I love the start of a new year because it means you – and your business – have a clean slate. This clean slate results in positive thoughts for the future. Wouldn’t it be great if we could carry this enthusiasm throughout the rest of 2009? If you take a hard look at your business – and make any necessary adjustments now – you just might. So here are 10 ways to better marketing, messaging, and business in general for 2009.
Solidify your 2009 marketing plan. Ideally, this would have been something you thought about in Q4 of 2008. But the reality is this important to-do item often gets cast aside because of the holiday hubbub.
The best way to get started on your 09 marketing plan is by looking at last year’s marketing calendar (you do have one, right?) and evaluating which programs worked and why. What program had the biggest ROI? Were you able to effectively measure all your marketing efforts? If not, what can you do this year to make sure everything is measured properly? The marketing plan/calendar doesn’t need to be fancy—use a calendar program, Excel spreadsheet, whatever works. Make sure the key personnel in your organization have a copy, and identify who is in charge of what items. Revisiting your calendar at the end of each quarter is also a must.
If you don’t have a formal plan from last year, don’t worry—you wouldn’t be the first business. But let me repeat: marketing plans are important. After all, you’re already spending money marketing, even if you don’t realize it. Having a website is marketing. Having an email newsletter is marketing. Understanding how well each work and how much money you should invest in each is all part of your overall marketing plan. Here’s an article from Entrepreneur.com that you might find helpful.
What messages from 2008 will you be keeping? What new messages will you be using for 2009? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…but keep in mind that even the best messages, logos, and taglines become stale over time. (Hey, even Walmart launched a new logo in Q3 of 2008). While messaging takes time and research, now’s the time to decide if your message is stale—or in danger of becoming stale—and what marketing research you need to do as a result.
Once you’re “set” on your message, make sure you maintain consistency throughout all mediums. Most businesses put a lot of emphasis on their websites, and for good reason. But now’s the time to make sure your core messages are consistent on any piece of communication that “touches” your customer. Do your invoices, auto confirmations, newsletter welcome emails, etc. have a tone that’s consistent with your website? Do all these items properly display logos, taglines, or any other sort of call-out or call-to-action? This consistency is incredibly important from a branding perspective. Re-read this post on creating a consistent tone in your copy.
Is 2009 a relevant year in your business? I’m amazed at how many of my clients who don’t understand the relevance of—or even think about—anniversaries. If you started your business in 1999, 1994, or 1989 (etc), then 2009 is a monumental year for your company and you’ll want to leverage this anniversary in marketing materials, press materials, and just about everything in between.
Review your email newsletter statistics from 2008. What links had the most click-through rates? Was it a link to a particular product or customer review? Was it some sort of downloadable item, like a white paper? What days and times saw the biggest open rates? Which newsletters prompted the most direct feedback from readers? These statistics are a goldmine of information. Review them, understand them, then craft an editorial calendar around what worked best. Here’s the most recent email marketing metrics report from Mailer, Mailer that you might find helpful as well.
Recommit to what’s fallen by the wayside. One of the potential downfalls of New Year idealism is the idea that we’re going to set the world on fire and do everything we set our minds to. This isn’t realistic. I have a client who has trouble keeping up with his blog and his email newsletter. My advice to him? Choose one or the other, and recommit to doing it well. There are just so many hours in a day. The same is true with other social media—unless you have someone with the title Social Media Manager, you just can’t do Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and whatever else is out there. Choose the medium that makes the most sense for your particular business and commit to it. You can always add in additional mediums once you’re in the habit of being dedicated to one.
Identify three things your business did well last year. Did revenue go up by 10 percent? Did your company win an award? Get some great press?
Now identify the steps you need to take to replicate this greatness. If you want to increase revenue by 15 percent in 2009, what steps would you need to take to make this happen? For example, maybe you would need to have an additional 100 customers a month to reach this revenue goal. What would it take to yield an additional 100 customers a month? Maybe you’d need an additional 500 unique visits to your site. What would it take to increase this traffic? Maybe this would require a revisit to your optimization efforts or maybe this is the year you’ll look into PPC ads. Once you see all the steps that you need to take, goals can be set and managed. Simply saying, “I want to increase revenue by 15 percent in 2009” is not enough (even if the universe is on your side).
Identify three areas where your business could improve. Maybe it’s customer service. Maybe it’s in-house processes that would help streamline your business. Maybe it’s gaining more exposure through press efforts.
Now identify the steps you need to take to improve these three areas. Concentrate on three areas where you’d like to improve and the steps needed to get there. For example, if you want to improve customer service, investigating and pricing “live chat” programs is one step in this direction.
Do you have any additional ways to better marketing, messaging, and business in ‘09? We’d love to hear them! Leave them in the comments section.
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