04 Dec How to Prepare for Digital Marketing in 2019
Looking forward to 2019 will prepare your digital marketing efforts for the new year while helping your business finish 2018 strong. While there are often competing priorities this time of year, it’s important to think about your goals for the next year. If you don’t spend time thinking about your business’ growth in 2019, it’s easy to fall behind or stay stagnant. A big part of business growth comes down to getting the word out, which boils down to client referrals… and digital marketing!
Let’s use this all-too-common story as an example to illustrate stagnant business growth.
Thanksgiving through New Years is always a hectic time, personally and professionally. Family is in town while your company is putting on its largest sale of the year on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and it may seem like there’s no time to slow down before the end of the year. However, January marks a traditional slump for business. After the holiday season, customers want to save money, join a gym for a month or two, and stop making impulse buys. January becomes a slow month, then Q1 turns into a slow quarter. You panic and put on another huge sale to give your business a much-needed boost.
Does this sound familiar? While there’s nothing inherently wrong this story, what if you could break out of the usual cycle and see increased profits all year long?
Here’s how to prepare your digital marketing campaigns for January 2019.
Look back.
Taking a look at your historical sales and campaigns during January gives you a benchmark to build off of. If your business is new, think of it as creative freedom to run a new kind of campaign or try a different advertising method. Always build your campaigns based on your target audience first (and no, that doesn’t have to mean only current customers). Here are some types of questions to ask yourself to determine what worked and what can be improved.
- Which channel performed best? Ex. Did email marketing perform better than social media?
- Does your target market live in a specific geographic area that you could host an event in?
- Does your target market love other brands that you could do a social media giveaway with to gain more exposure and similar customers?
Build brand awareness.
Even if your customers aren’t ready to make a purchase during the first few days of January 2019, this is a great time to strengthen your marketing funnel and build upon your existing audience. Give your loyal customers a break. Instead, seek out lookalike audiences, secondary audiences, or new locations to reach your primary audience with geo-targeted ads. Ask yourself if there’s a large group of people that makes purchases from our company that you’re not actively marketing to.
Create goals.
Getting clear on your goals for the next year can be as complicated as you’d like it to be. It can be as high-level as a yearly sales target, or as granular as daily impressions and a defined marketing funnel. However you define your goals, they will keep your monthly efforts focused so you know exactly how to measure campaign successes and failures.
Start fresh.
If you’ve been using the same images and techniques in your marketing for the last 5+ years, it could be time for an update. With new web design best practices, social media trends, and an ever-evolving digital world, it’s important to do occasional updates. Put your best foot forward in 2019 with a website redesign, new logo, or a new take on your digital strategy.