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How to Set Attainable Marketing Goals This Year

Setting big, lofty goals are great – as long as you build a roadmap to get there. This is one reason we’ve never been big fans of New Year’s Resolutions – the beginning of a new year is as fine a time as any to look forward and plan a strategy, but unless you spend as much time on the HOW as the WHAT, it’s not worth the effort.

Our advice is the same no matter the time of the year: look at the data and make a plan from there.

Look at Last Year’s Marketing Metrics

First, tally up every penny you spent on marketing – networking dues, advertisements, flyer printing, sponsorships, marketing agency retainers, marketing team salary etc. It should be a line item in your books.

If you want to get an even more accurate number, look at everyone on your team that has some marketing tasks but is not in a full-fledged marketing role – estimate their hours per month spent (ie proofreading marketing material, going to networking events, grabbing coffee with potential referral sources, etc.) on marketing and multiply that by their hourly rate.

This all adds up to your total marketing cost for the year.

Next, tally up how many leads you got last year. Divide your marketing cost by your number of leads, and you have your cost-per-lead.

Then divide your marketing cost by the number of clients you added last year – now you have your cost-per-client.

These two metrics should govern your entire marketing campaign – every action you take should be bringing these numbers down (the lower your cost-per-client, the higher your profit margins).

Look at What Is Achievable Through Marketing

Now, once you have those data points, look at what you can do. What actions can you take to bring down that cost-per-lead? The reality is simple: you can either:

  1. lower your costs
  2. grow your leads, or
  3. all of the above

If your goal is to grow revenue by, say, 40%, look at what that would take. Say your revenue was $5,000,000 in 2022. To grow by 40%, that means the goal would be to hit $7,000,000 in revenue in 2023. If you had 450 clients and assume you’ll make the same revenue per client this year, you would need to add 180 clients to your annual tally. The first place to look is to see what you can do to boost your conversion rate (ie keep the same number of leads but convert more of them). Next, look for where you could reallocate your budget.

If sponsoring that charity golf tournament doesn’t do anything for the bottom line, drop it. But if getting a booth at a trade show worked well, look at using the money you saved from not sponsoring the golf tournament on get a more prominent booth this year.

Want to get into the details? We’re here to help. Drop us a line and we’re more than happy to set up a free consultation.

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Give Thanks to Your Customers and Clients This Year

Life, and work, has looked a whole heckuva lot different these past three years than it has in…well, a while.

For most of us, just surviving the workday each week takes more effort and brain power than we even thought possible. We show up, we work hard, and we never punch out thanks to Zoom, email, push notifications and that WFH lifestyle.

If you’re anything like us, your clients are what drive you. They become your friends – where their successes become your ultimate goals. Before you know it, you look forward to those blurred-out-background zoom calls and new project requests.

Your customers and clients are a big part of your life and your success. So, when was the last time you thanked them?

A Little Gratitude Goes a Long Way

This year, we’d like to challenge you to take that extra step to show your clients, consumers, partners, vendors, you-name-it – that you are appreciative of the work and the relationship you’ve developed.

And no, we’re not saying to just toss a mini-muffin basket their way and call it a day. Although, who has ever refused a basket of mini-muffins? But is it really the best way to let your clients know you appreciate them? The short answer is probably not. The muffins get eaten, the card goes in the trash, and ultimately the message of genuine gratitude gets lost.

If Not Mini Muffins, Then What?

Handwritten thank you notes are just retro enough to be cool. Do it right – use quality stationary, a personalized note to them letting them know how much you appreciate them and look forward to their next project. It doesn’t hurt to include a gift card. It can just be enough to buy them a coffee or a smoothie. It really is the thought and effort that counts here.

So, You Want to Make a Bigger Gesture

Maybe you did an exceptionally large project or want to recognize a long-time customer specifically. Don’t feel like you have to give the exact same “thank you” to everyone. Each client is different and expressing your appreciation for them can be different, too.

Setting up a time to have lunch brought in for your customer’s office is a big gesture. If you can coordinate it to a time that you know is extra busy for them – when you know they’re likely to work through lunch – all the better. It not only lets them know you appreciate them as your customer, but you recognize how hard they work doing their own thing.

Giving out your branded merchandise might seem a little ten years ago, but if you do it right it can be a great gift. The trick to it is an item people will use with a version of THEIR logo. So many times, businesses send gifts of their own merchandise – but really, a bigger statement is to have something made for your clients. It’s a little extra effort and takes away the soapbox and impersonal touch of sending your own stuff their way. Our recommendation? You can never go wrong with a custom YETI travel tumbler.

The important part is making sure they know how much you appreciate them. If you need some more specific ideas we can help with that!

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5 of the Scariest Marketing Mistakes We’ve Seen

It’s spooky season, and we’re leaning in to the theme! We’ve compiled a list of some of the scariest, and most harmful, marketing mistakes we see too often.

5 Scary Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

1: Ignoring data and analytics. It can seem overwhelming, but it’s important information you absolutely shouldn’t ignore. It tells you which efforts are working best, and which ones are just not getting you any traction.

2: Ignoring your competitors. We’re not saying you should go head-to-head with anyone. But looking at what your competition is doing is a great way to find the ways to settle yourself into an underserved niche.

3: Not knowing who your ideal customer is. Marketing is never about you – it’s about your customer and their wants and needs. If you don’t have a solid grasp on who your customer actually is, you can’t know how to give them exactly what they’re looking for.

4: Forgetting to focus on customer retention. Once you have a good customer you don’t want to lose them! In the hustle of seeking out new customers it’s easy to take your current customers for granted with your marketing plan.

5: Not enough focus on maintaining your brand. This is just a remember who you are reminder. Your brand is your foundation, and you want to stay laser focused on it in everything you do. Once you focus long enough it becomes second nature.

Notice a Common Thread?

It’s a little like a horror movie really. Paying attention to your surroundings is the best way to avoid these marketing massacres. When planning out your marketing strategies it’s a good idea to have a punch list to keep you on track. Make sure that your marketing ticks all the boxes you’ve identified & you’ll be the Final Girl (or Guy.)

We can help you avoid marketing mishaps! Let Us Help! Get in touch today.

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A Viking Funeral for Outdated Marketing Strategies

When it comes to marketing, you always need to be a few steps ahead. You need to plan ahead, write ahead, strategize ahead. As a marketing agency, we live at least two full quarters ahead of the rest of the world (which truly becomes problematic when we’re rushing to buy holiday gifts for friends and family in July). 

So, in the wide world of marketing – when you are implementing strategies from years past, well, you are living in a whole different historical era than your counterparts. 

So, what to do? Simple: bury that noise. Send it off with a ceremonial Viking funeral, if you will. 

Out With the Old SEO, In With The New

It is simply no longer possible to get good search traffic to your site with old school SEO tactics. In the past, SEO keyword stuffing and Alt Tag optimization was effective because search engines were not very sophisticated – they did not have the ability to detect and penalize websites that were using manipulative SEO techniques. 

Now, things are a bit more advanced. Machine learning has helped make Google Search become much cleverer and is now able to detect and penalize websites that use outdated SEO techniques. 

Good Content is the New SEO 

When it comes to successful SEO tactics, Google spells out what they are looking for – good content. 

You see, they make money from selling ads. Their ads are worth more if their organic search results are more accurate. So, Google wants your website to have relevant content that answers the questions your audience is searching for. 

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing high quality content to attract and engage an audience. Content marketing is much more effective than outdated SEO tactics – it is an honest and transparent way to attract and engage an audience through storytelling and genuine content. It’s also the best way to build relationships with an audience, which makes them more likely to trust and become loyal to your brand or business. 

Instead of over-optimizing for keywords no one actually searches for, try answering the questions you always get from people each and every day. 

The content must be relevant to the audience and offer something of value, such as insights, tips, or entertainment. We’ll admit, it takes quite a bit of time – but the results are well worth it.

If you’re still using old-school SEO tactics, it may be time to try something new – and if you need help, we’re just a phone call away. Get in touch anytime. 

Social Media: What is it Good For (in Marketing)?

Way back in 2010, most business owners had no urge to be on social media – that’s where their kids wasted their time, not where you obtained new clients. 

Then, once they realized that social media was the new town square and clients were accessible on it, things started to change, and every business owner wanted to spend all their marketing time dedicated to getting new leads on social.

These days – for the most part – people go on social for entertainment. Yes, the CEO of that company you want to land is on Instagram – but they use it to look at cat videos, not new CRMs. 

In 2022, the most successful social media marketing campaigns center around building a network of people that can refer business to you regularly. Sure, viral posts are still great and get you a lot of awareness – but getting a post to go viral is the goal of most people on social these days. And the truth is Twitter has a different main character everyday. You don’t want to be that main character.

If you’re looking at how to make social media drive leads for your business, we are more than happy to schedule a consultation.  

All in all, we could wax poetic here for hours about what marketing strategies deserve the poshest of send-offs, but truly there may be too many to count and you may be asking for your own funeral procession at the end of our long, long list.

Our best advice? Look to a professional marketing team to assist you in staying top-of-mind, engaging, and ahead of the curve when it comes to your business. And hey, we’re just a phone call, email or DM away. 

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What is The MetaVerse and Why Zuckerberg Has Gone Off the Deep End

Ah, Zuckerberg. 

It’s hard to believe that nearly 20 years have passed since a college kid with a bankrolled pivot on “Hot or Not” became a household name. A name that has since created such a reverberation across pop culture. 

Let’s face it (pun intended), the man shifted social media onto its current course. And, he got a movie out of it. 

Zuck is back in the news (did he ever leave?) but this time for re-positioning and re-branding his Facebook empire to something entirely different. 

So, what the heck is this MetaVerse?

At this point, not much. Let us explain:

The Internet Brought to Life

The term, coined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash,” refers to a virtual world that coexists and overlaps with the physical one, with people interacting as avatars. Zuckerberg has described it as an extensive “virtual environment” you can go inside of, instead of just looking at a screen. That world doesn’t exist today on anywhere near the scale Zuckerberg envisions, but a small version can be found in gaming, especially with virtual-reality (VR) headsets like Facebook’s – or, Meta’s — Occulus.

There are “multi-billion revenue opportunities,” Bank of America analysts wrote. “For example, 50-yard line seats for the Superbowl, taking a hitting class with [Major League baseball player] Buster Posey or shopping for sunglasses with virtual try-on may all be possible in the metaverse,” they said. 

Zuckerberg is going all in on what he sees as the next generation of the internet because he thinks it’s going to open up a large new digital economy that sometimes runs in parallel with the tangible world and other times far surpasses it. “Ads are going to continue being an important part of the strategy across the social media parts of what we do, and it will probably be a meaningful part of the metaverse, too,” Zuckerberg said in a recent company earnings call.

But will it though?

Our Thoughts

Ironically enough, one maxim we’ve always shared with our clients is to think about the internet as if it were the real world. Building a web presence is synonymous with real estate development. In that analogy, social media is akin to high-end retail space – high foot traffic, but also high rent and most importantly real estate you don’t own.

When you approach it that way, you don’t overinvest in your Facebook (or Instagram, or TikTok, etc) presence because the owner of the real estate can change the rent on you with a snap of their fingers (in this case, by limiting organic reach and requiring you to buy ads). 

It’s always best to invest in the real estate you own – your website and your email list, the two things that no one can take away from you.  

Zuckerberg did a great job building extremely valuable real estate and got a ton of users – but they also built their ad platform on data they got from people’s phones. So when Apple (and now Google) change the privacy settings, all of a sudden it looks like he built his empire on someone else’s real estate. 

The Metaverse is his shot to change that. Will Facebook –er, Meta – succeed? Only time will tell. Until then, we remain skeptical and wouldn’t recommend anyone to invest heavily in building a presence on a platform they don’t fully control. 

In short: keep an eye on it, but don’t go all-in. Zuckerberg is investing in visions of life-changing technologies, while he can’t even sort his main (and only successful) business out. Creating the metaverse will also be arduous and expensive, and the financial payoff is uncertain – so if it fails, it will likely be the biggest failure in the history of the internet.

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5 Fads in Marketing to Avoid This Year

Trends can be enticing. From rice pudding shops to shiplap – sometimes hopping on the latest bandwagon is worth the hype. Then…there’s things like the mom jeans craze that’s “so hot right now,” which we know we’ll regret when reviewing photos next year. 

For those of us who are old enough (Hi, Millenials!), we know a thing or two about a certain Von-Dutch-hat-with-Ugg-Boots situation that may now feel like a big (huge!) mistake. 

Our point is – trends are fun. Until they aren’t. And some not-so-great fads, especially in marketing, are not worth your time, energy or money. 

But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with some trend-wise advice on how to keep your business on the savvier side of marketing trends. 

5 Marketing Trends To Avoid: 

  • Getting on the Latest Social Craze: One of our hard rules is to give every new marketing tool, social platform, or other gimmick a real consideration as to the WHY behind your interest in getting on board the so-called train. If the rationale is, “everyone else is doing it,” then you pretty much have your answer (we’re looking at you, TikTok). Often times, your audience may not even be on the platform that has the latest craze.
  • Copying What Everyone Else is Doing: Continuing our point above, if everyone else is doing it, it’s probably too late to get on the bandwagon. Marketing is never about doing what everyone else is doing. So, innovate – and if you need help brainstorming, we’re here.
  • DIY Websites: While all the rage, building your own Wix or Square Space site does not always end well. Most of these DIY website platforms have strong limitations and you’ll end up having to redo your site within 1-2 years anyway. Getting a website professionally made will save you time and money down the line.
  • Over Promoting: Contests and promotions are fun and engaging – within reason. While giveaways and discount codes can be instantly-gratifying, doing so in excess can hurt your brand in the long run. Don’t make each month a different event – people get tired quickly and don’t see the overall value if you’re constantly discounting or giving away free items.
  • SEO Ninjas: The race to the top of Google is no longer dominated by keyword ninjas. Save yourself some money and energy by skipping the ninja route to the top of Google and ask yourself what your goals really are. If it’s more business – then create a strategy to drive higher traffic from valuable, qualified leads. Say goodbye to poor turnover and hello to better business. 

And if you still want to rock mom jeans, we won’t judge.