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While retail stores are flooded with holiday shoppers and the air is filled with Christmas music, most businesses are focused not on the festivities, but on planning for the next fiscal year. With each year comes new marketing strategies, and it can be difficult to keep up with the ever-changing market today. The following are must-haves to grow your business in 2014:
1. Brand Yourself
Anyone can make a pretty design, but is it effective? Before you roll out new graphics, ads, or other marketing materials this year, invest in defining your brand. Bringing on a branding agency to help you determine not only who you are and what you are, but what that looks like. An effective branding agency will research your industry and consumer base, identify your company’s distinction in the marketplace, and develop a creative strategy to help you effectively reach your target market. This strategy will serve as a guidebook for choosing everything from your company’s tone and phone etiquette to your taglines to color schemes. Having these plans and policies in place ahead of time, simplifies future marketing endeavors and allows you to take a nearly formulaic approach to maintaining your brand image. For more information on selecting a branding agency, click here.
2. Go Mobile
Having a mobile website for your business has become increasingly important. Just like having a website in general is now a necessity to have a healthy, growing business, ensuring that website has mobile capabilities is no longer optional. In June of this year, Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study revealing that, of the 91% of US adults who own mobile phones, more than 60% of those phones are now smartphones. This means more than half of America is surfing the internet via their phone. While there are discrepancies as to the exact number, you have easily less that ten seconds to capture someone’s interest online before they will move on. If your site is unattractive or difficult to use on a potential customer’s smartphone, you can rest assured they won’t be around for long.
3. Add Visual
Whether it’s an advertisement, website, or newsletter, wordy is never better. When a consumer is inundated with text, even if the content is valuable, he or she will often become overwhelmed and will likely not continue reading. This is not to say you should not attempt to get your message across. However, you should look for ways to communicate visually with your consumer through graphics or photographs, rather than text. Again, this where branding your company properly is worthwhile when it comes to the subconscious messages you want to communicate to your target market.
Interested in any of the marketing tips listed above? “The Creative Bar is a full-service branding firm specializing in company branding, marketing, and graphic design. They have earned 16 national awards in 2013 for a total of 44 national design awards since opening their firm five years ago. For more information on their services, or to request a proposal, visit TheCreativeBar.com.