New Year, New You: Updating Your Marketing for 2017

In this day and age, your marketing team seems to always be in your office pitching you the latest and greatest technique to reach your customers. If you’ve been hesitant for a total restructuring of your brand and strategy, utilizing the New Year holiday spirit might be the perfect motivation for you and your team! Before we jump into the creating a new strategy, make sure that you are ready to budget for marketing success in 2017. Having both the manpower and the financial means to remake your marketing strategy, or at least be aware of your boundaries is important before turning too creative. Luckily there are many online platforms that can help you with designing both online and in store, without costing you an arm and a leg. In this article we will cover updating your writing to reflect today’s customer’s attention span, refreshing your online look from blog to local traffic, and reviewing your target audience while updating the journey they take to reach your products.

If you have been paying attention to marketing trends, or even advertisements on TV, social media, and email campaigning, then you have probably noticed that they are short, sweet, and to the point. This is a direct reflective of the attention span your average demographic has, typically around 30-60 seconds. With so many sources of information and lightning speed access to it, consumers want to be able to get what they want, when they want it, fast. If you are pulling out your hair trying to create the perfect marketing verbiage for your products, or how-to instruction pages, don’t fret, there are a few simple tips that will help you create excellent content for your site.

Make the text scannable, if your viewer can’t find what they want immediately, they are more likely to move onto another page instead of spending time looking at your content for their answer. Nowadays don’t expect everyone to read all the way through. Stick to simple writing formats, when it comes to demonstrating a point, be brief and concise. On average your consumer is not going to read over 980 words, even if they are truly interested in what you have to offer, especially if it’s not in a format they can easily scan. And finally, know who you are talking to, perhaps the most important part of an article is the tone. Make sure that you are using updated lingo, hitting on trends, and empathizing with your customer’s needs and interests.

But it’s not just the article style and tone that matters, it’s about the visual that will first perk their interest, before they decide to dive into the content. Aesthetics matter, to your business and your narrative. If your logo, site, or even your business cards are looking out of date then it’s time for an upgrade. If your clientele base is high-tier executives, your branding should have clean lines, simply designed fonts, and imagery that draws the line through modern, bold looks and relevant colors. If you aren’t loving the look of your own site, then you can be sure that your customers aren’t loving it either. You can either creep up on the New Year, by slowly changing fonts, then images, then content, or create an unveiling of your new brand to be released all at once on the first of the New Year. As the rest of us are committing to juice cleanses to get our new look, in the same way, you can unveil your new site to show your company is an ever-adapting brand. Consumers today want to see that brands can move forward with them and their aesthetic preferences. If you find yourself wondering why you are repeating looks from the 1990s to please your demographic, then just think of it as revitalizing the past. We mentioned that your online look isn’t the only important aspect of your blogs look. You should also consider really looking into your local traffic. Is your site compatible with Google’s new algorithms that allow for local businesses to get more of their own communities traffic? Back in 2014, Google gave us all the ability to search stores near your current location on a constantly updating map which showcased local businesses, but it was up to the business to optimize their site to ensure they are receiving traffic. Doing one simple tweak to your site can significantly increase your local traffic. The easiest thing is to make sure your local page has the local content and address. Are there driving directions? A local phone number? Employee spotlights and reviews? Are there unique things about the area that are noteworthy and finally, are locals reviewing specific products or services? Including these things on your site will quickly increase local traffic. The harder thing to do is recreating your content to reflect a unique narrative that focuses around your town for Google to identify. Bolster this content with local citations that mention your business. Were you reviewed in a local paper? If so, include reputable links to it on your site.

Before you start making all these improvements and changes, take a moment to consider who exactly are you talking to? Look at your demographic and assess if it matches up with what your original target demographic is. Pulling your data from 2016 will provide more insight on how you and your company is doing in advertising. If it shows that you were a little off on your demographic, or that you can achieve an even more specific target audience take a moment to map the journey of your customer. In your company’s ideal world, how are your customers coming to your store or site, what are they experiencing, purchasing, and then saying about the experience? Whether you take a moment to ask customers themselves or use satisfaction data already pulled, in any good marketing strategy the demographic and how they experience your brand is going to be a central part to shaping 2017.

With the New Year comes many new ways to make your business even more successful. Whether you are considering a total rebrand or just thinking of tweaking a few aspects, make changes with your customers’ desires and needs in mind to accomplish true growth in the New Year. With enough preparation and the manpower behind you, your company can create a fantastic new marketing strategy for your already excellent products or services!