Well, 2012 is now here and for most of us in business, it is back to work; back to the daily routine, back to the grindstone; back to the corporate treadmill.
However, don’t feel down or gloomy about being back at work or the year that lies ahead as a new year is actually a perfect opportunity to really go for it and make strides into building (or growing) a great business platform.
I am not a great one for making resolutions, but I stand by my suggestion that putting together an effective and cohesive marketing plan could make the difference to what you and your business achieves in 2012. So……..if you havent started thinking about this, do it now!
To get you thinking, I put together 30 questions to test your business and, although these were done a while ago, they are still very much worth looking at as they may well prompt you into thinking about things in a different way.
Already in 2012 the internet is awash with Blog sites making marketing predictions about which initiatives to employ. One of the best I have read places great emphasis on how to get the best from your website in terms of how to use title tags effectively. For those already baffled by the term title tags, title tags are the primary text that defines a web page. They are required for all HTML documents. Search engine bots use them to help identify the content of a page so begin the tag with the most valuable and relevant keyword phrase.
Continuing on from the trends from 2010/11, social media and the importance of unique, quality and relevant copy for your website have been highlighted as areas that will be key for successful online marketing and I am very much in agreement with this. I came across a website recently called Hub Spot Blog that gave a string of facts to do with social media and its power for marketing.
But what about more traditional marketing avenues? Well, there will always be a place for traditional advertising, but bunging in ads willy nilly as a result of a sales call selling “last minute space” is not the way forward. Plan what you want to advertise i.e are you looking to make direct sales as a result of the ad or simply generate website traffic.
Email marketing is also an area where I see continued growth in 2012. Why? because email marketing is incredibly cost effective and can provide excellent stats as to actions made as a result.
One area I do think may well become important for the medium sized business is exhibitions and trade shows. They can be expensive, but done correctly and marketed for 2-3 months in advance using Twitter etc, prospects can turn up to meet you on the day who are very “warm.”
Watch this space I say and if you need to talk to someone about what you should do in 2012, get in touch with Bath Marketing Consultancy.
