Seven Marketing Tips to Try in 2014

A new financial year brings a new budget allocation for your business, and with it, the opportunity to try out new marketing strategies. If you’re still putting together your marketing strategy for 2014/15, why not try and spice things up a little? Your usual marketing routine might have brought you success in the past, but if you want to take a risk and try something new, these seven marketing tips might work for your business.

#1: Content marketing

If you’re not already experimenting with content marketing, you’re already falling behind. Content marketing is about creating interesting and shareable content and posting it on your company’s website or blog. Regular updates mean that Google will index your site more regularly, helping you to climb up the search rankings.

#2: Use Google Authorship

A key way of making your content more Google-friendly is to implement Google Authorship. The gap between SEO and social media is closing. Authorship links your content to your Google+ profile and puts your photo next to the post’s meta description in Google’s search results – drawing the eye of the reader and increasing the clicks through to your website.

#3: Diversify your content

While we’re on the subject of content marketing, this year might be the year you want to start diversifying your content. If your business has a very narrow focus, that doesn’t mean your blog content has to stay within those confines. Talk about issues affecting businesses of a similar size to yours, or branch out into discussing related fields. Don’t be afraid to change the format and structure of your content, either.

#4: Tweet your customers

You’ve probably already got a Twitter account for your company. Make sure that you’re updating it regularly, and make an increased effort to respond to every customer query, complaint and compliment that you receive via the company account. This helps build brand loyalty and may even lead to new partnerships in the future.

#5: Optimise your site for mobile

Mobile web users will soon make up the majority of website visitors. It’s more important than ever to carry out the extra work required to optimise your website for smartphones and tablets. Potential clients will be put off if they can’t easily access and read every part of your website from their smartphones.

#6: Microvideos

Towards the tail end of 2013, companies have used Vine and Instagram to tease, inform and present. Vines are embedded in Twitter feeds, so readers can easily view the bitesize videos without having to click through to any external sites. Experiment with microvideos – they’re relatively cheap to produce and can be shared easily.

#7: Try out competitions

Social media allows you to easily connect with your customers. It’s also great at building you an audience – and what better way to tempt people to connect with your brand than through competitions?

With a little time investment in digital marketing for your company, you should soon begin to experience results.