Between Covid, the election, and murder hornets, we’re all ready for a fresh start in 2021, am I right? We can agree that the unpredictability in 2020 had an impact on our society; fundamentally changing the way we market. According to AdExchanger, digital ad spend grew 6% in 2020 despite the pandemic. While we anticipate a stabilization in 2021, it’s a good time to evaluate your marketing strategy for the new year.
We’ve compiled a shortlist of key points to consider in preparation for success in 2021.
Conduct An Audit
Deep dive into everything starting with an evaluation of all your marketing performance YTD. Can you break down what channels worked for you in 2020 and which did not? Now is the time to be critical! This is what makes us good marketers; fail fast and make changes for optimal growth in the new year. Once you know where everything sits, breakdown what you want to do next year based on your data. We recommend dedicating 70% of your budget to what works, 20% to what looks promising and has potential, and finally 10% to try something new.
Next, audit your marketing technology. Have you outgrown your email marketing platform? Are you ready for a more robust social publisher? Is everything working as expected? Are your costs in-line for the benefit of your tech? Need help? Check out this post from Intercom.com on the ultimate marketing technology stack for 2020 to see where you might make changes for the better.
Analyze your website. This is a tough one because EVERYONE has an opinion about your website. Ask yourself this question: What is the number one goal of my website? Is your current website meeting that goal? If not, it may be time for a reset. The Hot Jar has a very thorough blog series on how to perform a website evaluation. You might be surprised at some quick fixes you can make towards better performance.
Spend some time reviewing your social profiles. Do you have a rogue Pinterest account you’re not using? Maybe your LinkedIn page needs updated branding. How did your socials perform over the last year? Ever consider reducing your social channels to the ones that have the most impact? Think through what you could be doing more of in social and what might have to shift in order to do those things well or better.
And last but not least check in on your brand. We get caught up in sales, social followers, leads (all things growth) in the early stages that brand sometimes takes a back seat. Remember that brand is how your customers connect to you, remember you, choose you, and share you. While you may lack resources for branding in the early stages, you should always be thinking about its importance to the bigger picture.
Start by looking at your messaging as a whole. Does everyone talk consistently about the brand? Is the message clear? Does the message communicate well from your salespeople, to the website to your emails? Perhaps you want to take time to reset on your overall positioning to improve messaging. An exercise like this could have a huge impact.
Next think through your logo, fonts, palette. Do they still represent your brand personality? Do they feel outdated? Are you using them consistently? Have any members of your team started to improperly use the assets? Remember, this actually hurts the brand in the long run. Take the right steps to keep things in line so you can continue to grow.
What can you do that won’t break the bank but will help you, as we like to say, uplevel. Need some more about branding? Check out our blog post: To Brand or Not To Brand.
Establish Goals and KPIs
I know, you’re probably rolling your eyes but without goals, you have nowhere to go! You should be using the overall company goals (i.e. Revenue, new deals, retention) to plan out your marketing goals. Once you have these, it’s easy to set your marketing budget. If you can establish a cost per lead, you can put a marketing budget together working back from your lead goals and cost per lead.
Sample marketing conversion funnel from fivefoottwo marketing.
PRO TIP: GOALS AND KPIs ARE NOT THE SAME THING
A goal is the desired result while a KPI or key performance indicator is the means by which you will measure your progress. For example - a goal would be to increase website traffic by 10% and the KPI you would use to measure that goal is unique pageviews.
So what KPIs are important? It’s easy to get bogged down with all the numbers and acronyms but here’s the short answer - KPIs should be dictated by your goal (see the example above). We love this ultimate guide to marketing metrics from Marketo.
Take Risks
Marketing is a combination of the things you know work, things you are learning to optimize and the things you are willing to test - and take risks on! As mentioned at the start of this post, we always recommend to reserve a small portion of your budget to test some of your wild ideas. Here are a few to get you started:
In lieu of an in-person event, consider sending a drizzly gift card along with an invite to a virtual party. Have you seen all the great new virtual party apps? I don’t mean appetizers! There’s more to virtual than zoom guys. Check these out:
Create a unique creative campaign that only your target audience would relate to that you’ve always wanted to try. Make it mysterious, suspenseful, exciting. Surprise and delight!
Shift some budget to a guerrilla tactic that could potentially drive earned media
This all sounds great and you are ready to to right? Or maybe you need a little more guidance…don’t worry! We’re here to help! Contact us for a free marketing analysis or visit our blog for more insights. And cheers to a new year!