As we approach the new year this is a great time to start thinking about your marketing plans. Taking stock of how things have worked in the past year and looking toward new year marketing is a crucial part of shoring up your business plans. The end of the year always marks a turning point and making some decisions about new year marketing should be part of your yearly round-up.
This time of the year usually brings up things like budget decisions and new ideas for the coming year. Among the things business owners should be thinking about are the ways their marketing strategies have played out. Have you achieved the projected goals for your marketing strategies, and should you re-think some things for new year marketing ideas?
This is a great time to account for things like the return on investment for the past year’s marketing strategies. It is a time to think about shifting strategies and making changes for new year marketing to explore new ways of making your brand more visible
Why is new year marketing important? When should you start thinking about new year marketing, and what kinds of things should you be thinking about? And what strategies should you consider for new year marketing? This guide will offer some ideas for new year marketing and how to find new paths to success in the coming year.
Why is New Year Marketing important?
Perhaps the most obvious reason to think seriously about new year marketing is that this is the time to reassess how things have worked for the past year and what changes you should make for the coming year. Certainly, things like taxes and fiscal year accounting should have any business owner thinking about how to optimize spending and ways to bring in revenue. New year marketing should be part of these calculations.
The new year also provides a slim period to cash in on the time of year when people are spending money. You have a small period of time after the holidays to draw in revenue from the holiday spending boost. Things tend to slow down considerably by March, and new year marketing is a way to draw in customers and boost sales.
When should I start my new year marketing efforts?
The short answer to this question is to start your new year marketing right now. Consumer spending ramps up during the holiday season. This spending tends to drop precipitously shortly after the holidays. However, there is a short burst of time when consumer spending continues into the new year. New year marketing is a time to take advantage of this normal market trend.
As the year draws to a close, nearly everyone is gearing up for tax time and for ways to make adjustments for the coming year. This can be a difficult time for many business owners as the more onerous tasks of year-end accounting take over from the exciting time of the holiday business rush. Accounting needs to also be a time to consider ways to cut what has not worked out in terms of return on investment and consider what might work instead. New year marketing plans and strategies can put this kind of nuts and bolts accounting to work.
Most common motivators for New Year Resolutions
As you consider your new year marketing, some statistics might motivate you to make some resolutions for the new year. Some of the most important features for new year marketing cited by professional marketers include:
Focus on SEO. More than 50 percent of marketing professionals cite SEO and organic traffic as the most important measure of success for marketing strategies. Making sure your content, website, and social media are optimized to capture searches is crucial to success in the coming year.
Create email collection forms. Some of the highest conversion rates are directly attributable to email collection forms and direct email marketing. Email collection forms have been shown to lead to a 15 percent conversion rate.
Of the industries that use email collection forms, Media and entertainment get the most conversion from these, and restaurants and catering make up a close second. If you are operating one of these businesses, it is time to start using this marketing method in the new year.
Put your landing page to the test. As of now, only about 17 percent of marketers are using an A/B test to measure the success of landing pages. By doing something as simple as an A/B test, in which you check to see which version of your landing page is getting more attention, you can vastly increase your search engine rankings and your conversion rates.
Optimize for mobile. Mobile traffic accounts for about half of all traffic on the web. This means about half of your potential customers are searching the web and doing research on a mobile device. 64 percent of SEO marketing professionals say that optimizing for mobile is a key feature of a successful marketing plan. Right now, 25 percent—a full quarter—of companies optimize for mobile. Those that do not tend to fare worse than those that do.
Consider optimizing for voice-activated systems. A full 52 percent of people who use voice-assisted tech say they use it more than once a day. This voice-assisted tech appears to be a growing segment of web searching and consumer activity.
Accentuate eco-friendly aspects of your products or services. Surveys show that customers are four times more likely to buy eco-friendly products or services over other types. With the continuing rise in awareness of eco-friendly products, customers are increasingly valuing these kinds of products over more conventional products that do not or cannot advertise eco-friendly aspects.
6 New Year marketing ideas
To get you started in new marketing plans, here are some ideas for new year marketing ideas:
Help your customers keep their resolutions
There is a long-standing tradition of making resolutions for the new year. The tradition of making new year’s resolutions goes back to the Romans who saw the god Janus as the one who looked both forward and backward and held out the promise of a new start with each new year. That few people keep their new year’s resolutions is a reason to avail yourself to potential customers to help them. This is a great time for many businesses to offer specials on things that can help them keep their new year’s resolutions. Many businesses are particularly well-suited to provide this kind of new year marketing idea.
Launch New Products
The new year is an ideal time to launch something new. Rather than relying on the same things with the new year, start a new product or service, and make this the subject of a brand new advertising campaign. This is the kind of fresh material that grabs attention and boosts visibility in web searches.
Use a tagline that draws attention to the new product or service. Something as simple as “New Year, New Product” can be all you need to increase your visibility and take advantage of the new year bump in web traffic and consumer spending.
Be ready for Impulse Purchases
Retailers know the value of impulse purchases. Whether in a physical store or online, those items that are easily available in a checkout line or last-minute cart add-ons are ideal ways to cash in on impulse purchases.
Place these things strategically to take advantage of returns. Just after the holidays, there is always an enormous boost in customers who are returning items. Make the impulse items available at the return site. This encourages customers to spend what they have from the return on an impulse item.
Returns mean a customer is already in your shop or website. This is more than half the battle when it comes to making a sale. Impulse items turn the trip for a return into a sale.
Run a Post-Holiday promotion
Advertise post-holiday promotions with special discounts or even a freebie. You can do this by offering a free item with a purchase of a given amount. Keep this within reason, obviously, and link the promotion with a new product or service.
The best way to do this is to link the promotion to other new year promotional campaigns. You can also link the new year promotion to your other promotions that offer to help people keep their new year’s resolutions.
Test traditional marketing
With so much retail and commerce online, it is easy to lose sight of more traditional marketing techniques. The new year could be a good time to think about these traditional marketing ideas. A great example of this is to create a shop window display that promotes your other new year marketing ideas.
Make sure you plan this in advance. You will need to have the traditional promotional materials ready to go on the day after Christmas to grab the most attention.
Create a loyalty or referral program
Customer loyalty and referral programs are extremely popular because they work. Create a customer loyalty or referral program that offers great benefits and bonuses. You can make this the subject of your main new year marketing programs. Social media and online platforms are the ideal ways to get the word out on these kinds of promotional campaigns.
You can also build a referral program on the basis of online reviews. Give customers a loyalty bonus based on positive reviews on widely read websites. This has the collateral benefit of building your company’s reputation while you also increase sales.
Start the new year right with a solid digital marketing strategy with Hey Day
The ideas and suggestions above are just a few of the possibilities for new year marketing strategies. With the start of the new year, it just makes sense to get a jump on some new ways of achieving your marketing goals. To maximize your marketing possibilities, you should consider working with marketing professionals who know how to get the most out of this time of year.
HeyDay Marketing Services can build new year marketing strategies that can increase your brand awareness, create loyal customers, and generate conversions. We can help you build a paid new year marketing campaign that works for your product or service.
From new year sales to introducing new products and customer loyalty programs, HeyDay Marketing can formulate strategies that work with your budget and create the best return on investment for marketing campaigns and strategies.
HeyDay Marketing Services offers several packages for you that will create new year marketing strategies and campaigns that work for your company. We understand that one size does not fit all. For sound marketing campaign strategies that take full advantage of the consumer trends and tendencies of the new year, allow HeyDay Marketing Services to create an integrated marketing strategy that maximizes new year marketing potential.
Wrapping things up
To put this in the simplest terms, if you are not taking advantage of new year marketing possibilities, you are missing out on one of the most lucrative times of the year. The momentum of holiday spending, the potential for impulse buys piggy-backed off returns, and the potential for new year specials are just too easy to take advantage of, and the payoffs are too great to miss out.
With the right marketing and advertising, the new year is an ideal time to gain visibility in web searches, create great conversion numbers, and boost sales. This is a time of year to both re-invent some of your most successful products and services as well as introduce new products and services. And all of this new material is prime material for marketing ideas that work.
HeyDay Marketing knows how to maximize your new year marketing potential. With so much going on in eCommerce at the end of the year and the start of the new year, there are endless possibilities to generate sales and build your brand. This is the time of year to make your company a massive success for the coming year, and HeyDay Marketing can provide the professional services that make this happen.
