Fingers Crossed Is not a Marketing Strategy
Guest post by Julie Young, Young Design
You just got a new logo, an optimized cool-looking website, and some beautiful print brochures; your brand is out there. Now what? Letting your website and marketing collateral gather dust is like tossing a coin into the fountain – you can wish and hope that they continue to work for you, but they won’t – not without tweaks, updates, redesigns, and downright overhauls.
It’s a fact: You must keep your marketing fresh to be effective. Responding to fast-changing technologies, business trends and cultural norms is part of a good marketing strategy.
Prioritize Web Maintenance
Part of protecting your brand is staying on top of the collateral you have in place, and keeping your website up to date is crucial. One look at a stale website without current content, and a user will click away — that’s one customer you just lost. Read our post on website maintenance for tips on setting goals, doing reviews, and assigning tasks.
Adapt Your Brand Identity
Aside from new markets, there will always be new ways to leverage and deliver your brand – social media, video, online ads, mobile apps, and new venues. Is your email campaign performing well? Do you have a blog? Well-optimized blogs are known to draw traffic. Have you thought about launching a podcast? They’re hot now. Do your research, and then make sure your brand adapts to these opportunities, whether it’s getting serious about using new technology or generating entirely new ideas to get the word out there.
Analyze Your Competition
Always, always be looking at your competition. Customers are most certainly comparing your company with others, even if you’re not. Here’s a good guide to finding your online competitors and identifying opportunities to outperform them.
Revisit Your Marketing Strategy Regularly
It’s easy to neglect marketing – business is booming, so who has time? But it’s fairly certain that at some point your business will be idling in the down loop of the roller coaster. Make your own luck: Look into the future and continue to make concrete plans even while things are busy.
About the Author
Julie Young is a print and web designer at Young Design. For over 20 years, she has been creating quality branding, websites, print collateral and email marketing to help companies communicate with their customers in order to raise profiles and profits.
