Is it just us, or is the start of a new year always a magical time? There’s an exciting sense of possibility like everything we do could be the start of a wonderful adventure or success.
The great thing about a new year is that it allows you a bird’s eye view into a fresh perspective and puts your marketing at the forefront of your business goals. Hopefully, like us, you’re taking the opportunity to set intentions for your business and marketing (as well as planning to run a marathon, perhaps!). This is a great time to reset and refresh your marketing strategy.
If this sounds like a tremendous job, it’s not! You don’t have to start with a blank slate, but take inspiration from an expert – yourself! When it comes to planning marketing goals, the power of hindsight is vital. This is why you need a New Year marketing refresh to start the new decade the way you mean to go on – with innovation, SMART goals, and a creative outlook.
What exactly is a marketing refresh?
Approach this as you might approach a massive house clearout (another thing we always get the urge to do at the start of the new year) or even a new look or clearing out your closet. When you clear the contents of your home, you find a lot of stuff you want to donate, sure, and you also find a lot of stuff you want to keep that maybe you’d even forgotten about. Similarly, how many times have you proudly come home with a gorgeous new floral dress only to find one pretty much the same hiding in your closet?
When you find this stuff you want to keep, all you need to do is give it a quick update. Maybe you start wearing that old party dress with a sweater to make a cute skirt or give that dresser a lick of paint. A refresh isn’t about throwing everything out and then getting brand-new stuff; it’s about letting go of things that no longer serve a purpose and hanging on to those that still work.
We know you recognize this approach from refreshing your home, closet, office space, or even yourself, so apply it to your marketing. Trust us; it’ll give you a significant motivational boost going into a new year of business.
If this all sounds great, but you’re wondering where even to start, we have two all-important words for you: marketing analytics. We cannot overstate the importance of analytics and the marketing insights you get from them. This is the equivalent of pulling everything out of your closets and cabinets and taking stock of what you have. It’s fascinating and time-consuming, and 100% necessary.
We know a lot of times in life, the advice is ‘don’t look back.’ Here, we’re going to spin that advice around because if you want to improve your strategy and reach those marketing goals, you need to look backward to move forward.
Your marketing analytics are vital because they’ll give you key insights you might miss. By insights, we mean a more thorough understanding of what your audience wants. Not what you want, what your competitors are doing, or even what you assume your audience wants – but what they engage with. What’s driving them to take action on your social media posts, blog content, and email marketing? The answers could surprise you, but then you work with them.
This is your springboard for a marketing refresh. From seeing what your audience responds to, you can analyze the gaps between your marketing objectives and reality. We then work to bridge those gaps with our budgets. A key question you’ll have to answer as part of your research is how to determine the right budget to move forward. Giving your marketing goals a financial context allows you to make intelligent decisions.
How do you move forward after your initial look into the past? Well, that’s up to you! It might be about a new look, re-framed messaging, or a deep dive into your user experience. Whatever it is, keep your overall marketing goals clear, and we’re sure it’ll reap the rewards.
BONUS TIP:
If you’re looking for somewhere to start your marketing refresh, we’d recommend starting with content pillars. These are essentially a way of organizing your content around your business’s core themes, which is super helpful when planning content and strengthens your SEO.
It might sound like a lot of work but remember; you already have a lot of the content; it’s simply a matter of organizing it into pillars and pillar pages. The perfect example of an effective marketing refresh!
Think about how energized you feel after completing your start-of-year home clearout or getting that new haircut. Now imagine that great feeling applied to your marketing strategy! So let’s get started and meet our marketing goals with verve!