Digital Marketing For The New Year

Your digital marketing plan for 2019 will likely hinge on what type of industry you are in and what you are trying to promote. This is a topic I could discuss for hours and therefore I will likely blog about again later this year. A solid marketing plan for my small business’s new year is a top priority for us! Making the most of our digital platforms is an important part of that.

What Role Does Digital Marketing Play In Your Overall Plan?

Don’t start off your new year without a plan in place. For the most part, my marketing plan helps to drive business, develop my team members and supplements any holes in my sales projections. If you haven’t done one yet, sit down with your key people as soon as the year starts and get to work. Personally we were late to the game when it came to digital. We didn’t want to jump into something that was a fad. By now, we know many of the platforms aren’t going anywhere. Over the last 2 years, the vast majority of clicks on our website have been from people’s phones. This was a big change from the 2 years prior to that. Once you determine your top marketing priorities for the year you can clarify the role digital will play for your company.

What Platforms Are The Best For You?

What is your top priority for digital marketing? Some common answers could be brand awareness, customer engagement or increasing sales. Ideally most platforms works together to not only accomplish day-to-day goals but to elevate your brand awareness and get traction to your phone or website. At the very minimum, every small business should have a website, a Facebook Business Page, an Instagram and a Twitter handle. You can put the same content out on each of these, but it is important they are reserved in your name and at the very least, your information is updated and correct. If you are selling services, retail or lifestyle products and services you can also benefit from Pinterest and Snapchat. If increasing traffic to your website is important for your business model, a blog is a wonderful tool to get you a higher ranking on search engines.

Should You Pay To Play?

Many of these platforms now offer ads and sponsored content that can be customized to populate to certain demographics. I have never been able to figure out the “perfect” formula to how Facebook or Twitter displays content, but I know three things for sure.

1. Consistency is key. Putting great content out on a regular basis is necessary. For most businesses that is at least once a day.
2. Original video and photo content is crucial. The most dynamic thing you can do is always changing. Right now Facebook rates Going Live first, then creating a Story, and then Video/Photos, with regular-old-words coming in last. This may not always be the case, but learning these different tools as they are launched is a good idea.
3. Engagement is golden. The more likes, comments and shares your posts get, the better. This is across all digital platforms. The more dynamic content you have, the more your posts will populate and the likelihood increases that your customers or potential customers will engage!

All that being said…whether or not you pay for ads or to boosts your posts, really depends on you and your goals. The good news is that if you want to try it, you can start in small parts. Boosting a post for as little as $1 a day or $5 for a few days. This is a nice way to see how well it works for you. My rule of thumb in the past year has been that we pay to boost posts that have potential to increase our sales directly. That may not be the right risk for you, but it has paid off well for us.

Happy New Year!