The beginning of a new year is the perfect time both to reflect on the previous 12 months and to think about what can be improved upon in those to come. While 2014 was the year that responsive design continued to dominate and
paid social media marketing became increasingly important, 2015 looks set to be even more of a game-changer for marketers, and companies need to continually evolve and adapt in order to keep up.
Whether you have identified key areas you’d like to focus on in 2015 or you just need inspiration for the New Year, here are the 5 New Year’s marketing resolutions we think you should be making in 2015.
Improve the Health of Your Content
From videos to how-to guides and e-books,
content is king. If you weren’t producing content in 2014, or didn’t take its value seriously enough, this is the year to turn that around.
We predict that 2015 will be the year that search engines continue to encourage natural and helpful content. January is the perfect time to make sure you have some budget and resource set aside to invest in producing and distributing shareable content in 2015.
“But I already produce lots of content,”
some of you might argue at this point.
“We’re always churning out loads of long, SEO-friendly copy.”
Well, there’s a lesson in here for you too. This year, try to move away from the old-school mentality that dictated that the more content you produce, the better – invest your time wisely in less frequent but higher quality content, zeroing in on specific niches.
It’s also important to humanise your output. This will mean your focus becomes more on making your content valuable and useful, rather than considering it in terms of Facebook likes and shares (although, of course, these are also beneficial).
Slim Down Your E-commerce Process
Carrying unnecessary weight is never healthy, and this is also true of your web
e-commerce process. Lengthy forms, too many mandatory questions, and misplaced, distracting upsells all make your online e-commerce sales funnel flabby and ineffective.
Make 2015 the year you make purchasing or ordering from your business as simple as it can be for your customer. Offer convenient functions designed to make customers’ lives easier, such as free shipping or click and collect, carefully integrate your payment gateways to ensure trust and make sure your forms are as streamlined as they can be to reduce bounce rates at this crucial point.
Flex Your Personalisation Muscles
The more relevant something is to us, the more likely we are to interact with it. Therefore,
personalisation can lead to increased customer dwell time on your site as well as more engagement, not to mention increased sales. In 2015, we predict that websites will continue to become more and more personalised to deliver a relevant and effective experience to all customers.
Whether you choose to more accurately target your emails or filter relevant products per customer on your site, keep personalisation of content high on your list of marketing resolutions for 2015.
Spring Clean Your Data
To achieve effective and accurate personalisation, you need to be able to rely on your data. There’s no point investing significant time, effort and budget into personalisation if your data list is full of lapsed customers and incorrect details. Start the year as you mean to go on with an edited and accurate data list.
Facebook’s acquisition of Atlas earlier in the year is just one example of how companies now have more access to customer data than ever before, allowing us to target even more detailed and niche groups to yield the best results. Consider using segmentation, the categorisation of your customers into definable groups governed by behavioural traits, purchasing habits or income, to get more out of your data.
Finding Balance with Marketing Automation
Marketing automation can save you time by taking care of some of the repetitive grunt work involved in marketing, allowing you to get on with the more complex and productive tasks.
However, automating all of your marketing goes against the personalisation and humanising principles we have already discussed. No one wants to feel they’re receiving a mass marketing email. 2015 should be the year you strive for balance and quality in your marketing.
Do you need help with any of the above-listed processes? Would you like Clever Marketing to help kick start your project?
If the answer is yes then please call our Surrey marketing agency now on
01276 402 381 – we’re here to take the load off local companies and provide you with excellent graphic design, print, web design, e-commerce and digital marketing services from SEO to PPC.
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