Our world now moves at an astounding pace which means that the digital landscape is evolving at breakneck speed; is your business keeping up? Whether you sell financial services, high-tech products, or seashells by the seashore – your company’s bottom line lives and breathes by the ever-changing algorithms, technologies, and crawl patterns of the online universe. To ensure your business not only survives but thrives, here are 5 marketing strategies to tackle in 2020.
Branding
Imagine the home of your dreams. Chances are, your mind conjured up images of a beautiful house – painted, landscaped, fully-furnished, and move-in ready. Fail to build on a solid foundation, however, and that’s all your mansion will ever be – a (wobbly) fantasy. For your marketing efforts to cut through the clutter of the Internet and truly resonate with your target audience, your business must be supported by a strong and solid brand.
There are many benefits to a well-respected (and well-maintained) brand including customer recognition and loyalty, a competitive edge, an easier time introducing new products, and enhanced credibility.
- Clearly define your brand’s purpose
- Research and differentiate your brand from the competition
- Define your target market
- Develop your brand’s mission statement
- Discover your brand’s benefits
- Establish your brand’s voice
- Build your brand’s story
- Create logos and taglines
Content
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of content marketers say they don’t have a content strategy, yet those who do consistently rate their efforts as far more successful. But, what is content marketing? Content marketing is the process of creating and circulating valuable, relevant information and experiences to a defined and targeted audience with the goal of driving them to eventually perform a profitable action.
When creating a content strategy, consider the following:
- Set sustainable goals that align with your company’s mission and vision
- Differentiate your brand from competitors by finding your “one thing
- Decide how to track your metrics
- Target your audience and understand who you’re talking to
- Research what your audience needs at each stage of the sales funnel
- Decide what to reuse or repurpose
- Create a content calendar
Design
While some may argue that design and marketing function separately, their goal is the same and more easily attained when working together. Marketing drives interest in the brand while design communicates the brand through impressions.
In addition to color palettes, fonts, icons, symbols, mascots, and packaging – design provides creative assets that become representative of the company to consumers and part of the brand’s overall personality. As previously discussed, 89% of B2B marketers say brand awareness is their most important goal and one in which design plays a major role requiring its own unique strategy. Keep in mind, the purpose of the strategy is to merge the company’s business objective with imaginative solutions and aesthetics that express the brand’s philosophy.
- Existing problems and ongoing challenges
- Current benefits and successes to be leveraged
- Unmet client/customer needs
- Changing client/customer behaviors and attitudes
- Emerging ideas and trends
- Opportunities to differentiate
Social Media Advertising
As a business operating in the year 2020, you no doubt understand the importance of executing a solid social media strategy However, you’re probably frustrated by the steep decline in your brand’s organic post reach. Does that mean you should abandon your company’s social media accounts to focus on other types of marketing? Absolutely not, it simply means it’s time to social, smarter!
According to Statista, by the year 2021, nearly 3.1 billion people will be using social media worldwide. Your customers ARE on social media, your goal is to find a better way to reach them!
Paid social media advertising is the most cost-effective form of advertising available today – what other medium exposes your brand to over 1,000 people for less than $3 – and is by far the most efficient way to put your products in front of your target audience. However, without a thoughtful social media advertising strategy, you’re just throwing money out the window.
- Define your campaign objective
- Research the best social platforms to attain your goals
- Create usable target audiences
- Blend your ads with organic content
- Understand the different ad formats
- Utilize a specific funnel for leads from your ads
- Optimize your bidding strategy
- Test and refresh ad content
SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is a scary term for many business owners because it feels like an abstract concept – but make no mistake – SEO is quite concrete and the way in which your customers find you instead of your competition.
Internet users type 5.8 billion inquiries into search engines like Google and Bing every day. Think of how many opportunities these searches create for customers to find your business if you’re ranking in your industry and/or area. Now for the stuff that makes your eyes glaze over – though they won’t provide the entire recipe, Google has admitted to using over 200 ranking signals when determining organic search page rankings, all of which are determined by their algorithm and crawl data.
And while it’s not necessary to understand the technical aspect of Google’s data systems, it’s imperative to your business that you comprehend and apply the ranking elements – like security, links, authority, intent, and tagging – to your website. The best way to be found on the Internet is to begin with an SEO marketing plan inclusive of:
- Taking inventory of your marketing materials
- Conducting an SEO audit
- Outlining important metrics and goals
- Add content assets and scheduling to a calendar
- Target off-page SEO channels as well
- Utilize and understand an analytics report
- Keyword research
- Optimizing every aspect of your website including images, tags, and headings
- Maintaining a high-performance site
- Content creation
- User-friendliness of your site
Now you have the 5 marketing strategies to tackle in 2020! If they’re leaving you feeling overwhelmed, (you do have a business to run after all) don’t sweat it! Reach out and we’ll help you with all of these and more – because our business exists to help yours grow!
