The new year brings the promise of change and the hope for a better year
It started before Thanksgiving this year, the relentless pounding of the self-improvement drums.
Subscribe to this delivery service for fresh healthy food! Buy this exercise bike to get in shape! Use this gum to quit smoking! New Year’s resolutions are creeping closer to becoming Halloween resolutions with every passing year.
For good reason! The new year brings the promise of change and the hope for a better year. Making a commitment to focus that hope and promise into an achievable goal is a worthwhile exercise.
But are you giving the same attention to your business?
After all, there’s no relentless message of business improvement like there is for personal improvement. TV commercial breaks and full magazine spreads aren’t hammering you with the need to improve your business processes and production pipeline.
Frankly, that’s a shame. Because if there’s a universal truth for business owners, it’s that if you’re not growing, you’re failing. And while we pour all this focus and money into our personal lives to reach for personal improvement, our businesses need just as much attention.
So, this year make one more resolution. In addition to the personal growth and change you’re committing to make this the year you finally get the consistent results from your marketing that you deserve.
Optimize Marketing Success
This exercise is tailor-made for the beginning of the year. What do your seasonal sales look like for the past few years? Do they follow the same pattern each year, with similar peaks and valleys?
Now a follow up question: does your marketing plan for 2022 account for those peaks and valleys?
After all, marketing isn’t a light switch. If you wait until the business is slow and then try to find the least expensive way to quickly drive new customers, only two outcomes are likely: either the marketing doesn’t work quickly enough to keep you busy during that slow period…or more likely, it keeps you busy and bogged down with low-value, discount-seeking customers.
Of course, if you have a plan to send coordinated messages to the right kind of customer before you hit your slow period, you can ensure you have a steady stream of customers all year long. More importantly, you break out of the same seasonal ruts that take the steam out of your sales every year.
The word “coordinated” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that last paragraph, though. Because a stark reality for many small businesses is that marketing is usually so scattershot that coordinating budgets and messages and plans across multiple companies is only possible with a herculean effort by the business owner.
When one company handles direct mail, another social media, another your website, and another your pay-per-click – all chosen because of price instead of effectiveness – then getting each on the same page, with the same messages and goals, is…difficult.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Make 2022 Your Year
Right now, the whole year is in front of you. 2022 is full of promise and hope. But whether this year goes any differently from years past depends entirely on whether you will commit to turning that hope and promise into reality.
Will this be the year you finally make and execute a plan to grow? Or will this be another year of scattershot marketing and inconsistent results?
If you’re ready to finally take control and make 2022 your best year ever, the only thing left to do is find a marketing agency to help you achieve your goals. Look for an agency who can help you attack your seasonal lulls with data-driven results, the kind who seeks to understand your business and customers before helping you create a plan to success.
More importantly, look for an agency who produces consistent results. Marketing should be about long-term success, and if you can find an agency with a long track record of getting results, you’re far more likely to have found a partner for taking your business to the next level.
And when you find that company? Make sure you ask for case studies – learn about their long-term clients and why those clients have been with them year after year.
No matter what, though, use this opportunity to reflect on your victories from 2021 and your hopes and goals for 2022. Head into the new year with a renewed purpose – 2022 will be your best year ever!
David Rogers is president of Automated Marketing Group (AMG), the recipient of 10 “Best of Colorado” awards from ColoradoBiz in the past seven years. Clients using AMG – including some from the beginning, more than two decades ago – keep choosing AMG because they get consistently excellent results. Year after year, decade after decade, AMG has used data-driven analytics to target high quality customers with laser-focused messages to drive customers who are ready to buy. Learn more and register for a free marketing assessment at https://automatedmarketinggroup.com/cobiz.
