It’s time to put bold and ambitious plans in place

With a refreshing, festive break behind us and a clean slate of a year ahead, it’s time to set new business goals and put bold and ambitious plans in place.

Although we expect social distancing restrictions to be lighter this year – with more workplaces, shops and leisure venues open for trade – the digital realm has already established itself as a permanent part of day-to-day life, from everyday shopping to networking to high-level business meetings.

That means that your web presence – including digital marketing, social media, marketplaces and direct customer relations as much as your own website – will be integral to achieving overall business success this year.

So with big dreams and high hopes, where’s the best place to start? It’s all about evaluating the current situation, upgrading your marketing, and planning for a fantastic 2022!

Analysing

Even the most comprehensive, deeply researched and brilliantly implemented digital marketing plan can be honed, refined and tweaked to achieve even better results.

Not only is this because no plan is perfect and there are always opportunities to improve, but also the fact that what worked once won’t necessarily continue working forever. In digital marketing especially, technologies – and best practices – move on so quickly, that you can’t simply rely on what brought results last year.

For example, the way in which people shop has changed since the beginning of the pandemic. Individuals now have different demands and expectations which you need to meet to win their custom.

The technology we use has evolved, too. For example, Google is forever tweaking the formula it uses to determine its search engine results. And did you know there was a major overhaul in 2021? This could hurt the online visibility of your site, even if you didn’t change anything.

And there’s also the fact that no matter how many good ideas you put in place, this hard work can be reversed by making digital marketing mistakes.

Take time to evaluate your current marketing – not just in the context of what has worked in the past, but how those ideas meet the needs of customers (and algorithms) in 2022.

Tweak

There are two key ways to give your online presence a boost – the first is to tweak what’s already in place. Maybe your campaign involves SEO. You can analyse which keywords provide best value, then increase spend on those which drive results and cut spending on those which don’t, as well as seeking out new keywords which could open up new opportunities.

But in addition to incremental improvements to your existing efforts, you should also keep abreast of other technologies.

SEO gets a lot of the headlines, but are you fully up to speed on alternatives such as PPC, which can deliver results much faster?

And all the results of all your marketing efforts across the board can be enhanced by investment in conversion rate optimism. Most campaigns are designed to drive visitors to your website, but CRO is what improves the likelihood of those visitors then taking a positive action – such as making a purchase. It’s your marketing – supercharged.

Prepare your business for growth

While analysing and tweaking your marketing, it’s also important to evaluate other areas of your business to ensure that you’re ready for the increase in demand you’re aiming for.

Do you have access to the volume of products you’re hoping to sell? Have you stress tested your logistics? Can you ship out the volume of products required, and can you handle the inevitable extra returns? And will you be able to maintain a good enough level of communication and keep customer satisfaction high enough when their numbers increase?

Being unable to deliver on your promises can reverse all the hard work you put into your marketing, making preparation for growth as much about being able to handle higher volumes as it is generating interest.

If you have big ambitions for 2022 and beyond, speak to the seoBusiness team to learn how our decades of web development, digital marketing and ecommerce expertise can help you achieve your goals.