2020 is the perfect time kick-start your marketing planning, a time to enhance your social media activity but don’t forget offline marketing!! In 2020 there will be a big push from businesses looking to merge online audiences into their offline activities.
Start 2020 off right! At Creationz Marketing, our top tip for January would be, spend time to record all of your stats from 2019 so that you have a benchmark to compare any new marketing against. If you don’t know your starting point, you really won’t know what marketing is successful for you. Ideal data to record:
Monthly Website Traffic
Number of enquiries and where they heard about your business
Social Media Follows – still worth noting but not as important as engagement
Looking to get ahead with your marketing and want to improve your skills?
Creationz Marketing offers a Marketing Planning / Strategy Package where we work with business to understand what they want to achieve and set a workable / achievable plan broken down on a monthly basis
Marketing Training
We have now launched our 12-Month Marketing Training Plan designed to give an overview on a wide-range of topics and booking is now available – See our 12-month Marketing Training Programme
Join our next Marketing Planning Masterclass
When: 23rd January 2020 – 9.30am -12.30am Where: 96a High Road, Beeston, Nottingham, NG9 2LF
It is always important to plan for the year ahead, whether this is planning for your business or for clients it needs to be done! If you’ve not started yet it is not too late, and if you’ve already started, not too worry there are still a few tips you might have forgotten!
Your plan may change throughout the year but it is so important to make sure you have one to layout your priorities and goals for the business.
We are going to give a few handy tips on planning for the new year.
Step 1: Review The Past Year
Ask yourself what worked in your business and what didn’t?
Go through your past year’s budgets, did it work well, check which months you made the most, spent the most, spent the least and why this is the case. If you had lots of budget left over, maybe this year spend a little bit extra on making your goals work.
Go through your analytics for your marketing, did your engagement increase? Did this help you reach your goal? If not try a new approach this year, if it did work well ask yourself how you could increase it more.
Brainstorm your business as a whole, how could you make the process flow smoother? Few ideas: stay on track, prioritise your work correctly and keep organised.
Step 2: Set Clear Goals
Set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) goals. You should have multiple goals for the business as a whole for the end of the year, for each quarter, for the end of each month and weekly goals.
Step 3: Create a Calendar
Print yourself out a calendar and for each month and prioritise what needs to be done for that month. Don’t forget to include seasons and holidays, adding a festive theme to your marketing. Find awareness days for each month and make sure your up to date with them including the correct hashtags.
Another big tip is to print out and stick the calendar on the wall where it is visible and a constant reminder of what you want to achieve – this works really well and is something we do. If your plan sits in your desk drawer, it will gather dust.
Step 4: Review Monthly
At the end of each month review how your month has gone, if there were downfalls, why did they occur and how can you prevent it from happening next time. Think about how to continue to improve. Check monthly analytics, this is really important to see success. Check your stats!
Join our next Marketing Planning Masterclass
When: 23rd January 2020 – 9.30am -12.30am Where: 96a High Road, Beeston, Nottingham, NG9 2LF
Last week I spoke at two different events on 5 ways to market your business on a budget as we often find that businesses concentrate on the big-ticket marketing items such as new websites, Google Ads etc and often forget about the simple things they can do to help their marketing efforts.
At each event, the point that resonated the most was using our email footers more effectively.
Be honest – when was the last time you updated your email footer?
Most of us have an email footer that contains our name, address and links to our website and possibly our social media accounts but our footer can do so much more:
Promote your latest Blog,
Share an event you are hosting/speaking at,
Share your LinkedIn profile,
Share a different product/service of your website,
Encourage sign-ups for your newsletter
Share your latest offer,
Share a recent testimonial
The key to utilising your email footer is to change it often and to make the change really stand out. Give people a reason to find out more about you or to invest in what you are offering.
As you can see from the image above, we use p.s below as a signpost for different aspects of the business – this will change in colour, style and content every few weeks. At the minute we are promoting our new FREE Facebook Group but have promoted our articles, new staff members, services and offers.
Join our FREE Facebook Group for regular practical tips & advice
We will also use a number of links if there is a lot going on – changing your email footer is relatively simple to do, will not cost the earth and can help get your marketing messages out to the right audience.
Please get in touch if you would like to know more about how email footers can work for you – claire@creationzmarketing.co.uk.
Hope you are enjoying the summer and getting to grips with your marketing efforts!
We wanted to take 5 minutes and share our 5 mistakes to avoid when using social media. We are passionate about helping businesses of all sizes to supercharge their marketing efforts without breaking the budget. With this in mind, there is an abundance of articles on how to be successful but not many articles look at actually what you need to be mindful of to avoid making mistakes.
So here goes…
Mistake 1 – Partially Filled Profiles
There is nothing worse than following a social media page but not being able to find out more about the business because the account has been set up with limited information. Just like a printed advert, remember to make sure you have all of your business information easy to find.
Make sure that whatever social media platform you are on, you have a full, detailed profile/bio that covers:
What you do,
How you can help,
Contact details
Website link
Also, make sure that you check the details regularly and update where necessary.
Mistake 2 – No Strategy
You have taken the time to set up profiles on social media – so what now? We have spoken to a number of businesses recently and asked – “what function do you want social media to do as part of your marketing strategy” – so many businesses have really struggled to answer. You need to be clear about what you want to use social media for. Is it to:
Raise profile of the business,
Increase website traffic,
Generate enquiries,
Share business news,
Provide a customer services function.
If you don’t know what social media is going to help you with, how can you know if it is a success or not? Also by being clear on the goal, you can create engaging content to meet those needs.
Are you updating your social media accounts frequently enough? Nothing shines a bad light on the business like a social media account that is not updated regularly. How regularly is up to you but you need to be consistent!
We are often asked how often should you post on social media and there are varying responses online suggesting 2-3 times per day for Facebook, 5 times a day for Twitter etc. I always start by asking about what content a business has as to how often to post. It is much better to put out quality posts instead of posting 5 times because that is what you have been told to do.
Remember if you have gone to the trouble of setting up the accounts – make sure you use them.
Mistake 4 – Lack of Images / Video Content
A number of businesses we have spoken to recently say the biggest bugbear they have with social media is a lack of images. It is certainly true that posts with images are more likely to receive engagement than posts without, so what can you do about it?
Well, for a start there are a number of image creation websites out there that don’t require any graphic design skills. Our favourite is Canva because it comes with a number of free templates already sized to suit social media platforms and can be easily be adapted to suit your branding.
Alternatively, remember that people still buy from people so how about sharing behind the scenes images of your business and staff? Other image ideas could be location shots, motivational quotes, photos used on your website & so much more. You can create a wealth of images – your only limitation is time!
You need to also considered Video Content – people engage more with video content as it catches their eye when scrolling on social media. Do you have a plan in place to create video posts?
Join our FREE Facebook Group for regular practical tips & advice
Mistake 5 – Not Engaging
If you are honest with yourself, how much time do you actually spend on social media engaging with others? We are not talking about posting your own content, we are talking about liking, commenting and sharing other posts.
The whole idea of social media is to be SOCIAL – make sure you make time to engage with others as it will help your account get seen by a wider audience and other people are more likely to engage with you. Ideally, you want to create an online community and as the saying goes – it takes two to tango! Go on, join in a conversation today and see how far you can go.
If you can avoid making any of the mistakes above then you are on your way to social media success. We can easily pinpoint another 5 mistakes to avoid but would like you to take the time to get the foundations right first.
We would also love to hear your tips on what mistakes to avoid with social media – please send your comments to claire@creationzmarketing.co.uk
Claire
p.s Looking for an audit of your social media activity, contact us today for FREE no-nonesense advice – Contact Us P.P.S – Join our FREE Facebook Group – Marketing for Success Club – Free advice & tips to enhance your marketing working
We are looking for a creative and motivated Marketing Assistant to join our small, growing team in Beeston – is this you?
Do you love helping to create Social Media campaigns that get noticed? Do you have a creative flair to help marketing campaigns stand out?
If so, we want to hear from you. To see the full job information then please visit our careers page – Careers
Further Information – contact Creationz Marketing
If you would like to talk through this role in more detail, Chris and I are on hand to answer any questions you may have – call us on 0115 8376 260 or email us info@creationzmarketing.co.ukwith your phone number and we will give you a call.
The Summer holidays are just around the corner! Just think, blue skies, the beach, sitting by the pool relaxing. Sounds like heaven.
But what about your social media accounts. July and August are notorious for businesses to switch off marketing whilst they and their staff are on holidays. But actually, this time is perfect for you to stand out in a less crowded space.
Ask yourself, whilst you’re enjoying yourself on a sunny beach, who’s going to keep things ticking away back in the office? It may not be on the top of your priority list, but social media is such a fast pace environment and if you don’t keep your pages active you may just find yourself being left behind…
Time to stop stressing – there are things that we (and you) can do to help keep your page, staying sunny & fresh.
These include:
Social Media Management – Here at Creationz Marketing we offer support for your break of sun, sea, and sand. This service allows you to switch off your work brain whilst your messages are being answered and comments responded to. Our service makes sure to take away the hassles of your everyday work life. Givng you peace of mind about your business. Leaving you able to enjoy your holiday. To find out more please contact Claire on claire@creationzmarketing.co.ukor call us on 0115 8376 260 – See more – Social Media Management
Consider scheduling – scheduling software is freely available and whilst some people think it may not be the best choice to keep your social media up and running, we think it will provide a solution to keep up posts on social media and get you through the holiday season. This software will schedule your posts, but you will need to check for comments and messages. This wouldn’t be ideal for those who want to switch off completely and just enjoy some family time (or some business free time). Could you get someone back in the offices to monitor the replies etc?
Reduce your posts – have a look at your social media presence. Is it necessary for you to post 2-3 times per day while your away? Can you cut down posts on your site for the week/s and just have one every couple of days or even once a week. This way you don’t have to worry about your social media pages too much and you can still have some time to relax. This may be a great short time solution for you
Whatever you choose to do this summer, it is vital that you take some time to switch off and relax.
You don’t have to be going to a fancy resort in Bora Bora, you can be sat on your sofa at home with a glass of wine. Rest and relaxation is vital to get clear and give yourself time to recharge those batteries.
Have fun this summer and don’t stress!
Further Information – contact Creationz Marketing
There are things you can do to give you a helping hand whilst keeping your marketing ticking over. If you would like to talk through your options in more detail, Chris and I are on hand to guide you through all options and make a plan that is right for your business – email us on claire@creationzmarketing.co.uk with your phone number and we will give you a call.
Send us a postcard – we would love to see where your travels take you this Summer
Claire
p.s Looking for an audit of your social media activity, contact us today for FREE no-nonesense advice – Contact Us
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