reins for you. Hopefully, one post will go viral and thousands of people will be introduced to your company!
Dabble With Video
We all know that content is king. For years now, that “king” has been written content on blogs and websites. However, trends come and go, as we all know, and it looks like the current trend for written content will screech to a halt next year. The onus will be on videos. As video content can now be added to websites and social media posts, it’s important that you try and utilize this as much as possible. Worried that you will have to invest in expensive video-making equipment? You won’t. In fact, most smartphones now have brilliant cameras that are able to capture sharp videos which you can upload onto your laptop to edit. Why not give it a go next year?!
Keep On Learning
Right now, it is difficult to forecast all of the trends that will be important in the digital marketing world next year. So, you will need to keep on studying the industry to see what is big and what flops. You should always keep your eye on social media trends and the things that all your competitors are doing as this can provide you with some really key insights into marketing. Don’t forget that it is also worth taking the time to read industry publications as these can also help you learn new marketing skills and develop as a marketer. Not only that, though, but they should be filled with insights, tips, and tricks that can help you stay one step ahead of everyone else.
Keep It Regular
Once you start a certain marketing campaign, you need it to be regular. For instance, don’t post on social media for a few days and then forget about for a couple of weeks. This might make your followers think you’ve given up. So, only commit to a campaign strategy that you can keep up with.
