25 Mar 4 Tips For Updating Your Marketing Strategy
If you can’t remember when you last worked on your marketing strategy, it might just be time to give it a refresh. Updating your marketing strategy should be a task you tackle regularly because the business landscape changes constantly. How can you ensure that you’re meeting your customers where they’re at when you’re using a marketing plan from a decade ago? Below, we share some tips for updating your marketing strategy for better results.
Start with a Good Foundation
Before you even look at your marketing plan, you need data. Too many small businesses make decisions based on their guesses and intuition rather than basing them on facts. You may think you get great engagement on Facebook, but do you really? Are all the likes on Instagram translating to sales or action?
Go through all of your analytics, all of your demographics, and collect any cold, hard numbers that you can bring to the table to assess how your current marketing strategy is performing. You don’t want to fix something that isn’t broken, but you also don’t want to leave something in place that’s not serving you well. With facts in hand, you’re better prepared to make the right decisions for your business.
Audit Your Social Media Profiles
Let’s face it—there’s no time waster like social media. Outside of the office, you find yourself scrolling mindlessly while eating dinner or when you should be doing something productive with your time. It’s also easy to let it waste your time when it comes to marketing your business.
There’s a pervasive myth that in order to be “good” at social media, you have to set up shop on every platform. Today this means TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, but not all too long ago it was Periscope, Vine, Pinterest, and Facebook—and before that, your digital marketing guru might have recommended Flickr, Google+, and del.icio.us. We can’t emphasize how wrong this approach is.
You need to focus on the platforms that feel authentic to your business and where your customers are. Don’t spin your wheels trying to create viral content for TikTok for your insurance company; instead, invest in some targeted ads on Facebook where your customers are more likely to find you. While it can be tempting to look at a platform where you’re not performing well and throw more money at it in an attempt to improve, you’re actually better off investing that money in a platform where you’re getting results.
Reassess Your Content Marketing Strategy
If you don’t have a blog already, add that to your updated marketing plan. If you do have a blog, it’s time to evaluate your content marketing efforts and tweak as needed. Just like with social media, if you’re seeing good results on certain topics, double down on them and build more content around them. Eliminate any series or topics that aren’t pulling traffic and introduce one or two new types of posts or topics to keep things fresh and see how they perform with your customers and Google.
This is also a great opportunity to find posts in your archives that could be updated with new images, current information, or better writing. Publish these as new posts throughout the year, re-sharing them in your newsletters and on social media.
Do an SEO Deep Dive
Search engine algorithms change all the time, which means your website needs to change with them. Currently, Google is placing a great deal of emphasis on the performance of websites. Does your website take forever to load? Is it difficult to navigate? Do you only have a desktop version of your site? Investing in a website redesign might be a good idea.
Next, look at your rankings in the SERPs and your keywords. Are there new keywords you should be targeting? Where are you performing well and where are you lagging behind your competitors? Even if you’re a small business with a limited budget, we recommend working with a qualified SEO firm to develop a digital marketing strategy. You might have to implement it yourself to save money, but you’ll have a solid plan to work from, which is essential.
Don’t Hesitate to Ask for Help Updating Your Marketing Strategy
Related to that last point, don’t hesitate to reach out to a marketing professional if you need assistance. Marketing is one of the best investments you can make in your business. To learn more about how our team at Spencer Lewis can help with your marketing strategy, contact us today at 909-945-5247.