If you haven’t read the predictions for 2018 marketing articles, I’ll save you some time: this will finally be the year in which businesses and marketers must leverage AI-IoT-Chatbots-Machine-Learning-Video-Content-Big-Data-Blockchain (what I like to call AIIoTCMacLVC-BigDBChain for short).
Same as last year’s predictions.
Of course, looking past over-hyped and inflated expectations, technology continues to affect the way consumers make buying decisions and how marketers can communicate with them in significant ways. Parsing the hype from the real stuff to make sense of this fast-changing landscape isn’t easy.
Rather than attempt to predict how things will or won’t play out over the course of the next 12 months, we decided instead to look back and compile a few of our favorite tips from 2017, with an eye for those that might provide some guidance and best practices for navigating challenging times. Whether it’s developing processes to keep your marketing on track or finding better ways of understanding your audience, we hope you’ll find these tips useful in making smart, strategic marketing decisions in the year ahead.
Document your criteria for assessing advertising opportunities
By cnadler
Every year, we have more and more potential advertising channels and options to choose from. Making off-the-cuff, reactive decisions about where your ad dollars should go is a really great way to get hosed.
If you don’t have a strong process for determining which opportunities make the most sense for your business, you need one yesterday.
Read more about this tip here.
By Brittney Lane
This was my favorite tip of 2017. It’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of building a brand-new marketing strategy, but doing so often comes at the cost of ignoring invaluable information that your target audience is probably happy to share.
Your clients know you, they know what prospects are going through when they are looking for a product/service like yours and they know where you’re falling short. If you’re not talking to them, you’re missing a massive opportunity to get intel that can vastly improve your marketing.
Read more about this tip here.
Learn to make budget-friendly videos
By Scott Rogers
Video has always been a perplexing form of content for me. While a well-made video can have a dramatic effect on a small business — making it look more prestigious, broadening their reach and connecting with people in a new, exciting way — I often struggle with a crucial element that goes into producing a great video: cost.
That’s why I love tips like this that show you how, with some creativity, you can produce effective, interesting video content on a low budget. Plus, not having to worry about meeting a potentially unreachable ROI due to how much you paid on one video allows you to take more risks, produce more videos and see what forms of messaging really connects with your audience.
Read more about this tip here.
Create (and follow) a plan that keeps all of your content on deadline
By cnadler
I’m a big fan of any tip that will help me actually create a stronger process or get more organized. (If you’re naturally organized and you don’t need tips like this because everything you do is perfectly planned and you’ve never missed a deadline in your life, well, I’m happy for you but I also sort of hate you.)
Letting perfectly good content sit in purgatory due to lack of process is a shame. Develop a good plan to avoid this from happening, and trust in the process.
Read more about this tip here.
Don’t immediately pull the plug on tactics that aren’t delivering
By Brittney Lane
Listen, when you launch a campaign and it immediately appears to be tanking, it’s understandable that your gut reaction is to turn it off before you lose any more money. However, sometimes your tactics need time to prove their value and sometimes your tactics won’t produce a direct ROI (looking at you, brand awareness campaigns).
Understanding the goals of your tactics and campaigns prior to launch will make it easier to make a smart decision about what to do next when the results of your campaign don’t immediately match your hopes.
Read more about this tip here.
Send better emails
By Scott Rogers
I spend a lot of time thinking about email subject lines, but sometimes it can feel like not enough. After you go through all the effort of writing the email, settling on a design and testing to make sure it all looks great for your recipients, settling on a subject line can feel like almost a second thought.
Only problem is no one is going to see your expertly designed template or engaging copy if your subject line fails to get them to… you know, open the email. Along with the tips for better subject lines, I love the practical suggestions for how you can take stock of your email lists and how to better monitor your sending frequency.
Read more about this tip here.
Clearly define who owns what when it comes to your marketing
By cnadler
There’s no way to guarantee marketing success — but a good way to ensure marketing failure is to have unclear roles and responsibilities when it comes to your marketing leadership.
Within our three-part series, “Marketing Without a CMO,” there are a number of tips I’ve referred back to — from defining which types of marketing roles different businesses need, to looking out for common pitfalls that happen as these needs change and marketing roles shift.
Read more about this tip here, here and here.
Stop choosing marketing channels for the wrong reasons
By Brittney Lane
It’s not uncommon for small businesses to pour tons of time into channels they’ll never get a return from. That’s why it’s critical that you can justify why you’re using any particular channel (or tactic, or strategy). “Everyone else is doing it” is a terrible reason and one that is far more common than it should be.
Above all else, you should be considering if your target audience uses the channel in question and what types of information they trust when making these decisions. A little bit of extra legwork now can spare you hundreds of hours a year updating a Facebook page that only 60 people like.
Read more about this tip here.
Improve your marketing with better grammar
By Scott Rogers
I’m a big believer in how far clean, well-written sentences can take your content and overall marketing collateral. Grammar is, of course, never the most exciting thing, but in this post, I tried to include some tips that are easy to follow and remember.
My favorite tip out of the bunch? Keep sentences simple. If you every feel like a paragraph you wrote is too bloated or a sentence too long, just start cutting unnecessary words out. You’d be surprised how much clearer and more effective your language can be after hitting the delete button a few times.
