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Want to know how to improve your marketing in 2021? If so, you are in the right place!
Your marketing plays a major role in the success of your business, which means it is important to ensure you are marketing your business as best as possible.
Keep reading to find out 7 ways to improve your marketing in 2021.
This page includes affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.
1: Review, and possibly upgrade, your technology
Advances in technology are happening all the time and that includes marketing technology. Therefore, it is key to regularly review the technology you are using as it can quickly become outdated or new features could have been introduced that you aren’t making the most of. Some things to review are:
- Website hosting and provider
- Email service provider
- Social media scheduler
- Sales page or sales funnel builder
- Chatbots
As well as reviewing what you’re currently using it might be the time to invest in something new. Maybe you are using multiple services to run your online business and you could make your life easier by using a one-stop service like Kartra.
2: Uplevel your email marketing
Email marketing continues to be a highly cost-effective form of marketing for businesses small and large. I absolutely love email marketing because unlike content and social media marketing the real advantage is you can gain great insight into your subscribers and send highly targeted messages.
When it comes to email marketing there are a few ways you can make improvements in 2021.
Email Marketing Improvement 1: Send a regular newsletter
Do you have a mailing list that is seriously unloved? If so, 2021 is the time to change that. If you have a list that you aren’t emailing then you are leaving money on the table. Make a commitment to start small and send a newsletter on a monthly basis and once you are able to do that consistently, you can increase to fortnightly, weekly or even multiple times a week.
Email Marketing Improvement 2: Set up automated email sequences
Maybe you are already sending out a regular newsletter, but that is the only type of email marketing you do. Now it is time to start experimenting with automation. Automation allows you to create an email (or sequence of emails) once and then they are sent based on actions an individual takes.
A very common type of automated email sequence is a welcome sequence. This is created for when an individual first joins your mailing list. This allows you to tell them about you, your business and what they can expect as being on your mailing. This is just one possible automated email sequence you can set up. I share two other types you can create here.
Email Marketing Improvement 3: Improve your segmentation
Earlier I mentioned that one of the reasons I love email marketing is because you can send highly targeted messages. However, you can only do this if your segmentation is good. Therefore, if you really want to become an email marketing pro in 2021, I would recommend spending some time looking at your segmentation.
Each email service provider has a slightly different approach to segmenting. Subscribers might be placed into groups or they may have tags assigned to them. Now you can create hundreds of tags, however, it isn’t necessary. The aim is to be able to segment your subscribers so you can learn more about them and send them better emails. Rather than creating tags for the sake of it, create them for the purpose of being able to follow up on that knowledge.
For example, you may have a number of different services or products with a different focus. If you are a fitness coach you may offer a meal-planning service, a group weight-loss programme and a weight lifting programme. In your email service provider, you can set up tags for interest in meal planning, weight-loss and weight lifting. Then you might have lead-magnets that relate to those focuses and would mean if someone signs up for that lead magnet that is tagged accordingly
3. Plan your content in advance
Whether you are creating content for one platform (such as Instagram) or ten platforms it is essential that you plan your content, and even if you are currently planning your content I’m sure you can improve your planning process.
There are multiple objectives when you are creating content and by planning you can ensure within a period of time the variety of your content allows you to:
- Demonstrate your expertise
- Address your clients or customers’ needs
- Move your audience along the customer journey or down the sales funnel
- Connect with your audience
- Share details of your products or services
- Invite people to buy from you
- Keep your audience engaged
As you can see there is a lot to consider when making great content for your business, which is why planning in advance is key.
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To help you create your own 2021 content marketing plan I’ve created a workbook for you. Download your copy and you’ll be able to use alongside this blog post and create your very own 2021 content marketing plan. |
4: Introduce, or run more, retargeting advertising
If you aren’t already running digital or social media advertising, then 2021 might be the time to start investing. When it comes to digital advertising you can run two types of adverts: prospecting or retargeting. Prospecting is where you run adverts with the purpose of attracting a new audience. Retargeting is where you run adverts to an audience that has already engaged with you in some way. You can run retargeting ads via lots of platforms, but since Facebook is a popular choice for social media advertising, I will use that to explain how it works.
In Facebook, you are able to target people (show them a specific advert) based on their behaviour and actions within Facebook and anywhere else that you have the Facebook pixel installed. You can run adverts based on what % of a Facebook Live video they watched (I discuss this technique more here) or a specific page they visited on your website.
The reason why I’m recommending using retargeting is because it usually has a better conversion rate than prospecting, which makes sense because the audience is a warm audience (aka they already know you). Also, since you are able to run an advert based on an action they’ve taken you can be more specific with the advert.
If you are getting started with retargeting a great place to start is by focusing on key pages on your website. If you have sales pages you can set up an advert for people who have visited your sales page but didn’t purchase. This is a very common type of retargeting advert that is used when someone is running a launch but can be used continuously too.
5: Gain more insight from your data
When it comes to marketing one of the biggest mistakes, I see entrepreneurs and business owners making is not making the most of the data at their disposal.
Firstly, if you want to improve your marketing in 2021 it is important to understand how your marketing is currently performing. This means reviewing your Google Analytics to understand how your website is performing. (You can check out the 7 metrics I recommend you review here). Then depending on what other types of marketing you run you’ll probably have access to more insights and data. Most social media platforms, email service providers and sales page builders will give you data too.
You might have access to a lot of data but for it to be useful you need to be able to gain insight from it. This means working out what numbers are actually important and monitoring them regularly.
Once you’ve decided which metrics are important to your business and the direction you are going in it is important to regularly monitor them. As an absolute minimum, you should be reviewing your data on a monthly basis.
6: Run marketing experiments
Has your marketing been the same for months or even years? Maybe you have a number of marketing channels that you use to market your business and you’ve got into a nice rhythm. Now I’m not one to say mix things up for the sake of it. However, the purpose of this blog post is to help you to improve your marketing in 2021 and if you want to see different results in 2021 it might be time to try something different.
Running experiments is an essential part of marketing. You might decide to try a new marketing channel or even just do something different with a channel you are already using. Set a time to run the experiment and decide what you will measure in order to see if the experiment is successful or not. Then at the end, you can review your results and decide whether to continue with this new type or approach to marketing or whether to move on.
7: Work with a marketing professional
I’ve given you 6 generic recommendations to improve your marketing in 2021, however, without knowing your business all I can provide is generic recommendations, which may or may not be applicable to your business.
The best way to improve your marketing in 2021 is to work 1-to-1 with a marketing professional like myself.
The first thing I do with new clients is conduct a marketing audit. I’ll review all of your marketing and then highlight the specific areas that need improving. This means you aren’t having to guess at what you should be doing. Instead, you can rest assured that a professional has reviewed your business and make informed personalised recommendations. This means you can focus your time, energy and money with confidence that you are using your resources as effectively as possible.
You can find out how to work with me here.
There you have it! You now know 7 ways to improve your marketing in 2021
I hope reading this post has inspired you to improve your marketing in 2021. Investing in marketing is one of the best things you can do for your business. Great marketing will grow your audience today, and generate more clients for now and in the future.
I would love to know in the comments what suggestion you are going to try.
Want to work with me? You can find out how you can work with me here.
You can drop me a message here or if you would prefer to discuss your situation (I love a good chat) then you can book a call here
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