Re-Energize Your Business Performance For The Year Ahead

2016 is time to start fresh, set new goals and approach business challenges with renewed energy. And rethinking your marketing and sales strategy is essential for improving your business performance. What can you change? Do differently? A/B test? Once you have evaluated what worked–and what was unsuccessful–in the past, it is time to try new tactics and branch out into new markets.

3 ways to refocus your marketing energy

1. Focus more on inbound lead generation

What are you currently doing to find new business leads and where are your new prospects coming from? Take some time to analyze your lead-generation results. Where did each of your current clients originate? Referral? Website form-fill? Or did you proactively go out and introduce yourself?

Every business needs to strike the right balance between reaching out to customers directly (“outbound lead generation”), and helping customers find you (“inbound lead generation”). However,  in the new year ahead focus on inbound marketing, which is crucial in today’s marketing environment. With consumers having more control on the information they consume, inbound marketing techniques enable businesses to reach their prospects in a targeted and relevant manner that helps to enhance their brand, generate leads and improve sales.

2. Consolidate your social media and online marketing

Many businesses find themselves getting spread too thin from trying to do too many social media activities. Do you have a Twitter account, LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, YouTube channel, Instagram account and Pinterest page? Are they all active? Or are some not getting any engagement? Sometimes social media can become a time suck, without any good results to show for it.

Instead of trying to cover every social media platform, declutter your online presence. Spend time evaluating where your prospects are active on social media. Are you B2B? Most B2B decision makers are on LinkedIn, which is the best platform for performing company research and networking. YouTube is perfect if your customers like to see product demos or other useful video content. Depending on your industry, you might get value out of Twitter connections as well.  But there are social media platforms and online marketing channels that you are probably better off avoiding altogether. Let the new year be a time to simplify. Don’t waste time, energy and resources into under-performing marketing tactics.

3. Re-connect with past clients

Referral marketing is still one of the most effective forms of marketing, and your best customers are your brand ambassadors. Refocus your efforts on being more proactive about drumming up repeat business and word-of-mouth marketing. Go back through your lists of customers who have bought from you before. Consider creating a marketing campaign focused on people who have done business with you in the past.  The new year is the perfect time to check in and see if they have any new business needs that you could help them address.

Business success in the new year is not always about doing things that are “new” and different—sometimes it’s a simple matter of looking back at the tactics that brought you to this point, and deciding which ones to continue and which ones to cease. Hopefully you already have a good foundation in place for sales success—you don’t have to totally hit the reset button. Instead, you can use the new year as a chance to re-evaluate and make adjustments to your marketing processes, and re-connect with your customers. Happy New Year!