Powerful Changes You Can Make to Your Marketing

It’s time to focus on the fundamentals, drive better results, and inject a little fun into your marketing efforts. Lucille Erwee, our expert marketing strategist specialising in lead generation and content marketing, shares her insights on how to make powerful changes for your business. Let’s dive in and discover powerful changes that will revolutionise your digital marketing strategy. 

 

Embrace the Basics and Prioritise What Matters

 

In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, I find it easy to get caught up in the latest trends. However, shifting my focus to getting the fundamentals right is what has allowed me to flourish. You can start by making sure your basics are in check. Create a proper marketing strategy and content strategy that is focused on what your ideal clients want and need.

Start by making sure your website is a well-designed and functioning website with clear messaging and effective lead generation techniques. Too often this gets overlooked or pushed to the bottom of the to-do list and it’s one of the most important basics for a business! You need to have a good website before you add in other marketing channels like social media marketing or advertising.  

We have redesigned our entire website with our clients in mind and the results have been excellent!
 

Choose Your Social Media Platform/s Wisely

 

Now that you hopefully have the basics sorted (your website), social media is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. Instead of spreading yourself thin across multiple platforms, identify one core platform to focus on. While it’s important to maintain a presence on other platforms, concentrate your efforts on the one that aligns with your goals and where your target audience is most active. Remember, quality engagement on one platform is more impactful than superficial presence across several.

Our focus for the year is Instagram. While we are active on other social media platforms this is the main one we want to focus on and grow in. Attempting to manage multiple platforms is difficult, so I have found focusing on one allows me to be my most effective and avoid burnout. This is because different platforms require different strategies, effectively tripling your work. They give preference to accounts that are actively on the platform, who are commenting on other people’s posts, and using the algorithm as they suggest. Trying to do all this on more than one platform at once is too much. 

 

Define Your Goals and Make Them Measurable

 

To drive meaningful results, set clear and measurable goals for your digital marketing. Instead of vanity metrics, concentrate on outcomes that directly benefit your business, such as increasing sales or lead conversions. Align your marketing activities with these goals to stay motivated and focused throughout the year.

I have laid out our goals for our content marketing and socials in both an Excel document and in our marketing dashboards that we use to track our online presence and posts. Having these set-in stone allows me to focus on what is important: What is working and what is not, to get us closer to our goals. Before I felt like we were just aimlessly floating around just throwing out random posts when we had time. Now, I have goals to meet and a schedule to keep. This has made me far more motivated.

For example, having a target number of blog posts and social media posts to go out means I know I need to create at least 3 content pieces per week to stay on track.  Additionally seeing the automated reports that come out each month tracking our progress is helpful in allowing me to see where we are and how much more to go until we hit our goals.

Nothing like a little accountability to keep you going!
 

Embrace Growth and Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

 

Finding the balance between comfort and change is crucial for personal and professional growth. Set marketing self-development goals that push you to explore new skills and ideas. Whether it’s consistent content creation, email marketing, or confidently utilising video, challenge yourself to reach new heights. Identify your knowledge gaps and seek resources or mentors who can support your journey. 

Personally, I love learning, but sometimes it’s hard to know what to learn and where to find high quality content. I have challenged myself to pick two areas of weakness that I want to grow in and learn more about them this year. I have decided to attend a minimum number of educational events to fill gaps in my knowledge and keep on top of the latest trends. Just pick something, set S.M.A.R.T goals and then stick to them! It’s a long-term game and consistency is key. 

 

Understand and Leverage Platform Algorithms

 

Each social media platform operates differently, and understanding their algorithms is key to success. Allocate dedicated time daily to engage with your audience, respond to comments and messages, and actively participate in relevant discussions. Building a community and demonstrating your commitment to engagement will be rewarded by the algorithms, leading to increased visibility and reach.

I tend to allocate time to check the platforms we are active on at the same time as our content goes out (automatically). This allows me to review the content posted engage with any comments/messages and then explore relevant discussions.  

 

Embrace the Power of Video

 

Video content has become an integral part of digital marketing. While you may already recognise its importance, now is the time to embrace it wholeheartedly. Incorporating video content into your marketing strategy allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level, build trust, and increase your reach. Don’t shy away from video; instead, explore ways to enjoy the process and leverage its benefits. 

While it might seem like a difficult and time-consuming task, it really isn’t. You can start small and build your way up to proper full-length videos. I found starting small by doing simple things like creating reels and stories (quite easy with tools like Canva) or short edited videos from templates allowed me to build my confidence and then move on to more challenging projects. 

 

Stay True to Your Values  

 

Authenticity and alignment with your values are crucial in today’s marketing landscape. Every piece of content you create, from social media posts to emails, should reflect your core values. By consistently aligning your messaging with your values, you attract like-minded individuals and build stronger connections with your target audience. 

Make sure that you know all the details and are confident in what you post. If your business has core values it’s a good idea to check that content aligns with your values before sharing it. 

 

Develop an Effective Content Creation Schedule

 

As a small business owner, it’s essential to strike a balance between marketing and other responsibilities. Recognise that marketing won’t happen magically; you must prioritise it. Find a content creation rhythm that works for you, whether it’s dedicating specific days or time blocks to writing captions, creating visuals, or scheduling posts. Don’t forget time to follow-up on these tasks as well if you are working with multiple people to create content. Book regular marketing time into your calendar and treat it as a “Very Important Meeting” to ensure consistency. 

This is something I struggled with as I work with a marketing team to generate our content and share it. The solution that worked for me was having a marketing plan, creating a content process and picking monthly themes. Also, making it as easy as possible for my colleagues to do their share. In practicality, this means I create a document for them that contains everything they need to do, I.e., the topics I want them to create content for or questions they need to answer, and I ensure that the items that they need to review are scheduled into their calendar on our project management tool ClickUp. This has made it much easier for me to follow up and make sure our content strategy and calendar stay on track. It has also made me more organised as I know my colleagues are relying on me!

There is no time like the present, so make these changes today. Take this post as a sign to revolutionise your digital marketing. Here’s to a prosperous year forward, regardless of what happens in future.