A New Year, A New Marketer
By Brittany Silva

A new year always brings new possibilities, opportunities and attitudes towards how we approach life. Some of us have personal, professional, or overarching goals, but most importantly, we all have some type of goals that we want to accomplish in 2018. This rings especially true for marketers, because if we fall behind and don’t stretch ourselves every year, we will fall behind in our careers and likely disappoint our employers. Let’s look at some possible areas of improvement in 2018 for us, marketers.

Area of Improvement #1: Content Marketing

Content marketing is an area we all know or have heard of, but few have executed to a high degree. Content marketing is using real, engaging content and providing it for free to your customers in the hopes of 1) building your reputation as an industry expert on the topic, 2) helping your customers see your authenticity, and 3) building your social and web presence. Mastering content marketing takes diligence, creativity and understanding. We as marketers have to provide content that our audience wants, where they want it in a creative way. Creating a plan on how often, what type and where your content marketing will be posted can go a long way in improving overall strategies and effectiveness.

Area of Improvement #2: Social Media Advertising

How many of us can say we have perfected our social media advertising campaigns? With look-alike audiences, retargeting, and more, there are hundreds of ways to tweak your campaigns to get the biggest bang for your buck. Focusing on an A/B testing strategy, audience refreshes, and working on a consistent funnel of new creative and copy will help you see more of the results you are looking for in 2018.

Area of Improvement #3: Website Optimization

Meta data, blogging, landing pages and more. Your website is a living, breathing entity that you should be monitoring and updating regularly. Having a website optimization strategy and knowing which keywords you’d like to own will help give you direction. Coming up with a schedule of when new content will be posted and when to audit meta data will sure help you stay ahead of competition.

Area of Improvement #4: Customer Support

Do you think of customer support as a branch of marketing? You should. Every touch point with a customer reflects your brand. We should all be thinking about the type of experience we want our customers to have and ensure there is a plan in place to help guide customer support interactions. To be better marketers in 2018, we must be more in touch with end-to-end customer relations.

Area of Improvement #5: Measuring ROI

Do you measure ROI on a per-brand basis? Per campaign basis? Or maybe sometimes not at all? Having a plan in place to actively measure ROI will ensure you make smart decisions when it comes to your marketing budget, as well as track success of your marketing programs and the work you’ve put into developing them. How would 200% ROI sound to you? Yeah, it sounds pretty good to us too, let us know if you’ve found a way to get there consistently!

Whatever your goals and plans are in 2018, marketing with conviction, empathy and courage are at the heart of what we do and how we can become successful.