It’s always a good idea to assess your digital marketing plan year on year, see what worked and what didn’t.
Planning your digital marketing will give you the best chance to build successful digital strategies for the upcoming year. But on which areas should you focus your resources? There are so many, and it can be hard to know where your attention will pay. In the same way that you need a map when you’re on a road trip, you really do need a planned approach to developing a digital marketing plan. It requires a little time and attention to create solid strategies, but you can get a jump-start on the New Year with just these couple of activities.
Gather Data On What You Did In The Last Year
In particular, you should be looking for how much money you spent on digital marketing, how much time you spent, what kind of marketing you did, and what the final results were. Your goal here is to determine what sort of marketing has been working for you. Anything that didn’t work is right out unless you have a good reason to keep doing it. For example, most inbound marketing campaigns will take six to nine months to really start showing a profit – so if you only started one in October, it makes sense to keep it going.
Analytics is an excellent way to obtain this information. If you haven’t implemented Google Analytics yet, that should be the very first thing on your to-do list. Seriously, don’t even finish writing this marketing plan – go get that installed right now. It really is that important.
Revamp your website
You may have put a lot of time, money, and effort into making a spectacular homepage, but now that you have refreshed your digital marketing plan and revitalized your content strategy give your homepage a much-needed facelift. Even if you haven’t completely changed your marketing strategy, there may be some changes you’ve neglected to make like updating new services or products. Your webpage is an important place to let your current and future clients know about the NEW and IMPROVED you. Talk to us about revamping your home or landing pages
Do some Market Research
When you decide what it is you’re going to achieve with your digital marketing plan, it is important to do your research. Be sure to educate yourself on your target market, potential competition and how to make your goals reachable and measurable.
Focus on Inbound Marketing
If your budget is currently geared towards billboards, print, and/or radio you may want to reallocate your budget. Studies have shown that outbound marketing is a thing of the past. Now more than ever, leads are being generated from inbound efforts. This could mean doubling on your content writing to develop quality blog posts, newsletters, or other types of content relevant to your business.
Don’t be afraid of change.
Taking on new digital marketing campaigns can be scary. In fact, you may have already shaken things up last year, and it didn’t quite pan out. This may make you think twice about pushing forward and exploring even more new routes but what can you gain by doing the same thing you’ve already done? If you devote the time to analyzing previous marketing plans, you can target areas that need improvement to predict results and reduce or eliminate your risk. Smart, evidence-based changes will give you an advantage this year.
