Marketing Focus – New Year, new opportunities for success
Happy New Year everyone! We hope you had a great Christmas and managed to take a break and recharge those batteries. Take advantage of the start of the New Year to give yourself a marketing shake down and refresh. This is the chance to reflect, review, plan and act for success! Here are a few tips on how to make 2018 a brilliant year for your business:
Step 1 – Evaluate, review & reflect – Look back on last year and properly evaluate your business’ performance, not simply on face value or just on your bank balance, but also in terms of hours spent on each project, difficulties you encountered on any given revenue stream and also the projects that gave you most fulfilment. It’s the right time to reflect if you would be happy to have another year like 2017 or not. If you would, then think how to sustain this positive curve, if not then what should you change for more success.
Step 2 – Plan for Success – Having an in depth marketing plan will help you to clarify your objectives, understand your company, customers and competition and create an action plan for marketing your business with deadlines and people who will be held accountable for the actions. Take the time to make a proper plan if you want to promote your company effectively, it is an invaluable business tool.
Step 3 – Work smart – Make the most of your resources and concentrate your efforts on tasks that generate the most income and give you the most satisfaction.
Step 4 – Be up to date with the trends – There are a number of interesting trends to watch and keep up with this year to make the most of your marketing, here are just a few –
Brands strive for more personalization – We love being spoken to as a person, not as a number, and with giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Google serving us only relevant information, marketers are following suit with more segmentation and smarter marketing to deliver the most relevant content and marketing messages to the right people. Think how you can do this for your business.
More people are searching using their voice and so brands are responding by optimising content for voice search with long tail search phrases. Predictions are that 50% of people will be using voice search by 2020, so this is one we can’t ignore.
Don’t ignore Instagram – Engagement is amazing on Instagram and it’s growing fast, so expect more brands to take notice of this social media channel this year and more brands looking to influencer marketing to increase their reach to Millennials
More live events – Two-thirds of marketers plan to increase live events this year as it’s one of their most effective marketing channels. We’re delighted to see that huge modern companies such as Airbnb and Google make it a priority to host live events and bring people together to supplement their online marketing and know that this has always been a good option for marketing on the Costa del Sol.
B2B marketing online – LinkedIn will grow in power and favour amongst B2B marketers, while Twitter fades. For media outreach we still find Twitter a very useful tool, but agree that LinkedIn is a brilliant, targeted marketing tool to reach potential clients.
Demanding customers increase – Customers will continue to expect more and brands need to respond to delight them or risk losing them to competitors. How will you delight your clients this year?
Trends taken from the 18 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2018 from Entrepreneur Read the full article
If you need our help to market your business in 2018 please get in touch, we can support companies on the Costa del Sol with everything from branding to advertising, online and offline marketing and PR. As a full service marketing agency, we can work with you to develop the right strategy to make your company visible, attract more clients and improve your chances of success.
We wish you every success in 2018 and look forward to a fantastic year for Shaw Marketing Services. We celebrate our 10th birthday this April and will be marking the occassion with plenty of activities and helpful marketing information, so watch this space.