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Review & Reflect on 2017 – Now React for 2018

December is the ideal time to reflect on what was, and prepare for what 2018 needs to be.

 

Download TemplateDownload your FREE 2018 Annual Marketing Budget Template from Perth Marketing Agency Toby Creative.

 

Download TemplateDownload your FREE 2018 Marketing Calendar & Social Media Planner Template from Perth Marketing Agency Toby Creative. This superb resource will simplify and streamline your marketing campaigns and social media planning for 2018 saving you hours of work. Provides a clear month-by-month and daily calendar for scheduling marketing campaigns, EDMs and social media posts. Includes all local, state and national holidays, religious events, special events and observances. Includes really useful information, moon cycles, zodiac phases as well as a month of social media post suggestions to power your social media strategy.

 

Did your marketing achieve your business objectives in 2017? Were you able to try new marketing platforms, test and measure, and make informed decisions as to what works and doesn’t work when it comes to marketing your particular business?

Have you been able to successfully and correctly measure the attribution and ROI from your marketing activities, or are you still unsure what is working and what isn’t?

Have you improved your marketing efficiency and reduced labour costs, particularly with automation and conversational interfaces (chatbots)?

Did you miss out on available free organic traffic to your business through organic search marketing or social media exposure?

Many Australian businesses are still under intense pressure, in highly competitive industries, with little surplus marketing budget to be able to make lavish spending actions. Return on Investment has never been more important than it is currently. As new markets continue to open up for Australian businesses, so do the competitors locally, nationally and internationally (Amazon the new kid on the block), all wanting a bite from the same consumer pie. Now is the time to think smart – market smart, with Toby Creative in 2018.

We encourage you to take stock by reviewing your marketing analytics and campaign performance data. Engage with Toby Creative Perth Marketing Agency to have our team perform an analysis of your Email Campaigns, Social Media Campaigns, Adwords Campaigns, Organic Website Traffic Patterns and other available marketing data to formulate a review of the integrated effectiveness of your overall business marketing.

Collate and summarise this marketing data with a SWOT Analysis to determine the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats apparent to the business. Participate in a SWOT marketing workshop for your brand to involve key business stake holders in a very useful guided activity to assist in your 2018 goal planning.

Which content and campaigns worked for you during 2017? What can you consider repurposing and reusing in the closing weeks of this year, particularly in the count down to the New Year, or add to your marketing strategy for 2018? It is a sensible consideration to recycle content that has a proven track record of success. You may even be able to update some of your old posts from 2017 with the latest facts and figures, and have a discussion around the change that has occurred.

Have you considered trying different social media accounts and channels for the business? Here is a great way to reuse and repurpose your old content from other channels as you establish new accounts and build additional followers to your brand.

Take the time during December to review your mailing list to see who hasn’t been opening, or engaging with your content these past twelve months. Determine suitable strategies to re-engage with old contacts, or consider whether you should purge those who haven’t engage over a period of time. Filter your bounce lists for undeliverable email addresses and determine if there is a way to reconnect and obtain their new email addresses to update your contact list.

Prepare your New Year’s Marketing Resolution with a planned marketing objective for 2018, and determine your marketing goals. This will form the basis, along with useful data and marketing guidance, to make an informed marketing plan and strategy for 2018. Taking a structured approach, Toby Creative can create your 2018 Marketing Calendar outlining your next twelve months of online and offline marketing budget allocation, strategies, and suitable marketing campaign types that complement and work in an integrated fashion to improve brand awareness, reinforcement of brand message, target your intended audience and drive sales for the business.

Plan your social media strategy and email marketing campaign strategy for 2018, with a useful 2018 Marketing Calendar from Toby Creative for your business, distributing your social media campaigns for improved effectiveness and to maximise engagement as well as planning your email campaigns for the most effective times to increase open rates and click through. Take advantage of seasonal trends and plan in advance to ensure you can leverage opportunities for your business. Allow yourself planning time to prepare all aspects of your campaigns to ensure that they work correctly, are delivered on time and contain tracking so that you can measure the results.

In 2018 aim for more infographics as well as stimulating visual content. Visual media (photos, video, live content, augmented reality, virtual reality) will play a huge role in social media during 2018, as the tendency is to express everything visually as much as possible. Your audience has a short attention span, so brands need to be as eye-catching as possible, consider using infographics instead of text and sometimes create provocative images to convey the message. Snapchat and Instagram filters have enabled their audience to enhance selfies. Consider what you could do with your brand and augmented reality. In 2018 Facebook will be launching Spaces, their virtual hangout so you can connect with friends using Oculus, there is some interesting new developments in the pipeline coming soon!

Remember that useful, fresh, evergreen blogs are still very much beneficial to your business and SEO activities. Great content has always been a way to increase your brand’s status in social media, and this is not going to change anytime soon. Companies need to continue to create long-form posts that give helpful advice and direction, not just the latest news, and written with an SEO strategy in mind.

Have you prepared your company’s Social Media Policy for 2018? Do you have a social media plan, approach and company usage policy for staff? Protect yourself and your brand by planning with a Toby Creative Social Media Policy workshop session to guide you through this process for your business.

What are your staff training needs in 2018 in regards marketing? Toby Creative run customised workshop training classes for individuals and businesses covering WordPress, MailChimp, HootSuite, SEO, Social Media organic and paid advertising.

Who is your ideal customer? Have you profiled and created an ideal customer persona so you know who you are marketing to, and plan your marketing strategy to suit accordingly? Engage with Toby Creative – Branding & Marketing in Perth to develop your business’s customer persona and associated marketing strategy to maximise your marketing results in 2018.

Prevention is better than the cure – what is your Brand Crisis Management and Reputation Management plan for 2018? It will never happen to me? I hope not! In the meantime, we have worked with businesses where it has unfortunately happened, and they have had to deal with it. Planning, having a strategy, and practicing its implementation is like a fire drill. We never hope to have to use it in anger, but we need to have someone delegated as the fire warden!

Have you had an opportunity to read through all of the marketing solutions that Toby Creative provide? There are a lot, from old school traditional; TVC, Radio, Newspapers, to modern web design, ecommerce, search marketing and social media, with quite a bit thrown in between.

Toby Creative offer a truly integrated marketing strategy, with guidance and support, good communication and clear reporting. We would love to meet with you to find out how you went in 2017 and where you would like to go in 2018 with your business marketing. Contact Toby Creative – Branding & Marketing on 0412 622 262, email info@tobycreative.com.au or fill in our contact form to book a no obligation free initial consultation at your location so that we can discuss your specific marketing requirements.

2 Comments
  • Matt Lynch - December 11, 2017 at 8:42 am

    This post is jammed packed with resources to effectively plan your 2018 marketing strategy for your business. The free resources are super useful to plan marketing budget allocation across the year, for campaigns and month-by-month to allocate costs and determine ROI. The free yearly marketing calendar is a simple, clear and efficient way to plan all your marketing campaigns, allow for seasonality, take advantage of special events throughout the year and amplify posts in a coordinated way. What better way to get some organisation and structure into your marketing, improve efficiency and effectiveness.

  • James Brine - December 12, 2017 at 2:39 am

    Having a social media calendar is not only a great way to save time on researching what to post about (as this is a struggle for many businesses) but it also serves as a guide so that you don’t post inappropriate things during particular events.

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