5 Remarkable Tools To Top Your 2016 Marketing Wishlist

By now, you have a pretty good idea of how your marketing fared this year. You either pulled off a total win, came in about average, or completely lost the battle.

And if the latter is you, don’t be too tough on yourself. Finding your way around the marketing landscape can be a little like a rat race, one in which you ask yourself who keeps moving the cheese.

For 2016, you need a plan. And that planning starts now with your wishlist.

Build a marketing wishlist

We’ve got a two-part list of a few of our favorite things to add to your marketing wishlist for 2016.

Here’s this week’s top five:

Clear value proposition.

This is a positioning statement. In fifty words or less, explain what benefit you provide, to who you provide it, and how you do it better than anyone else. Your goal should be to communicate a clear, specific purpose to your target audience.

To be effective, you must first understand what exactly you are offering. Because consumers buy benefits and not features, touting a list of features just won’t do. You have to think past the obvious and zero in on what void you are filling; the problem you’re solving.

Start here.  Ask yourself this question: “Why does your business exist?”

Articulated brand promise.

Your brand promise is the value consumers have come to expect from your brand. It’s your commitment to them. When they are in pursuit of solutions, this is what they’ll recall because it represents what they can count on you for.

And you can articulate this in a couple different ways: through your mission statement or subtle touchpoints in the marketplace as consumers interact with your brand.

Consistent visual branding.

From your website to your social media networks, email marketing to business cards, all of your visual branding should have the same look and feel, and communicate the same brand promise.

Consumers expect a seamless and cohesive experience with your brand.

Don’t disappoint them with fragmented messaging, visual or written. People will consume your brand visually before they read one word. Think continuity.

 Updated Website.

Websites can be expensive to build. So after the initial investment, it’s tempting to want to leave it alone and just recover. There’s value in that.

But don’t let it sit too long. It’s imperative that your creative assets mirror the value stated in your brand promise.  Your website is mostly likely the first introduction consumers will have to your brand.  So you want to make a good impression.

Sit down with your web developer now, and every 6-8 months going forward to walk through your website. Check for broken links. Update images and refresh content.  Use this opportunity to install some of the latest plugins available. You want your website to maintain a fresh and current appearance.

Active Blog.

You are doing business in a time when everyone is a publisher. The veil has officially been ripped away, and everyone has equal opportunity access to creating and distrusting their own content.

Blogging is a common way to do that. This onsite content has numerous benefits, with its impact on SEO being one of the most known. Blogging can help stimulate traffic to your website by sending signals to search engines that your site has new content to index.

Blogging is also a good way to demonstrate your smarts and capture leads.

Few rules. Pick a publishing frequency that you can maintain and write good content. Write for people, not algorithms.

Stay tuned…

We’ve got five more remarkable tools to add to your marketing wishlist in our next post. If you have one you think we should include, give us a shout!