Improving Your Marketing Strategy For 2019

It’s a new year so it’s time to start over. That means getting rid of everything and having a fresh start, right? Not exactly. Just because you didn’t see the results you wanted from 2018 doesn’t mean it’s time to give up and start over. One of the biggest mistake’s companies make with their marketing is that they ignore the information for unsuccessful campaigns.

For example, if you are an author and wanted to promote your book over Black Friday weekend via Facebook and you spent $400 on ads and didn’t get the sales numbers you wanted does that mean Facebook doesn’t work for you? No, you have to take a look at what your goals were, who you targeted, what happened over that weekend, the traffic you got, what your competition was doing and so forth.

For starters, that weekend is very competitive as most businesses are running big sales. That means consumers are going to be overwhelmed by the ads that are shown to them. Another thing to consider is whether this was the first time these people saw your name and book? If so, you are asking people to give you their money when they’ve never heard of you or about your book. That’s asking a lot and you should have introduced yourself weeks before that weekend.

Did you get traffic but did not get conversions? This is where you want to also look at the competition and landing page. Are you sending them to a website that’s not secure, takes a while to load or is not mobile friendly? That could be a factor as well as the price. You are selling your book for $5 but the competition is selling the downloadable version for $2. Why would someone choose to pay you more for your book?

You have to identify your audience, identify which platforms they want to gather information on and also what platforms they want to buy products and services on. Beyond that, you have to look at what the consumer is receiving. Is the content clean and professionally done or does it look amateurish? Last year’s failure is giving you valuable information to better understand what you need to do in 2019 to have a more successful marketing campaign. Here’s where you can begin:

• Identify your customer: Who is your ideal customer? How old are they? What is their gender? Where do they live? What interests do they have? You cannot just randomly try to run ads and think that you are going to see results. There’s an audience out there that will be interested in what you are offering. It’s time to find out who they are.
• Identify the best and most cost-effective platforms to reach them: Now that you have a much better idea of who to market to, the next step is to find the best platforms to reach them on. One of the top options would be email marketing because it’s cost-effective and allows you to reach a highly-targeted audience in a short period of time.
• Introduce yourself: When you meet someone new the first thing you do is introduce yourself. The same works in marketing. You want to introduce yourself to the audience, tell them about yourself, who you are and why they should take an interest in you. Instead of a discount on your book you offer them the first two chapters for free if they sign up on your site. That gives them a free opportunity to check out your content and because you are capturing their information, you can then contact them after a month to see if they want to buy your book for a lower price.
• Offer them a reason to engage or buy from you: A promotion is not a reason to click on an ad. It’s an incentive but it’s not a reason. The reason is information, a new product, a chance to learn more about a service or to watch a video. Focus on getting people to your site, getting them to engage your content and become familiar with your brand. Once they’ve done that, then you can start focusing more on sales.
• Stay in touch: Do not disappear once you’ve introduced your brand and established an identity with the consumer. Keep them informed on what’s going on, even if you do not have anything new to sell them. A monthly newsletter is a great way to stay in touch. Staying in contact will have a big impact on your next promotion.

While it may be tempting to completely redo your marketing strategy for the new year, remember to not throw your old campaigns away. There is valuable information there that can be used and if they had any amount of success, people will remember your name and what you are offering. Use that to build a better strategy for 2019 that will hopefully produce far better results.