6 Marketing Goals to Set (and actually keep) This Year

It’s a new year — a time for fresh starts and the beginning to great things. To get there, it will take reflection and consideration of marketing goals. There are many good resolutions and goals worth making, but let’s be honest. Many never get actualized because daily demands pop up and our lofty goals for the year run off the rails. But, they don’t have to.

Below is a list of six marketing goals that every brand manager, business owner, public figure, and leader should consider setting for 2016 and actually keep.

The hard part is that it takes disciplined time to reflect, develop goals, plan, and implement the marketing strategy.

1. Establish an electronic-free area to reflect and create

To maximize your creativity, you’ll need the space and quiet to develop great ideas. You cannot come up with the best next thing when the world is constantly stealing your attention away.
Set aside a special place in your office, home, or even a coffee shop where you turn off your phone, tablet, computer, TV, and anything else where people can reach you and keep you from fully focusing.
Many efficient leaders shut off electronics at certain times of the day to get their top tasks done.
We need time to reflect regularly. How on earth can we expect to think back and be critical of our actions if we’re constantly being bombarded? Get away from distractions and the demands on your time so you can thoughtfully reflect on where you’ve been in 2015 so you can evaluate where to go next.

2. Make a habit to read your industry’s news & happenings

What are the competitors doing? Who is excelling and how are they rolling that out exactly? What brands have missed the mark and failed, and why did they do so? Take notes and learn from the best.
Get to love all the quirks that make your industry breathe and embrace them into your business model and marketing strategy.
How can you benefit from what other brands have already learned the hard way, by failing themselves, and how can you be better off in taking their lessons to heart?

Is there a new way of doing things? Is there a new product that’s auxiliary to your particular industry, but will affect you? Perhaps a new law is being rolled out that will affect your business. Read about it. Learn all you can before it hits and plan for it as best possible so you can continue doing what you love to do. Don’t be caught off guard.

3. Know (and yearn to know) what’s happening in the SEO world

Don’t know what SEO is? It’s time to learn. Your brand won’t cut it if you don’t keep up with the pace our world is moving at and how people search online.
There’s many SEO and internet changes with each passing year. You need to be in-the-know so you can adapt your website, your brand’s billboard. You want to best accommodate your audiences to ensure your message/product/service reaches your folks and your brand continues to exist. Don’t be left behind!
Purchasing power has gone online and brands that haven’t adapted, haven’t made it:
- Books (Borders vs. Amazon)
- Job searching (walking in/calling employers vs. LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster)
- Movies (Blockbuster vs. Netflix or Hulu)
- Cars (Traditional car lots vs. Carmax)
- Homes (Traditional realtors vs. Redfin)
- Home services (neighborhood plumber or housekeeper vs. Handy and Instacart) Many traditional retailers have developed apps that are often faster and more accurate than even asking an employee in the store like Home Depot’s app.
- Socializing/Events (calling/mailing friends vs. G-chat, Facebook messaging & Evite or Paperless Post)
- Selling/donating stuff (leave on side of curb or advertise in local paper vs. Craig’s List or NextDoor)

You get the idea. Our world has moved online. Many brands recognize the power of building apps for mobile users to easily navigate around in. I personally prefer using the apps of Chase, Modcloth, Redfin, Austin American-Statesmen, Mint, Wayfair, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, and many others than their actual official websites in my internet browser on mobile or even the full site on a desktop computer. The apps are so much easier to use and cut through the clutter and excess. And Instagram is basically only available to post through their app. They understand the power of mobile.

No longer do people want to waste their precious time sitting in traffic getting to your office/store and maybe finding what they want or maybe not. They want knowledge now to answer their questions.

A great article to read about the changing face of SEO is this one right here.

Get online, seriously! If you don’t already have a website that is responsive and works on various devices (mobile, tablet, desktop), invest the time and money now. You’re quickly getting left behind.

4. Write consistently

Yeah, I know. It’s tough. There’s always an excuse or reason not to. You have other priorities that are more important. You aren’t a writer — you specialize in another area. You don’t have time. I get it. I’ve heard it all before. Heck, I’ve even mumbled it myself a time or two.

Here’s some advice: stop, and start writing.

Need some motivation to write?

The world could use what you know and learn from your experiences.
You will become an authority in a given area — thus increasing customers, leads, sales, members, donations, ect. People will keep coming back to you because they see you as an expert and have learned to trust you.
Publish your thoughts up on your website’s blog (if you aren’t already doing so, which you definitely should be!) to increase your indexed pages and keep your website updated. When you blog regularly, watch your web traffic visitors tick up and the quality of your leads increase. Woo hoo!
For those of you that are long-time writers, take the best of your old content and edit/update it. It’s an easy way to push out new content with less work and tends to make great content become even better for your audience. Try it!
Share your experience by becoming a guest author/contributor for an industry publication/blog to increase your brand’s reach and explore new business markets.

You have too much knowledge to keep it all to yourself — so go share it! And then, watch your expert authority grow, your reach and visibility expand, and your business brand go absolutely gangbusters.

5. Invest in better measurement to increase ROI

Many times we’re so hurried we fail to evaluate our work. You might be rolling out a new product line and are so busy fulfilling orders and researching the next new project that you fail to ask: How are we doing? Where are the choke points? And, how could we have done better in area X,Y, and Z?

Many times, we run strategic tests when first starting a new project to make sure it will be profitable, but often, we forget at various stages of the project to check in on the ROI and evaluate how to improve. This is especially important at the end of a project.

Project management, task help, and evaluation software can help project managers and executives keep abreast of where they’re at and how the project is coming along. Here’s just a few:

6. Prioritize sleep

We are a culture totally crazed with how many billable hours we can log and often brag about how much we have to do and how little sleep we get like it’s a contest or something. But is that something worth bragging about?

Do we actually do better work and get more done with just a few hours of sleep?

Check out how many hours of sleep these famous people get in the accounting/finance, technology, engineering, media, marketing + pr, and politics sectors. This Ted Talk discusses the value of sleep.

Break the cycle of depriving yourself. Instead, increase your sleep cycles so tomorrow you can be your best rested, sharp, relaxed, enjoyable, quick-thinking self. You owe it to your brand, your family and friends, and to yourself.

It’s a new year. It’s time to develop dreams and set goals worthy of where you envision your brand belonging. No matter what your resolutions are for 2016, make sure to include these six into the mix to sustain you through the end. So excited for all the possibilities!

Among Austin marketing firms, GoodBuzz Solutions empowers brands to become more visible by harnessing the best of marketing, communications, and events to achieve their goals. Put your marketing expertise to the test by taking the free GoodBuzz Online Marketing Assessment here. The quiz will evaluate you in seven core areas with 31 questions. Your immediate marketing score will identify your strengths and show you where you can polish your strategy – all for free!