It’s that time of year when most of the people you meet haven’t just given up on their New Year’s resolutions but can’t quite remember what they were in the first place. That’s fine if you simply decided to live with that extra 10 pounds for a while, but what if your goal for 2019 was to revamp your online marketing plan?
Many of the business owners we talk to and work with set big goals at the beginning of the New Year. But, by the end of January or February, they’ve gotten so busy with the day-to-day grind of running a growing company that their plans have stalled (or never got off the ground start with).
If that sounds familiar, we want to remind you that there are still 10 months left to go this year. Stay focused and you could make 2019 your most profitable year yet – and set your company up for big growth in the future.
Let’s look at what you need to know to put your 2019 online marketing plans back on track…
Why Online Marketing Plans Tend to Go Off Track Quickly
When you want to stop making the same mistakes, it helps to know why you made them in the first place.
Years of work with entrepreneurs, business owners, and marketing executives have taught us that big plans and goals tend to go off-track for a handful of predictable reasons. These include unrealistic targets, a lack of resources, failure to generate a strategy, and a loss of enthusiasm based on previous failures.
Each of these really comes down to the same thing: one or more people in the company want to make the new year different and set a high bar for achievement. But they never get past that wishing stage to figure out how these new goals are going to be reached. Without that clarity, the whole project falls apart pretty quickly.
How to Revamp Your Plan and Make it Actionable
If setting big goals and then failing to follow through is the classic mistake in online marketing, then developing clear and actionable plans is the proven pathway to success.
You can begin this process by setting realistic and measurable goals for your campaigns. If you aren’t sure how high you should reach, talk to an experienced web design agency who can help you figure out what’s achievable in a few months. Then, turn those aspirations into a written plan of action with responsibilities and deadlines.
This is the painful part of the process, of course, and the one that business owners and executives hate. That’s because it involves budgeting time and money, as well as making tough choices about priorities. However, you can’t succeed if you aren’t willing to actually define what you want to accomplish.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to do all of the work involved in online marketing yourself. You can delegate tasks to your creative team or an outside vendor. And, for the jobs you are going to handle in-house you can create repeatable processes (like writing, editing, and proofreading blog posts in batches) that make things go faster.
Your realistic and actionable online marketing plan might not be as bold or entertaining as your big 2019 goals. But it will be workable, which makes it more valuable than a set of dreams or wishes.
Setting the Right Course
As your new online marketing plan comes to life, you want to keep things moving in the right direction. That’s where measuring your progress with web analytics comes into play. Whether you look through your web statistics on your own or review them with your web design and online marketing company, this is an activity you shouldn’t skip or ignore for a couple of reasons.
The first has to do with your return on investment. You’ll want to know you’re getting everything you can from your time and money. By looking at things like website visits and conversions you can figure out which campaigns are working, and which ones need to be abandoned. That will stop you from wasting your most precious resources.
Just as important is using your regular web analytics review to see incremental progress. When you’re just plugging away at online marketing tasks without seeing big gains in your bottom-line it can be easy to give up. However, the big breakthroughs usually don’t arrive all at once – you have to be patient and put in a little work to let them happen. When you can see that you’re making measurable improvements in your business it will stop you from easing up before the bigger profits show up.
Thinking Bigger
When you follow the kind of approach we have laid out in this article, some wonderful things will happen over the course of your year.
First, you’ll get the satisfaction that comes with following through on your plans and ideas. You won’t be stuck thinking about all the things you could have done in 2019 when the next holiday season comes around, or wishing you hadn’t fallen behind your competitors.
Next, you’ll start to get more leads and sales from your online marketing strategy. This is something most business owners and executives dream about, but an area where very few come close to reaching their potential.
Finally, you will set yourself up for even bigger profitability in the future by finding more customers, refining your message, and figuring out which techniques work in your industry. Then, your next year plan can be bigger, bolder, and even more likely to succeed in the future.
Need a Fresh Approach to Business Growth?
If you feel like it’s time to get your business moving in the right direction, then let our team of sales growth experts help. The Maxburst team has been using common sense, marketing experience, and unmatched creativity to help our clients boost their businesses for more than a decade.
