What was that? Did you say 2023? Yes! While you may still be chugging full steam ahead on implementing your 2022 strategic marketing plan, it’s now time to start planning for what brand goals you want to accomplish in 2023 and create a marketing budget accordingly.
Increase Video Capacity
If you have spent ANY time on social media lately, you will have noticed a steep uptick in the posting of short-form videos by creators. It all started at the beginning of the pandemic when people were banished to their homes and had more time to create videos. TikTok became the number one downloaded app in 2020.
TikTok became so popular that it started stealing traffic from Instagram, so Instagram rolled out Reels to compete. And other social media platforms are following suit. The message is: Content viewers like short-form video and it should become a part of your regular social media marketing content.
Don’t stress, though! Generation Z and other social media viewers don’t expect perfection in their videos. As a matter of fact, they like it better when the content is more relatable. And they like it when there is a mix of different types of video content. Example: don’t always have a person talking to the camera…have some animated videos, have some videos with words….you get the idea. Just make sure you budget for the amount of time it takes to create video and the money involved.
Use Big Data
Data is more important than ever to use in making marketing decisions. If your marketing team hasn’t started migrating over to Google Analytics 4 for your website analytics, they should start now. Google Analytics Universal will no longer be available as of July 1, 2023, and all past data for your website will only be available for another 6 months past this date. Be sure to have them download all important historical data before this.
Most companies have their marketing data tied into a CMS like Salesforce or HubSpot. Data such as online purchase data, click-through rates, browsing behavior, social media interactions, mobile device usage, geolocation data, etc., can all be sifted through to look for trends and patterns and to help guide marketers and team leaders to better understand what’s working and where to head next. (To learn more about how Hubspot can help you, read our previous blog, “How to Migrate Your Website to Hubspot.”)
- Customer engagement. Big data can deliver insight into not just who your customers are but where they are, what they want, how they want to be contacted, and when.
- Customer retention and loyalty. Big data can help you discover what influences customer loyalty and what keeps them coming back again and again.
- Marketing optimization/performance. With big data, you can determine the optimal marketing spend across multiple channels, as well as continuously optimize marketing programs through testing, measurement, and analysis.
For a more overarching view on how using big data can help your strategic marketing, check out this previous FPS blog to learn more about creating a data-driven marketing strategy.
Focus on Growth Marketing Tactics
Growth marketing focuses on customer relationship building and fostering loyalty. Unlike trying to make a single viral video, it’s more of a long-term strategy focused on brand authenticity and engagement with the core audience to create a community of brand advocates that continues to grow.
Instead of trying to draw in new customers with a PR-fluffy sale, focus on a long-term marketing strategy that is targeted toward helping your core audience.
- Focus on a content marketing strategy that puts out bi-monthly blogs with helpful tips for those in your industry.
- Create a monthly email newsletter that includes these blogs, as well as industry news.
- Create free downloadable whitepapers and ebooks for your audience that shows your industry expertise and thought leadership and that will really help those in your target market.
Your audience will buy from you because they will see you know what you are talking about and that you have helped them for free. Try it!
You can also host some free webinars or Facebook Live or LinkedIn Live Q&A sessions and those can then lead to paid seminars or training, perhaps. Or if your goal is to get new SAAS clients, it can lead to some of those. Paid advertisements can help your content reach potential new clients.
Other growth marketing tactics include loyalty programs and referral programs. Campaigns promoting offerings like “exclusive access,” ”sneak previews,'' or the like validate ongoing loyalty to your brand. Look at historical customer conversions and reinforce those with segmented loyalty campaigns.
Nielsen (you know, the big data company?) found that 83 percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other source of advertising, so a strong referral can serve as powerful social proof for engaging new users. Look to successful SaaS brands for examples of best-in-class referral programs: Dropbox, for example, began offering a two-sided referral program in which both the current user and the referred user received 500MB of storage space for free upon the referred user's signup.
Focus on Mobile-First Design
When is it time to redesign your website? Experts say nowadays that every 2-3 years should be the schedule. In the past, companies spent large sums of money for a website to be designed and implemented, then didn’t touch it for 10 years. Those days are now in the past.
One of the major reasons behind this is the comeuppance of cell phones and their center focus in our daily lives. We use them for work. We use them for play. We use them back and forth all day long and they never leave our sides. Two billion people per year access website from mobile devices. Therefore, if your company’s website isn’t designed to look good and work well on the small screens of mobile devices, it is likely affecting your sales and is definitely affecting your reputation.
Do customers want to buy from a company that isn’t keeping up with technology and is obviously behind the times? Likely not. Especially the younger, tech-savvy generations. Since a company’s website is your primary face to the world, it’s important that your website is redesigned and updated on a regular basis to look and work the best on the newest device sizes.
Mobile-first design is exactly that…designing for the smallest screens first and then working your way up to larger-size screens like desktop and laptop computers. This empowers designers to focus on the core functions. When they focus on the core and strip away the rest, they are able to pinpoint the most important user experience components. Then, as they begin designing for larger screens, they can add additional elements to compliment the core functions.
Take a serious look at incorporating these four marketing tactics in your 2023 marketing budget. We here at FPS want to see you succeed. Whether it’s beefing up your content marketing strategy or getting started on video, we can help.
