Today is the perfect day to take stock of your businesses accomplishments from 2012 and to review your businesses marketing and advertising goals for 2013. Taking time to review what worked and what didn’t last year and uncover how your competition stacks up to you will help you determine where you should market and advertise your business and what to avoid this year. Knowing which advertising or marketing programs worked for you business will also help you increase your overall revenue and cut unnecessary expenses. Here are a few simple things you should ask yourself or find uncover to start your businesses 2013 marketing and advertising review off right.
Where Are Your Sales Coming From?
Many small business owners keep track of how their Clients found them, but they don’t necessarily use this information when they are marketing their company online or off. Others may not even ask their customers how they heard about them. Knowing this information will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your advertising and where you should and should not spend your marketing budget.
If you have a computer program that tracks your sales or Clients run a report and find out how your Clients found you and start looking at this data, it will help you uncover information that will help you market your company. Keep in mind that many times Clients may have heard about you offline, but looked up your company online if you do a lot of advertising, so don’t be afraid to ask them to clarify anything for you. It’s important to know what triggered Clients to contact you and to know if they are Googl’ing your company name OR your services. If they are Googl’ing services and you at the top of the results Kudos! If you can’t be found at the top of organic search results for your services it’s time to develop a online marketing plan. - If you don’t have this information start asking Clients how they heard about you and how they got your phone number.
If you’ve discovered that some of your advertising or marketing budget was not effective last year evaluate what worked and look at options to contact current customers for new business, referrals and take a look at your website and other online marketing opportunities that you may have neglected.
Review Your Website.
Roughly 50% of all search results are individuals looking for local businesses or services and if your website is not at the top of the organic search results or you don’t have a mobile website you need to consult an online marketing professional for advice.
When was the last time you updated your website? If it’s been a while or you’ve never figured out why your website does not come up in the top results from Google you should take advantage of a Free SEO Audit to see if there are any issues or easy fixes to optimizing your website. These audits provide valuable insight into how your website ranks online and you can see how you stack up against your competition.
Checkout Your Competition.
When was the last time you evaluated your competition, their website and where they spend their advertising and marketing budgets? If you have an established business and your sales have not rebounded over the last few years and your competition seems to be growing you need to find out why and make the necessary changes to get back on top. In some cases, young businesses that have adopted online marketing strategies are growing and established businesses that have failed to invest in more than a website, yellowpage advertising or a cost per click advertising campaign are stagnating or loosing business. If this sounds familiar here is what you need to evaluate:
- Evaluate where they are advertising compared to where you are advertising
- Evaluate their presence on: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and 3rd party review websites like Yelp
- Evaluate the size of their business now compared to yours and what the changes were like over the last few years
January is a great time to evaluate your businesses accomplishments and to set your goals for 2013. If you need help evaluating your offline or online advertising and marketing programs or you need to online marketing services contact us for more a Free SEO Audit and a consultation at 805-380-5494 or by email.
