What are your New Year’s Marketing Resolutions?

I love the beginning of the new year. It’s a perfect chance to start fresh, leave behind whatever bad habits I had last year, and hit the ground running with all my new year’s resolutions. I’m not talking about the eating-healthier and exercising-more kind of resolutions. My goals are more business-oriented. Below is my list of 2016 New Year’s Marketing Resolutions. I welcome you to steal from my list to jumpstart your own!

Start an email newsletter

The biggest hurdle to starting an email newsletter is that first email. What to say, what to include? But once you’ve got a template going, sending out weekly, monthly, or quarterly emails shouldn’t be so daunting. Using a service like MailChimp or Constant Contact, once you have an email template set up, it’s just a matter of filling in the content. I resolve to finally get our email newsletter on track in 2016!

Get on a better social media schedule

I’ll admit it… I took a social media sabbatical over the holidays. But in 2016, I resolve to get back on that horse, and post daily to my business’ Facebook page.

Update business profiles

The start of the new year is as good a time as any to make sure all your profiles are up-to-date. I’ll double check my personal LinkedIn profile, as well as our business profile, our Facebook profile, and any profiles on group websites we belong to (like the Chamber of Commerce and other networking groups).

Don’t forget to ask for testimonials

We did a lot of great work in 2015, so now’s a good time to reach out to the clients involved with our most successful projects and ask them to write a quick sentence or two about their experience, and why they would recommend us to others. I can use some testimonials on our website, as social media posts, and even in networking!

Update your website

You really should be looking at your website (posting blogs, updating content) more regularly than once a year. If you aren’t blogging, I’d recommend doing a quick review of your website at least quarterly. Check for things like:

• Is your contact information up-to-date?
• Are you receiving your contact forms?
• Are your hours correct?
• Do you have any new services to list?
• If you run events, are they up-to-date?
• If you are a restaurant, are your menus all online and up-to-date?
• If you list clients on your site, do you have any new clients to add or old clients to remove?
• Do you have a press section? Do you have any recent press to add?

We have a portfolio section that I resolve to refresh!

Outsource/Streamline more

I recently posted a great article from Forbes on 15 marketing tasks you should outsource now. While that’s great advice for anyone outside the marketing world, obviously, here at Katy Dwyer Design, that’s exactly what we do. But it got me thinking, “What tasks or jobs could we be outsourcing so we can spend more of our time working for our clients?”

I’m certainly going to keep the idea of outsourcing open in my mind throughout the year, but my first step is to streamline, and find services that can help with monotonous, time-consuming tasks. For instance, I track my business miles for tax purposes. It’s a job that I have always loathed, and I never, ever, remember to make note of my mileage, or I’m in too much of a rush to stop and write it down. So this month, I’m giving the app MileIQ a try. It’s an app that automatically tracks your drives and miles. Then you just have to assign each drive to business or personal, plus you can add purposes for the drives. With 40 free drives each the month, I can test it out before paying the subscription fee, which I will find WELL worth it if it means that I don’t have to go back, retrace all my steps, and figure out my business mileage every month!

Work Less

I’m not suggesting I’m going to start working 3-day weeks, or take loads of time off (although, wouldn’t that be nice!). What I am saying is that my days are often spent at my desk. That means I don’t get out enough to network! And without networking, no business can stay afloat. If people don’t know you exist, and that you can help with their needs, you won’t continue to get work in the door. I may need to rethink schedules, try to be more efficient when I am working, or even consider hiring an employee. But no matter how I plan to do it, I resolve to work less and network more!

So there you have it. My 2016 Marketing Resolutions. I hope I’ve inspired you to make a marketing resolution list of your own!