Today I talk about – 7 things to do for your Marketing over the Christmas holiday period….
Transcription
Hi, Amanda here from Koogar.
I’m really sorry. It’s like, past [12:00] I think, and basically, my computer doesn’t want to find my camera, my laptop doesn’t want to turn on, and so I am left with my phone. It’s Monday, it’s marketing Monday, today. I’ve written down a number of things, seven things, to basically do for your marketing over the next week. This is our last week when it comes to Christmas. We’ve got probably a lot to do. You’ve got people to email, meetings to book in, networking events to maybe attend, or maybe you’re just winding down, or you might already have wound down for Christmas. What I want to do is just show you these seven things, or they’re just idea of things that you can do over the Christmas period, over the holiday period.
So, number one is start planning. Don’t wait until next year to start planning. You need to … Yes, Jay, thanks for joining us. Tech is great when it works, when it doesn’t work it isn’t so great and you can’t do Facebook Lives’ without any laptop, desktop, but now I have my phone, so, yeah. Number one is start planning. Don’t wait until next year. Don’t wait until you’re busy catching up with people or busy having meetings. Start planning now. Start having a think about what it is that you want to achieve, what do you want to do, is there any new events or places that you want to go to. Do you want to speak? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to update your websites? Plan now what you’re wanting to achieve for the new year. It’s, you know, very similar to New Year’s resolutions but you should really be thinking about your business now. If not before now? You should be thinking about it now in terms of what you want to achieve. What are the things that you want to achieve in the new year? That’s tip number one.
Tip number two is develop a marketing strategy. The planning part of it is the stuff that you’re actually going to do, the Facebook Lives’, the updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, photographs, all of that kind of stuff. The planning is the doing stuff. The strategy is about the goals, what are you wanting to achieve? It could be you want to double the amount of hits that you have on your websites, double the amount of clients that you’ve had in 2017. Or, for a particular month, double your turnover, triple your turnover. Whatever it is, that’s the strategy side of stuff so have a think about what strategy you want to put together. What goals, what hard-core goals do you want to nail for 2018? Is 2018 going to be your year? Is it a year where you’re going to be getting rid of a lot of things? A lot of products or services and just tidying up your core? What is it that you’re trying to do? What is it you’re trying to achieve? So, that’s tip number two.
Number three is start brand awareness before January. I’ve written this down because sometimes for businesses, it’s quiet in January. January isn’t a great time. January is a time of finding out what you need to do in the business. What you need to … Like, the housekeeping kind of things? What is happening in January? With brand awareness, brand awareness isn’t about getting somebody to buy a product or service or whatever it is that you do. Brand awareness is about telling people this is who I am, this is what I do, this is how I do it and this is why you should buy me, or buy into me, or buy my product or service because I am really good at X, Y, and Z. Yeah?
So, brand awareness is not about selling to people. Brand awareness is about saying this is who we are, this is how we can help you. In January, you might want to be going to new networking events, you might want to be picking up and having coffee and cake with people, you might want to, again, update your website and add some new things on there to tell people about what’s coming for the new year because you’ve planned and you strategised and all that kind of … So, that’s tip number three. Start with brand awareness. Obviously, before January, but in January if that’s a quiet time for you.
Number four is make a list of all the housekeeping duties that you should be doing and I’m not talking about cleaning your house, however, that possibly needs to happen. It does in my house, before Christmas. What I’m talking about is housekeeping with regards to your in-box. Is it full? Do you need to get rid of the emails in there? Do you need to action them? Have a look at … I’ve got some notes here … What I’m talking about is cleaning your inbox, it’s having a look at your desk. Right now, my desk is absolutely chock-a-block with stuff. It’s absolutely everywhere. Now, yes, it is the end of the year, it’s the last week before Christmas, but it’s an absolute state. I know where everything is, which is fine, but I want to de-clutter.
I want to get rid of a lot of stuff. I’ve got a lot of notes, ideas, tips and tricks that I want to do for the new year. I want to be planning all of that kind of stuff in, so that’s one of the things that I want to be de-cluttering. Your desktop, what’s actually on your computer desktop? Now, I’ve seen some people who come to our meetings, and they bring along their apple Mac’s or their laptops or whatever. The amount of stuff that’s sat on the desktop alone, it’s not in a folder, it’s not put away nice and neatly, it’s not safe. They don’t know where it is, they could lose it, all of that kind of stuff. There’s three things that you need to, sort of, have a look at over the Christmas holiday.
The reason why I say these as well, is because number one, when you go through all your emails, and you just clear your inbox, there’s possibly some business in there that you’ve forgotten about, you haven’t actioned, you haven’t emailed that person, or the person said to you, “I don’t want it now, can we do it in January?“, and you haven’t put that in your diary. There could be a little bit of business there already that you haven’t actually had a look at. That’s tip number four, make a list of housekeeping duties that you need to do for your business.
Number five is make sure that your emails are opened and not unsubscribed to in January. Does that make sense? I don’t know about you, but at Christmastime, we receive a lot of emails. We get them from Living Social, we get them from holiday places, we get them from business people trying to sell their final bits and pieces. I’ve got something that I’m promoting at the moment that starts in January. Everybody is getting lots and lots of emails, so don’t be the person who is being unsubscribed to. When you send that email in the new year, everybody unsubscribes, what I’m trying to say is have a think about what you’re going to send to people in the new year.
Sorry, I’m just going to add that person there. Okay.
What are you going to be sending … with regards to are you going to give them some value? Are you going to give them a discount? Money off, even though that we don’t like talking about that kind of thing? What are you going to give them in January to make sure that they don’t unsubscribe from your emails, because that is probably the top place in January where people unsubscribe from emails is because they’re getting an influx, lots of things are happening, and they’re just getting sick of lots and lots of emails coming through. Have a think about what you’re going to share in January with regards to email marketing, who you’re going to share it to, and what you’re going to give them so that it makes them want to stay and makes them want to keep on your email list. That’s tip number five.
Number six, what marketing goals are you trying to achieve for the new year? One of the marketing goals we’re trying to achieve, or, I’m trying to achieve is more blog reads for the new year. We have a certain amount this year, which has actually gone up considerably. I think 30%, just on 30%, from the year before, which is great because we’re blogging more, we giving better content and making sure that I spend more time writing the content. I’m listening to what people have problems with, and I’m writing about that. I’m trying to answer people’s questions. Next year, I want more hits to the website. How am I going to achieve that?
When I have that kind of goal, it’s very focused, it’s very particular, it’s very specific. What goals do you actually want to achieve when it comes to your marketing? With Instagram, how many more people do you want following you? With LinkedIn, how many more connections would you like? With email marketing, how many more subscribers would you like? All of this kind of stuff. How many more people, how many more clients do you want? How many clients in a particular service or product that you deliver? But, be specific is my point. That’s number six, what marketing goals do you want for 2018?
Number seven, the final one. Have a look at what the upcoming events are that are happening in the new year? Are you running your own events? If you are running your own events, get them in the diary, get them on Facebook in an event. Are there conferences that you actually want to go to? Are there conferences that you want to attend? Get them into your diary as well. Are there networking events that you want to go to? What I’m trying to say is start organising yourself, start organising your life when it comes to business so that you know what you’re going to do, you know where you’re going to be, you know who you’re going to be with and what you’re actually going to achieve. You’re sort of planning your first quarter for the new year so that you know what’s happening. It’s a lot easier when you’ve planned instead of trying to scrounge around for content or ideas or … Right, I’m going to put this event on, but you only put it on two or three weeks before it’s actually running. You need a good six weeks. Tell people, the brand awareness side of stuff. Tell people now in January what’s going on.
I hope that helps. These are seven tips, I’m going to just run through them again.
Number one is start planning now. What is it that you want to achieve. What are you going to plan for in 2018?
Number two is develop a marketing strategy so what specific goals do you want to achieve when it comes to 2018? Now, it could be that you plan for the month. It could be that you plan for the quarter. I plan for quarters, I don’t plan for the full year because I don’t know where I’m going to be in six months’ time. I don’t know what products or service that I’m going to have. Nothing changes drastically, but things do change in business and it might be that you want to pull something and put something new on. Have a think about that, that’s number two.
Number three is start brand awareness and start it now bearing in mind that you don’t want people to buy, it’s just about telling people this is who I am, this is what I do, and this is how I can help you, okay? When you get that brand awareness, you are in the forefront of their head.
Number four, make a list of the housekeeping duties that you need to do with regards to your business. That’s cleaning your inbox, cleaning your desktop, cleaning your desk itself, maybe your office. Just make your environment a little bit better for yourself for the new year.
Number five, make sure that your emails are opened and not unsubscribed to. Think about something new, think about something of value that your readers want to read about.
Number six, what marketing goals are you wanting to achieve? Get specific with this, the more specific you are, the better it is to market yourself and know who you want to get in front of. The final one is what up and coming events do you want to go to? Conferences, networking events, are you running your own events? Are you wanting coffee and cake with people? Current customers, new customers, all of that kind of thing.
I hope you found that useful. Eventually I got to you with my technology issues. I don’t know what is happening today. So, there you go.
This is my final Facebook Live for just before Christmas, because it’s Christmas at the weekend, which is very exciting. What I wanted to say was you still have a couple of days left for our Marketing Monthly Masterclasses. If you haven’t seen them, and I’m sure I’ve told you about them before, but if you haven’t’ seen them we’ve now got 12 people signed up, which might not be massive, but actually you’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t you? This is a very brand-new service that we’re providing. The Monthly Marketing Masterclasses is where I am live. You will log on. It starts on the 8th of January. You log on for 45 minutes. [9:45] till half past [10:00], so that you’re ready for the day ahead. On the second Monday of every month.
Every month we’re going to be talking about a particular subject. They’re all on the website, they’re all on the link, which I’ll share just after this Facebook Live. It’s for business owners and marketing managers who want to have somebody to be accountable to. Somebody to have support. Somebody to ask questions and actually have a community of people to ask questions, too. We have a secret Facebook group. We also have a membership area that if you can’t make the date, you can actually go back onto the membership area and you can watch all of the Facebook Lives’ at a different time. The other thing is that we’ve got resources and exercises that we’re going to be sharing with you over a period of time as well.
Every week you’ll be getting something from me. I’ll keep poking you and saying, “Have you done your accountability things? Have you done your actions? What did you get from those actions? What did you see? What did you achieve? What didn’t you achieve? Let’s see if we can tweak them? And, that kind of thing. That’s the Monthly Marketing Masterclasses. As I’ve said, I’ll put them in the link below and I hope you’ve found today’s Marketing Monday useful. I wish you a absolutely fabulous Christmas. It’s going to be my first Christmas in Warrington, so quite excited about that.
I wish you a absolutely fabulous Christmas, if I don’t see you before, have an even better New Year and market yourself all the time.
Marketing is something that’s an ongoing process. Don’t stop, okay? Don’t stop when you get busy. Don’t stop when you don’t know what to do. That’s when you email me, okay?
Have a great time and I’ll speak to you soon. Take care.
Visit our Facebook Page www.facebook.com/koogardigitalmarketing to watch LIVE on Mondays between 11am and 12pm!
