I was on the phone with one of my newer home builder clients the other day and we were discussing the overall status of his marketing campaigns as 2019 came to a close.
This particular client was a little worried. He’d tried a lot of new things in the past year and while some efforts were successful, he fell short of some of the goals he’d set for himself, too. He’d tried to handle his marketing entirely in-house for a large chunk of the year, which is actually what led him to me in the first place.
I told him what I tell everyone – the end of the year isn’t something to dread when it comes to your marketing, as the beginning of a new one is right around the corner. Just as is true in our personal lives, January 1st is an invaluable opportunity for a fresh start just waiting to be taken advantage of by marketers who know what they’re doing.
But acknowledging that opportunity is one thing – successfully capitalizing on it is something else entirely. Therefore, if you really want to make sure that your marketing strategy gets off on the right foot in 2020, there are a few key things you’ll want to keep in mind.
It All Comes Back to That Return on Investment
Possibly the most critical way to make sure that your marketing strategy starts strong in 2020 involves taking a look not forwards, but backwards at everything you did for the last 365 days and comparing the results to the prior year.
Go over every element of every marketing campaign and find the precise return on investment for each. This will be a great way to eliminate ALL guesswork from the equation in a way that plainly shows the clear monetary value that something is bringing to your business. As you look at things from a cold, hard “dollars and cents” perspective, you may find that certain initiatives were far more successful than you realize. You might also discover that something you assumed worked well didn’t generate nearly as much as you’d hoped.
Once you know the precise ROI for everything, you put yourself in a better position to identify what is working and what isn’t. At that point, you can begin 2020 with that fresh perspective, doubling down on the former and getting rid of the latter as soon as you can.
If you haven’t been tracking your marketing campaign and the results of each, put this on your must do list for the new year and be sure to follow through all year.
Building (and Re-Building) That Brand Experience
Another one of the most important steps you can take to help make sure that your marketing strategy gets off on the right foot in 2020 involves taking something of a “bird’s eye view” look at the entire enterprise.
It is absolutely critical – especially in a value-driven industry like contracting or home building – to offer the most consistent brand experience possible across ALL touch points within your sales and marketing cycles. It doesn’t matter how someone happens to come into contact with your brand for the first time, absolutely every interaction should feel like it’s all coming from the exact same place.
Therefore, if you want to hit the ground running with your marketing strategy as we head into 2020, you need to re-evaluate and confirm that your own campaigns actually do just that.
Pay close attention to every element of your marketing collateral – from the visual aesthetic to the language choices you’re making and more.
Not only should there be a critical level of continuity that connects all these elements together, but that continuity also needs to properly reflect the impression that you’re trying to create with your brand.
Go over everything that you’ve created in the last year and look at how successfully you were able to pull this off. Do you feel like that blog post, paid advertisement, on boarding letter and all that social media activity accurately portrays what you want your customers to take away from your brand interactions? Why or why not? If not, what could you change with the collateral you’re ABOUT to create to really drive that impression home?
These are the types of questions that you need to be thinking about – both in terms of the materials you’ve already published and everything that you’ll soon be putting out into the world.
Consistency is King
Finally, we arrive at the topic of consistency – something that is far, far more important than a lot of people realize.
Success in terms of marketing isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon – meaning that you’re not necessarily going to see the results that you’re after right away. It takes time and, in the modern era, it requires an incredible amount of content and other marketing-related activities.
But if you don’t manage your campaigns consistently, you’ll never be able to build the momentum you need to unlock the return on investment you are after.
Marketing is something that you must do day in and day out – especially on those days when you “just don’t feel like it.”
Soon, you’ll come to realize that all the effort is worth it as your campaign naturally picks up steam and begins to drive itself forward. Savvy marketing professionals understand how important this level of commitment, care and attention to detail really is. If you want to make sure that your 2020 marketing strategy is even more successful than the one you used for 2019, you need to come to that realization, too.
If you don’t have time to do or oversee your own marketing, outsource it. There are marketing companies that will handle your marketing and report to you on the results just as if they were an employee but without the added expense of payroll.
In the end, every business is a little bit different from the next – meaning that there really is no “one size fits all” approach to what you’re doing. When properly created and thoughtfully constructed, your marketing strategy should support and empower those qualities that make your business unique in the first place, broadcasting them to the widest possible audience in the most effective way.
Having said that, the best practices outlined above WILL act as a solid foundation upon which the entirety of your marketing strategy will be built. Provided that you keep them in mind not only in January but all throughout the year, you’ll find that accomplishing the marketing objectives you’ve set for yourself is no longer a matter of “if,” but “when.”
