Did this year fly by for everyone or was it just us? And now we have to look ahead to the next year and get everything situated. New rounds of holidays, new products, new stories to tell…what else can there be? That’s right, new strategies in place to beat the competition. Let’s face it. Selling, no matter what product or service, is hard. Money is tight for people, budgets are thinning and the extra spending money that we all once had is now being added to the grocery cart expenses. So that means as marketers, we need to strategize to find ways around those issues with our customers and to win their hearts over the competition. Take our advice and with some luck, you’ll be off to a great new year!

Focus on Your Audience

Find your target audience’s pain points – their needs, wants, desires. How do they want to feel, how do they want to solve the problem? Once you understand all of this, creating content to relate to or solve their problem becomes easier. This shouldn’t be anything new as it should always be about the customer. But thinking outside the box of what marketing typically is and switching gears to a more customer centric experience instead of convincing can help with engagement and success rates. Continuing to build a positive business culture will trickle down to excellent customer service and sales in the end.

Let the Customer Know Your Story

Your brand has a story – show it. People love to see more about the actual brand, who is behind it, and they seem to like when it is fun! If that is your brand’s style, go for it. Even if you think, “Oh this is silly”, or “This isn’t professional,” sometimes that doesn’t even matter. We are all human (unless your business is robots!) Take control of who you are speaking to by doing your own target audience audit and see what they think of your brand and how they feel about it. Take a look at your competitors and what sets you apart from them. Even if you think you know what makes your brand unique, you might find something else when you are researching. Brands will need to be more inclusive, diverse, and connected to the actual people they are trying to reach. Customers are looking for a real-life business relationship with the products and services they use and trust. Allow them to get to know the in’s and out’s, the why and why not’s, and embrace the relationships that can stem from these budding kinships.

Be Real With Goal Setting

Do yourself a favor right off the bat and just set realistic goals. Too many times, especially in the social media world, we set goals that just aren’t measurable. Thankfully the social media giants are allowing more analytics to be learned, seen and used, but if there is not a measurable statistic to go with your goal, then maybe it should be reconsidered. Hold your team accountable also. Make sure they are the ones who are able to meet those goals. Meet with them once a quarter to discuss the goals, where they are with them and how they can do better on reaching the goals. It is a team effort, so all ideas should always be accepted. And if a goal isn’t met by the end of the year, don’t fret. Everything is a learning situation and you take what you’ve learned and put it toward the next year. Just be realistic and intentional this year. What will your key goals for 2023 focus on? Everyone has different goals, but they need to be purposeful and measurable. If you can’t appropriately measure something, then maybe it shouldn’t be a goal. And there are also going to be numerous ways to measure certain goals. Whatever you find works best for you and provides the best outcome, then go for it. Set the baseline to whatever was reached in 2022 and then set practical goals for 2023. 

Content Still Wins in 2023

There can never be enough content in the business world. When you think there are enough social posts, create more. When you think you have written all that you can on a topic, figure out how to write more. And when you aren’t sure if you have written about something, just do it. Filling the gaps in content and then optimizing it is never a bad idea. Ask the question of why should your followers read your content versus the competitors? And don’t be afraid to repurpose current content that works for your audience. Popular posts can turn into blogs and vice versa – blogs can be split into separate posts. An audit of the content that you have should be done and somehow cataloged so when a topic is trending, you can easily do a search to see if any of your content hits on that topic. While you are doing your content audit, you’ll find which content topics were most popular, which distribution channel works best for you and drives the most traffic. Reuse and repurpose are key in the content world!

The Bottom Line

If your business needs a change, don’t be afraid to move full steam ahead with ideas. And if you need our help, we will be here able and willing to help. Just contact us and our team will be back in touch, ready to crush your goals for the new year.