Managing your company’s marketing can be an overwhelming task at the start of each year. Let us remind you of some of the essential places to start and how to proceed. What do you need to prioritise to make an impact? This is a common position for many companies in January. This article will be useful for making sure that your efforts turn into successful results for the company. Keep reading to get on top of your marketing task list! We have 5 areas you need to start with. 

Verify Your Marketing Budget For The Upcoming Period

Before you dive into digital marketing, the first item you must check off your marketing to-do list is verifying your marketing budget. This can be a monthly/quarterly figure in many organisations.  You can’t invest in marketing strategies without knowing what you can afford.

If your company determines your marketing budget, you’ll want to ensure you get your budget amount as soon as possible to start planning. On the other hand, if your company asks for a budget proposal, you can typically ask for an amount that equates to 7-8% of your company’s overall revenue. This will be somewhat different depending on the industry. 

Verify Your Target Audience And Buyer Persona

Next, you’ll want to verify your target audience. You need to know who you’re actually targeting with your marketing. Targeting the wrong people will negatively impact your marketing strategy and make it ineffective.

To determine who’s in your target audience, you must look at who buys your products or uses your services. Look at the data available and identify information like:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Occupation
  • Income
  • Hobbies
  • Interests
  • Buying habits
  • Shopping habits

When you have this information, you can form buyer personas. Buyer personas are fictional representations of real customers that help you target people most interested in your products or services. Generate a set of insights that can be used by marketing, sales, and product departments to make informed decisions and smarter investments. From keyword research to ad copy to external content placement decisions, marketers use persona insights to create the most effective marketing and promotional strategies for business.

You can have multiple buyer personas in your audience. Once you know who you’re targeting, you can choose the marketing strategies that will help you reach your target audience.

Every aspect of marketing should benefit from awareness of the key features of the persona: email, digital, content, and social. This info is used to make an impact on the following: Better customer segmentation, Personalised brand experience, Identifying where high-value leads are, Cross-marketing alignment.

Set Your Marketing Goals (SMART)

Often the first step for many, you need to determine the overall marketing goals. Once you have accurate goals, you can then implement strategies. There are numerous marketing goals you can set for your campaign, including:

  • Build brand awareness
  • Increase website traffic
  • Generate leads
  • Increase sales

If you want to set practical goals, create SMART goals. SMART stands for:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Timely

SMART goals are best for your campaigns because they help you set goals that you can prove you achieved. With the SMART goal, though, you have a clear objective to achieve. In addition, you know what to achieve and when to achieve it, so it’s easier to know if you reached that goal.

Analyse The Competition And Where You Stand

 You’re not the only business looking to reach its target audience online. There has never been so many companies looking for the attention of your audience. Marketing is hugely competitive for every industry.  If you want to get ahead of your competitors, you need to know what they are doing. Looking at online presence is a good place to start. Identity their advertising and SEO metrics to start benchmarking activity. Successful methods should be noted by companies that are growing online. 

Please make yourself familiar with the various marketing tools that drive marketing data. Understanding the basics of Google Analytics, Meta Advertising, Email marketing and Website metrics is a must. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to see your site’s current load time and get tips for improving site load time!

Make sure that you analyse where your online infrastructure stacks up against these competitors. Carry out some website audits and reviews of last year’s performance.

Your website is at the heart of your marketing plan. Most people will get information about your business from your website. Without a well-designed, functional website, you’ll deter people from interacting with your website and learning about your business.

Determine What Strategies You Want To Use

Now that you have determined the goals, budget, buyers and competition benchmark, it’s time to determine the best strategies and tactics to use to implement your goals. Your marketing strategies are what you’ll use to reach people interested in your business. 

There are dozens of strategies used by companies all over the world. You can use these to reach people interested in your business. Popular activities that are used include, including:

You can use any combination of these strategies to help you reach people interested in your products or services.

The metrics you set will depend upon the strategies you use. Some common metrics companies track include:

  • Clicks
  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Conversions
  • Leads generated
  • Cost per click (CPC)

You’ll want to determine what metrics you’re tracking for each campaign. Keep in mind that the metrics you track should focus on helping you reach your business’s goals!

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VIMAR Digital Marketing

Do you need professional help with your marketing? We can help! We are a creative digital marketing agency with a true passion for digital marketing. Our experinced team can help you grow your business and brand through the power of digital marketing. 

We provide a variety of digital marketing services, such as: Website Development [1], SEO [2], Branding [3], Content Production [4], Social Media Management [5], Video Production [6] and Online Advertising [7].

All our efforts are focused on increasing our clients sales and promoting their brand. We do this by improving, or creating you a brand new website and increasing your rankings on search engine’s such as Google. We compliment your brand with content that can be shared on social media. We offer both full marketing plans, and also custom marketing plans. 

If you would like to learn more about digital marketing and how it could help transform your business, you can book a free consultation call with our team today.