A new year is a great time to start…well, anew! New intentions, new motivation, new resolutions (even if they don’t make it past February – no judgment), and for us – the new year is a time to set new business goals. Don’t know where to start? Here’s what we recommend as some small business marketing goals to strive for in the new year.

Refresh Your Brand

“New year, new you!” – except instead of “new you,” how about “new brand?” This is a great time to take a fresh look at your branding and evaluate whether or not it’s time for an update. Maybe it’s been a while since your brand was created and you just need to modernize it a bit, or maybe you’ve changed a lot as a company and you need your branding to reflect that. 

Either way, this is a great place to start with your small business marketing goals because you might want to reconsider driving a lot of new traffic and awareness for your brand if it doesn’t look and sound the way you want it to. Our team at South Street & Co. can help with updating your print materials for a more modern design look, redesigning your website to align with current trends and technology, or even going back to basics and working with you on a new logo design!

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Get More Leads

One of the most common small business marketing goals is to get more leads – of course! Because leads = sales = growing your business. But how do you get there? One of the best ways to get more leads is through SEO, or search engine optimization. This service optimizes your website presence to be easily found by online search engines and rank highly for keywords that your potential customers are searching for. 

This brings more people to your site, but then you also have to go the extra mile of getting them to convert – aka contact you to purchase your product and/or services. One of our favorite tools to help with this is ConvertKit – they make it really easy to add good looking forms to your website that entice people to convert (it is in their name, after all). 

Build Brand Awareness

A key element of SEO is great blog content, because this helps search engines understand what information you’re offering to searchers. But the best thing about blogging is that it also is really helpful in building brand awareness, which is why it’s at the top of our list for small business marketing goals. After all, the first step to turning someone into a potential customer is making sure they know who you are.

Through blogs, you can answer commonly asked questions about your services, explain your products in more detail, debunk myths about your industry, tell stories about great customer successes and past projects you’ve worked on, and so much more. This gives your audience a deeper insight into who you are as a company, so that even if they’re not ready to take the next step in the purchasing process right then and there, you’ll be top of mind for when they are.

Develop a Consistent Content Plan

One of the things we hear most often from our clients about their small business marketing goals is that they’d like to create and publish social media content more consistently, but they just don’t have the time or creative energy. And we get it! Quality social media content is highly valuable, but strategic and time consuming when done correctly. And it’s not just about posting – you also need to monitor all of your platforms and engage with people, too. 

We’re making it easier for you with a free 30 Days of Instagram Content downloadable. Often the hardest part is just getting started – so this can help with that while you focus on your other small business marketing goals. 

Nurture Your Current Customers

Last but not least, a lot of business owners look at their small business marketing goals from the perspective of new customers, but don’t forget about your current customers! After all, aren’t they the ones who helped get you to where you are today? It’s important to nurture these people and show them that you still care about and value them, even as you continue to grow.

A great way to do this is through email marketing. You should have a list of all of their email addresses (if you don’t, do that first) and then you can communicate with them in a bi-weekly or monthly email newsletter. Here, you can send them company updates, promote new products or services, share special discounts, and encourage them to spread the word to their friends! It’s a win-win. 

If you need help implementing your small business marketing goals in the new year, don’t wait – contact us today to see how we can help!