Let the countdown begin – only 5 more days until 2013! With the New Year right around the corner, it’s time to start planning ahead for your 2013 marketing goals. Here are some initial steps to take when preparing your marketing plan for the New Year:
- Evaluate the 2012: What were your goals for 2012 – did you achieve them? What strategies worked well for you and what didn’t? A new year is also a time to evaluate your business and your target client – has it changed? Are you hoping to grow and expand? Knowing the types of clients you’ll be targeting over the next year is crucial to the success of your new marketing plan.
- Create and Update Your Marketing Budget: What were your costs last year – did you track them? If you did you need to review what you’ve spent and if you were on target. If you didn’t have one – you need to create a 12-month Marketing Budget which should include everything from new marketing collateral you’ll need, to updated photography, as well as promotional needs and advertising costs. Having a budget laid out in advance will help you track your progress over the course of 2013.
- Follow-up on Leads: Do you have any outstanding leads that you’ve pushed aside until now? Clients will be looking to put their new marketing budget into place and following-up with a lead this time of year will put you front-of-mind for next year.
- Update Your Website: While updating your website throughout the year should be a consistent priority – use the New Year as an excuse to update old dates, news, images and content.
- Explore Search Engine Optimization for Your Website: If you’re not ranking high enough on search engines – the harder it will be for potential clients to find you. This is where the importance of SEO comes in. If you’re stuck on SEO, Elements can help, give us a call or email us – we use the most effective optimization techniques and determine important keywords, build links and create content that will draw in a larger audience and help get your company to the top of the search engines.
- Create a Blog Content Calendar – (or start a blog!): If your company doesn’t have a blog, now’s the time to start one. If you do have a blog – creating a blog content calendar will to help keep your posting schedule on track. Here at Elements – we create a monthly content calendar that keeps a consistent stream of content flowing of our blog. A content calendar can include specific topics for each day/week as well the person that will be posting and updating.
- Set Up or Update Social Media Profiles: If you’ve been dragging your heels on setting up a social media platform for your business – don’t wait any longer! If you already have a social media site, start updating the platform just as you would update your website. If there is an avenue of social media that you haven’t yet explored – Linkedin, Google+, Pinterest etc, and start looking into these sites that may be beneficial to your business.
- Create a Social Media Content Calendar: A social media calendar is much like the blog content calendar. You can create weekly or monthly (or more) list of ideas and content for your social media channels. This calendar can include various promotions or topics that you will highlight that day/week/month.
- Start a Client Wish List: Write down a list of one or two potential clients you’d like to target each month. Then write down ideas on how you can approach them and what types resources you’ll need to achieve it. Keeping a written list of these names will help you keep them front-of-mind.
- Build a 3 Month Marketing Plan: You can’t measure if you don’t plan – I live by this phrase. Creating a quarterly marketing plan will help you stay on target for your short-term goals. When creating this list have your “every month” goals and then also specific goals for each month.
Ready to get started? Don’t fear, Elements is here – if you’re in need of SEO, social media, website or marketing needs – Elements can help. We’re a full service agency that provides a full range of creative services for all of your marketing communications needs. Call us at 203.776.1323 or email us at studio@elementsdesign.com to find out more about our services.
~Allyson
