It’s hard to believe that the year is almost over, but now’s the best time to come up with your business’s goals for next year. A common goal among many business owners is to expand and connect to fresh audiences and turn them into loyal customers. However, that can be easier said than done.
Learn how to plan for the new year by strategizing best practices to reach new customers, optimizing your company’s goals, and using custom mailing services to streamline your brand’s expansion.
Targeting Fresh Audiences
Whether you’ve already honed in on a target audience or need help determining who would best benefit from your products or services, expanding brand awareness can extend your business’s reach and draw in more customers in the new year.
How can you do this? Here are some ways to widen your audience:
1. Get Personal
Research shows that 72% of shoppers expect the businesses they buy from to recognize them as individuals and understand their unique interests. Because consumers want to purchase from authentic companies, you should lead with your story first and strive to build connections with old and new audiences alike.
One way to engage with different audiences is through custom mailing services like letters and postcards. In today’s digital world, there’s something personal and nostalgic about receiving a physical letter in the mail. Polished, professional mail pieces can help your business stand out from the competition in the new year.
2. Determine Audience Preferences
Take a look at your current audience and ask yourself the following questions about them:
- What are their priorities?
- What do their engagement habits look like?
- What are their buying behaviors?
- What prices do they favor?
- How are they interacting with my business on social media?
For example, if you find your customers are most engaged on Facebook, this tells you to emphasize that channel as part of your marketing strategy. By noting what your current audience responds well to, you can determine what’s working best that may rope in new consumers in the upcoming year.
3. Optimize Your Website With SEO Best Practices
A crucial element of brand exposure is top-tier SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of tailoring your website’s landing pages to encourage search engines to promote your business on its search results pages for queries related to your company’s products or services.
For instance, if you run an auto repair shop in Monterey, California, you want your website to pop up as a top result when someone searches “auto repair Monterey.”
Some ways to improve your website’s SEO include writing keyword-optimized content, adding internal links to your pages, using robust calls to action with keywords and links, and uploading high-quality images with detailed descriptions.
4. Network With Other Businesses
Networking with other businesses can help you and them attract new customers — it’s a true win-win. Let’s say you run a coffee shop, and you know a food truck down the street that sells sandwiches.
You can reach out to them and have them park their truck in front of your building. This will encourage your customers to pick up a sandwich on their way out and their customers to purchase a coffee to drink with their meal.
5. Establish Multiple Marketing Channels
Omnichannel marketing involves using multiple marketing channels at once to draw in new audiences. For example, you can post a promotional video on Facebook with a link in the caption that encourages users to sign up for an email list. Then, you can use their sign-up information to send them a personalized postcard via custom mailing services.
Setting Achievable Goals
The new year is coming, and you want to set your business up for success with exciting yet realistic goals. While it’s fun to be ambitious with goal setting, it’s vital to set achievable objectives that ensure consistency throughout the year.
Here’s how you can become a goal-setting pro:
1. Get Specific
Be specific about the goals you want to achieve so you can accurately plan ways to accomplish them. For example, instead of saying, “I want to increase sales in the new year,” you can say, “I want to increase sales in the new year by sending out a custom postcard featuring our latest promotions quarterly.”
Then, you can create a step-by-step plan to achieve the goal. For example, “I will contact a company specializing in custom mailing services at the beginning of the year to explain my goal to send postcards quarterly and begin the design and printing process.”
2. Establish Deadlines
When setting goals for a new year, you must set deadlines to ensure accountability. Not only do deadlines make it easier to track your progress, but they also create a sense of urgency that can motivate you every step of the way. Remember to allow plenty of time for each goal, however, to keep your team from having to cram in too much work at the last second.
3. Keep Morale High
Celebrate the small victories that get you one step closer to achieving a specific goal. You and your team are working hard, so reward everyone accordingly with a celebratory lunch or a fun out-of-office activity. Cheering everyone on boosts morale and keeps your team motivated.
4. Don’t Get Discouraged
Bad days and small mistakes are inevitable; we’re only human, after all. If something doesn’t go to plan, don’t let it stop you from achieving your goals. Simply pick up where you left off and keep going — your future self will thank you.
5. Schedule Frequent Check-Ins
Figure out a system to track your progress regularly. Once you’ve done that, you can schedule weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meetings with your team to see your progress and make any necessary adjustments.
This is also useful in case your teams are prone to procrastination. Even if you give them plenty of time to reach their goals, they may wait until the last second. Regular check-ins for them to report on their progress discourage this.
Enhancing Your Marketing Strategy With Complete Mailing & Printing
A new year allows your business to start fresh, and expanding your reach to new audiences and reaching sales goals is achievable with custom mailing services. Customized mail campaigns are personal, cost-effective, and simple, especially if you partner with a reputable custom mailing service company like Complete Mailing & Printing.To learn more about how Complete Mailing & Printing can help your business reach new heights in the upcoming year with top-tier digital printing services and custom mailing services, request a complimentary quote today.
