What’s in store for your marketing plan in 2020?

It’s usually at this time of the year that you’ll start to just think about what the year ahead has in store for you. And maybe you’re really excited too.

It can be really normal for you to start thinking about all of the things that you want to achieve across the year. It may be the case that you’re feeling really excited about what you might want to work on. If you have a range of ideas, then you really do need to start thinking about organising them. An idea just stays an idea unless you do something to put it into practice. And one of the best ways to do that is write down all of your notes and create some kind of marketing plan. And yes, you’ve got that right – a marketing plan is best.

When your business is online, you know that you may have a whole host of options available to help you grow. Yes, advertising and PR can seem like some of the most crucial kinds of marketing for you to do, but they’re not the only ones. In this day and age, you’ll be glad to know that there’s a whole host of different things you can do to market your business. A lot of the things can be fun to work on too. So, it’s time to get creative. Because you’re going to want to ensure that you have a full marketing plan of what you want to do to make your business stand out.

1. Display advertising

First of all, there’s display advertising to consider. This is something that you may be wary of – because you set it a lot yourself. Btu advertising works. If you are targeting the right customers using a seasoned ad exchange, it’s going to work out for you. It’s important for you to make sure that you’re trying some of the best tactics to get in front of your customers and get your marketing rolling.

2. Sponsorship

Next, you may want to think about sponsorship. Advertising is always effective when you’ve planned it out right, but sponsorship can be such a good investment. You have to make sure that you are picking the right events or people, and that you have clear objectives to work with. And yes, it’s incredibly fun too.

3. Influencer outreach

A similar kind of activity here is influencer outreach. Working with influencers can support your social media activity (more on that later) but also increase awareness for you rapidly. Consumers listen to people they respect and admire. So if you have a business that has a range of bloggers or influencers in that niche, it could be perfect for you.

4. PR

It’s easy to think that PR is all social and working with influencers. But that’s not the case. Traditional PR can be really powerful. It allows you to support the activity you’re doing with more of a natural presence in the media. You can even do PR around yourself as a business owner, to raise the profile of what you’re doing.

5. Events

Another really powerful and enjoyable style of marketing activity that you can work on is events. When you get a bunch of people together that you respect and make it all about your product or service, you may find that it really gets them talking. This could be with journalists or customers – but either way, pulling together a successful event can be a huge win. You just have to make sure that it fits your brand perfectly.

6. Exhibitions

From here, if you work in the business to business sector, you may also want to think about showing at exhibitions. A lot of the time, you may find that you’re able to find the connections and business that you want when you’re at the right exhibitions. But, you will also want to have the best display, like this here, to help you do that. Also, you’ll want a strategy so that you know how to get the most out of the event.

7. Social media

Now, it’s safe to say that you’re always going to want to be on social media. But, there’s no pressure to be on everything instead, you need to make sure that you’re choosing platforms that are relevant to your audience. It’s often best to just be on one platform first, establish yourself and then create another profile on a platform that you can look to grow on next.

8. Paid social

To help you to complement that and really make sure that you’re able to get the results you want from social media, it can help to do some advertising. Not everyone likes the idea of social media advertising but it can really work out. By being strategic with your adverts and using them to complement and strengthen your organic activity, you may start to get the traction you’re looking for.

9. SEO

Now, when you’re online, you’re definitely going to want to make sure that your website is being found. You can look to do paid search here, but you’ll definitely want to start with SEO. If you want to be able to be found in different searches then you need to use the right keywords in your work in order to show. So make sure that you’re factoring in, in your marketing plan what to write then apply it. This should then allow you to rank and start to build up traffic.

10. Networking

Finally, one of the most powerful things you can do for your business is to start networking. No matter who you are or what kind of company you run, networking is always going to help you. It’s good for people to know what you can offer. And relationships really matter. You may find that you can get more business through connections and referrals, and it’s the relationships that do that. So get online or attend events and see what you can do.