With an eye cast towards 2012, many small businesses are thinking about how they can make the coming year a better one in terms of return on investment (ROI).
One of the keys to any company’s success is having a formidable online marketing plan in place. The problem, however, is that too many businesses still to this day do not include all the key components to a successful marketing approach, i.e. public relations, social media, customer service and more.
With that being said, how can your small business better position itself for an outstanding 2012?
Among the things to keep in mind to better your marketing efforts this coming year are:
- Define your target – While it sounds like a no-brainer, too many small businesses have yet to define who they are truly marketing to. Yes, they have a list they’ve compiled of targets to go after, but they don’t always truly know the people they are attempting to market to. What are your customer’s needs? How has the tough economy impacted your customer over the last year? Will your customer be seeking more or less from you in 2012? These are all questions that you should be able to and quite frankly need to answer prior to designing a campaign;
- Update your lists and check them twice – Given that today’s businesses and customers for that matter want today’s stuff done yesterday, time is of the essence. With that being the case, make sure you are marketing to live bodies who are presently interested in what you have to offer. Sending out campaigns to individuals who have dropped off the radar screen not only wastes their time, but your valuable time too. It also shows that you are not up to speed and perhaps a tad unorganized. Most importantly, an updated customer management software list allows you to review your company’s history with each individual customer, providing them in turn with better customer service marketing;
- Better utilize social media – Even if you are currently using social media efforts in your marketing plans, you can do more. While some ‘experts’ have brushed off social media as a fad that will come and go over time, most people know this is simply not the case. For all intent purposes, social media will be with us for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it behooves your company to make sure you’re employing a formidable SM strategy within your marketing plans. If you are not presently engaged on one or more social media sites, take the time to do so. A Facebook fan page is great for providing customers with valuable information on your products and/or services. Twitter is great in that you can share links with interested parties on industry-related news, surveys, trends, etc. Make sure your company is represented on LinkedIn, as this proves a great business search tool to locate you and your product/s. There are many others, so make sure you are sharing tweeting and more;
- Review your Web site – Have you ever been interested in a product and/or service, gone to the company’s Web site, then came away disappointed? Trust me, it happens more often than you realize. More often than not, companies will “forget” about their sites and just give them the minimal attention. The problem with that is business is lost as customers and potential customers turn elsewhere. You at minimum should review the company site every few months to see what may need attention. Are you offering podcasts and video demonstrations for customers? Is the written content on the site fresh or stale? Can individuals come on your site and navigate easily or are they left running around in a maze? Are you using keyword links that search engines like Google will use and provide you with more traffic? These are all things you need to review regularly;
- Retain, retain, retain – If you’re customer list is changing quicker than a baseball manager’s scorecard; you need to take a step back and understand why this is. Retaining customers is more valuable than adding new ones, although some may disagree. The message here is not to go after new customers, of course you must. The message, however, is that keeping the ones you have is even more important, given that consumers have a lot of choices on who they want to shop with. Make it a point to keep your current base of customers satisfied and wanting more from you so that you’re not trying to line up new customer continuously to replace old ones;
- Analyze but don’t obsess over numbers – Too many companies obsess over their production numbers to the point where they lose focus on the real goal at hand. Especially when the economy is up and down, your financial numbers are going to fluctuate, so don’t panic when things are not going as well. While the numbers are important, your marketing message, product/s and/or services are just as if not more critical. Some marketing campaigns will flourish and others in hindsight will have been a waste of time. Expect some ebb and flow in the numbers, it is normal.
While there is much more to successfully marketing your small business, those are but a few of the key ones.
With the New Year coming at you quickly, use the final few weeks of 2011 to review your marketing strategies going forward so that you’re in the market for more customers in 2012.