By Jim Houck
Make the new year a time for renewal not only for yourself personally, but in your professional life, as well.
Now’s the time to set goals.
If you influence the marketing and public relations efforts in your organization take some time to consider these resolutions for 2013.
Create/revisit your marketing plan. Don’t worry. It’s not just you. Those of us who do have a marketing plan often get so caught up in the day-to-day realities of lean staffs, budget challenges and shifting priorities to remember what we were supposed to accomplish in the first place. Set aside a couple of hours and commit to paper your marketing department’s objectives for 2013 – develop an effective online marketing strategy, generate 10 percent more sales leads, identify new markets, etc. – and brainstorm with your staff or agency on strategies and tactics. Make 2013 the year of accomplishments.
Evaluate/measure results. The best marketing professionals are the ones who can demonstrate a program’s success. Don’t know where to start? Ironically, the best way to measure how well a program did at the end is to establish a clear objective at the start. If you invest in a new advertising program, for instance, make it clear at its onset – as early as the initial creative brief – as to what you’re aiming to accomplish. “Increase sales” is usually too vague a goal. Measure something you can truly influence – visits to a splash page, impressions in a trade magazine, visitors to a trade show booth, etc.
Let others tell your story. Third-party endorsement of your products or services is marketing gold. Your prospects can often relate to the success stories of your customers or clients. Frequently tell stories of your products and services making a difference through the eyes of those using it. Aside from credibility and fresh perspective, these stories make rich content for blogs, websites, advertisements and product literature.
Dust off your crisis plan. Set a goal to organize at least one meeting with senior leadership to review how your company would handle a crisis. Don’t take “crisis communications is not in the budget this year” as an acceptable answer. Develop a short list of possible crisis scenarios within your company and walk through how they would be handled – in detail – and identify the gaps in need of closing within your crisis plan.
Set a stretch goal. Tired of being ordinary? Strive to be extraordinary by achieving unprecedented results. Write down your goal and you’re more likely to reach it. Keep it to yourself and treat it as self-motivation, or share it with your staff and agency and make it a team goal. However you do it, just go for it. Good luck!
Be engaging. Have your social media postings gotten stale? Are you struggling to think of new and interesting content to post or blog topics to write about? Are your followers not consistently liking and responding to your posts? It might be time to transition the social media responsibilities to a different team member who can offer a fresh perspective. Meet with your staff or agency and brainstorm an hour’s worth of social media content. Look ahead and develop an editorial calendar based on what’s going on in your industry, your community or within your company. Be engaging. Show a peek behind the curtain of your organization. Incorporate photos and videos as often as possible. And be engaging on other sites and they’re likely to reciprocate and comment on yours.
Turn up the volume. Create reasons to get in front of your customers and prospects more in 2013. Do you have email addresses? Use them. Send twice the volume of compelling messages to them this year. Email marketing is virtually free. Be interesting and be in their inbox. There’s competition for these same consumers and you need to stay top-of-mind.
Network more. If you believe a recent survey conducted by job recruiting website Jobvite, two-thirds of workers are either looking for or are open to a new job. Whether that means you or someone on your staff, it always pays to network. Know who’s out there and what skills they can bring to your organization. Meet the players who know the decision-makers in your community should you want to explore other options. Best yet, interact with fellow marketing professionals to seek new ideas and to commiserate about your daily grind. Not all networking has to be awkward, paper-name-tag, after-hours mixers. Attend local seminars, join a professional organization, volunteer on a non-profit committee, invite a new contact out to lunch, and use Linked In more frequently – strive for 2-3 new connections per week – to formalize your network.
January is the perfect time to get recharged and take charge of your performance in the office. With a little planning and foresight you can accomplish great things. Get off to the right start and make it your best year.
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Jim Houck is a senior consultant with Pecchia Communications in Youngstown, Ohio.
