5 Big Marketing Resolutions to Start the New Year Off with a Bang

Now that all the bubbly and confetti has subsided, you’ve probably thought about some New Year’s resolutions. Maybe it’s the usual – spending time with family, acquiring new interests and hobbies, eating less pizza and beer (maybe, but not likely for us!), but have you thought about what you’d like to accomplish this year in 2014 in terms of marketing? Just like any other New Year’s resolution, now is the perfect time to start thinking of what you’d like to accomplish and find success with this year – and we can help! Here are five marketing resolutions to make 2014 as good as or even better than 2013.

Refresh Your Buyer Personas

First, to help build your new marketing initiatives, the beginning of the year is the perfect time to define or refresh your buyer persona. Figuring out your buyer persona can help take your marketing to a whole new level because it helps you understand who you’re targeting for content marketing, offers, email, social strategies, search engine marketing – everything! Hubspot has a great template to help you get starting on creating your buyer persona. Even going old school with focus groups and online surveys is a great way to not only find out more about your customers, but how your brand is being represented.

Create More Content Marketing

This is a big one. With new updates last year to Google algorithms (panda, penguin, and hummingbird), the importance of content marketing is expected to grow even more this year. Creating high-quality content will mean much more to your search engine rankings and to your readers. In order to attract and acquire as many leads as possible, including content in the form of blogs, infographics, video, eBooks, and press releases is the way to go. To help you out, Hubspot introduced a new 30 day blogging program to get you blogging and seeing results within the next month. Don’t have time or the staff? We offer content marketing services for any type of business in any industry.

Focus on Mobile

We’ve read over and over again that past years 2012 and 2013 were THE year of mobile. Well, folks, if those years were all about mobile, 2014 will be even more so. Now is the time to start thinking about setting up those local marketing initiatives that can capture those leads and visitors fast on their mobile devices. The first step is ensuring that your email campaigns and your website are web responsive, meaning that they fit seamlessly and look consistently good across all tablet and mobile devices.

Additionally, you’ll want to make sure that keywords for both search engine optimization and your pay-per-click advertising campaigns incorporate local and longtail keywords.

Humanize Your Brand

Talk like a human to reach out to a human. That’s our motto here and it’s something we can help preaching because it works! Focus on really building and nurturing client and customer relationships this year and you’ll see true results that can inspire a better outlook on your brand and a whole new handful of loyal brand evangelists. Humanizing your brand is can be as simple as creating great content that’s helpful and useful to your audience, posting company photos and updates that show off your brand personality, and reaching out and responding to online comments and ratings made about your company by customers as soon as possible. After all, customers demand R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The more you can speak to them on an even playing field, the better they’ll respond to your products and services.

The point of humanizing is to show the human side of your brand – the honest, (sometimes imperfect), transparent side in order to reach out and relate to your customers. Owning up to mistakes (that are often inevitable), and acknowledging issues is better for your business in the long-run than acting cold or calculated. It’s so important for brands this year to welcome feedback and work through issues with customers who are speaking out more than ever on those social media platforms and online rating websites. Take a look at our reputation management services if you’re needing help with finding where those online conversations are taking place about your brand.

Revamp Social and Email Strategies

The hotshots of social media are as follows: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest (for the moment at least).

With this New Year upon us, it’s time to take a good hard look at which of these platforms work the best for your business and industry and strategize accordingly to get you great ROI. These changes could be just as simple as changing out a cover photo or adjusting the amount or timing of posts. We recommend fine-tuning your social media strategies for these hot shot platforms before trying any new social media platforms on the horizon.

If you’d like an in-depth walk-through of your current marketing initiatives, feel free to download the your own 32-page marketing assessment for free! 

About Small Screen Producer

Small Screen Producer is a full service, marketing firm located in Houston, Texas that specializes in online digital media marketing through a 4-step process. Step 1: WE PLAN a custom web presence strategy for your business through website design and development, mobile development, social media account creation and branding. STEP 2: We then POSITION your brand through Pay-Per-Click advertising and search engine optimize tactics that include on-page and off-page SEO that are Google and Bing approved. STEP 3: We then PROMOTE your brand using an Inbound marketing strategy or a content marketing strategy to help you accomplish your marketing goals. We do this through blogging, video production, infographics, call-to-actions, landing pages, and free educational offers. We help you build trust and rapport with your customer base. STEP 4: We then PROTECT your brand’s web presence with a reputation management program that monitors social media and on line reviews. Get started today with a free online marketing assessment of your company’s web presence. Your company deserves it.