Reinvigorate Your Marketing to Close Out the Year Strong

With summer vacations wrapping up and students returning to school, professionals should take this opportunity to refocus marketing efforts to engage customers. Think of it as another time to re-establish New Year’s resolutions for business. After all, we’ve got about 4.5 months until the end of the year. For retailers, the next few months are more critical as we approach Black Friday sales and holiday shopping. Other businesses can strengthen marketing execution for a strong finish to the year and, depending on your lead time and sales cycles, generate solid leads for 2025. Let’s discuss some key activities to incorporate or invigorate in your marketing now.

Thought Leadership that Sets You Apart

How are you sharing your industry knowledge and thought leadership? It’s critical to create content that highlights your expertise and distribute that material regularly so that you stay top of mind with customers and prospects. Revisit your content calendar or start an editorial calendar, if you don’t have one. Think of topics of interest and importance to your buyers. If you’re not sure of those subjects, ask your customers what’s top of mind for them regarding marketing. Document which topic you’ll concentrate on each month as well as when you’ll start creating that content and when your deadline is. Then, stay disciplined to meet those dates. Also commit to how you’ll publish and promote that leadership content. Will you use the content in an email drip campaign or publish to a blog post that is promoted with an email teaser and cross-promoted via social media? Perhaps physical mailers work better for your business sector. Try a few methods, measure which work best, and then rinse and repeat.

Get Social

Speaking of social media, be sure to monitor those channels so you can reply to comments and engage with followers. Try dedicating 30 minutes to an hour per week to this (maybe while you eat lunch or listen to a podcast.) You may not have enough interaction to warrant that much time so adjust as necessary. Just don’t publish content and forget about it until it’s time to create the next asset. People appreciate human interaction, especially during a time full of chat bots and automated responses.

Network.

For small and medium business professionals, look at the networking groups that have proven productive in the past and add those groups’ upcoming events to your calendar. Aim to secure one real lead from each event and follow up with that individual within the next day or two. Schedule a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call to discuss that person’s business needs and how you can help. An in-person meeting over coffee or lunch is even better. (So many of us became quite comfortable with not meeting in person during the COVID pandemic that we’re not as inclined to meet face to face. For this reason, in-person meetings can be more meaningful.) Even if you may not close a deal immediately, remember it’s important to build relationships.

If you’re a marketing professional within an enterprise, seek out opportunities to network with others within your organization—in your department and beyond. Growth opportunities may exist in other departments. Stretch assignments working with different teams also helps you hone new skills. Developing relationships with people with different skills and interests also expands your views and can help you become a more experienced and understanding leader… all important characteristics for those who lead, no matter your title.

Analyze Web Analytics

Dig into website analytics. What is that data telling you? I can’t tell you how many businesses have analytics running on their websites but no one ever looks at what’s really happening on the website. Is your website generating and capturing leads? Are you refreshing your content to address frequently asked questions about your products/services, customer success stories and new announcements? Are you providing downloadable content that site visitors can use to get better acquainted with how your offerings can solve their pain points? If you are, how often are those pieces being downloaded and are you capturing the visitors’ contact information so that you can add that to ongoing marketing efforts? Are there certain web pages that strategically are important for people to see to support your sales initiative yet there’s little traffic going there? Finetuning your web content to continuously improve your web performance and thus strengthen your sales funnel is crucial. Website content should evolve, which means regularly looking at analytics and taking action on that information is a must.

Deliver Remarkable Experiences

Across all of these efforts, emphasize positive personal experiences. Considering there are few instances where businesses have no competition, positive interactions with your brand can be a valuable differentiator. In fact, “Customers place a high value on their experiences, and 80% of customers say that ‘the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services,” according to The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at Harvard University. Companies with strong digital and in-person customer experiences tend to retain customers more and happy customers evangelize about their positive experiences. Imagine the growth potential when not only are your marketing efforts paying off, but also your customers are becoming fans for life. Now that’s marketing with impact.

For more ways to effectively boost your marketing, contact us.