Well, it’s time to look to 2022. While the new year holds promise and potential, it’s important to take the lessons learned from 2021 and apply them to new opportunities and situations. That applies to marketing and advertising your business as well.
With the right plan and digital marketing New Year’s resolutions, 2022 can be your business’s year.
1. Build your brand
But, what is a brand? Why is it so crucial to build one? How can you establish your business’ brand? Inherent to branding is your business identity getting seen and becoming known by your target audiences. With strong branding, you have the opportunity to become an authority in your field or industry and build loyal customer followings. Think of building your brand awareness as establishing your e-reputation.
Your niche and the brand you ultimately build determine your business decisions, it impacts the voice, feels, style, and substance of your content and website, and on a more technical level, your operations, management, interactions, and marketing efforts.
Think about some of the most popular brands out there: Nike, Disney, Coca-Cola, for example. They all have recognizable and unique brands. You may not be setting your sights on global domination (yet), but these big-wigs prove that building your brand is crucial for excelling in business.
2. Build a website
The fact of the matter is, if you’re running a business in the 21st century and trying to stay afloat mid-pandemic, you need an online presence. Even if you have endless tasks on your business to-do list, prioritize the presence of your web content. Consumers need to be able to find and connect with you virtually.
But building a website to showcase your business doesn’t have to be a complicated or an expert-level-only endeavor. And the how-to aspects of creating a website don’t have to keep you up at night! Any business can and should have a website. Start with a game plan and determine your goals, then dig into the necessary technical tasks based on your needs.
With a website, you’re reaching people even when you’re asleep meaning your business isn’t limited to a brick-and-mortar location. And when your audiences are sheltering-in-place at home and can only connect online, you need to meet them there. Your site will help you build your brand and connect with audiences, a crucial step to helping your business survive and thrive in the current climate.
3. Use PPC advertising
There is a lot to business advertising, and it can be overwhelming for newbies and beginner budgets. But promoting your site and attracting audiences through advertising doesn’t have to be overly complicated or pricey. So this year, give PPC advertising a go. PPC, or pay-per-click, works like this, A search engine query displays both organic results (the sites that come up because they are relevant based on their keywords, SEO strategy, fresh content marketing tactics, and responsive design) and paid search results. You’ve likely seen this second type of result identified with an “Ad” or “Sponsored” label.
Paid search as the name suggests involves dishing out dollars to have your website appear in the sponsored sections of search engine results and corresponding partner sites. Organic and paid searches appear in search results, just in different locations.
PPC allows you to have your website appear in the sponsored/ad results, but the best part? You only pay for it when someone clicks on your ad. So with PPC, your business can take advantage of the web’s virtual rush hour of clicks in a wallet-friendly and low-risk way.
4. Invest in social media
Having an established social media presence allows you to easily branch into new strategies like influencer marketing. Figure out which platforms are most effective in driving traffic to your webpage or store and build your presence out from there. That might mean taking the time to create video content for YouTube or TikTok, but if it gets eyes on your brand, it’s worth it.
5. Use AI for an improved user experience (UX)
The New Year's resolution businesses need to carry out is to level up their customer experience with artificial intelligence. A huge component of the customer experience is rooted in the user experience your business provides. This can range from the quality of accessibility on your website, the ease of access in finding widgets, support buttons, and add-ons, and the length of time it takes for your customer support team to respond to customer queries.
Because we’re only human, it’s important to find ways to take some of the stress off your support team members while still providing the best customer and user experience for your clients. One way is by implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into your customer service strategy to help enhance the customer experience you provide to users.
6. Give customers the option for self-service
While it’s true that some customers prefer chatting with sales or support representatives, not everyone is keen on contacting the customer service team. They want to find answers on their own without going through the hassle of reaching out to somebody else. Since your goal is to commit to providing an unbeatable customer experience, this means giving your customers the luxury of choice and self-guided assistance.
To put the control back into your customers’ hands, provide them the option of self-service support or knowledge bases that can help them solve problems on their own.
A knowledge base about your products, pricing, services, and offerings could consist of a hub of comprehensive articles on specific niche topics, how-to posts surrounding the usage of your products/services, and video tutorials to educate customers about what you can offer.
Letting people learn independently and absorb as much information as they choose is the best way to return the power of choice to prospective buyers. Then, when they’re ready to chat further with a representative, they might even be well-informed to the point that they ask valuable questions beyond the basic FAQs you’re used to answering.
Self-service options open up a world of possibilities regarding customer choice. The more time you give customers to learn on their own before being approached by a salesperson, the better. It helps reduce the back and forth between your sales team, your support team, and provides a better customer experience all around.
Heading into the new year can be overwhelming, especially for businesses with such high growth expectations. By focusing on your customers and putting them at the forefront of your New Year's resolutions, it allows you to narrow your focus and improve execution.
Ready for a Successful 2022?
At Meerkatz, we love watching you succeed. We live for it. So whether your new year goals include boosting your bottom line, advertising your products and services, finding new customers or clients, or digital marketing, we’re here to help you make them happen in 2022.
Here’s to a happy, healthy, and business-booming new year!
