New year, new decade… new marketing approach?

Whether you get an adrenaline shot of excitement when a new year arrives or it’s just another week to get on with your work, I think a new decade is something to sit up and pay attention to! What better time to take stock of what you’ve achieved (even if that is simply deciding to start a new venture or take a new direction with your business) set some goals for the years ahead and dream big! It’s one thing to think about where you’ll be in 12 months, but what about 5 years? Or 10?

From a marketing perspective, there are some really exciting trends emerging this year that can help shape your approach, whatever your aims are. If you’ve tried the same approach for years on end but don’t feel as though it’s working or you’ve never marketed anything at all, these tips for marketing in 2020 should help you reap rewards. Now some of these might sound like they belong in the realm of really big brands and don’t apply to small to medium-sized rural businesses, but I’ll show you how you can weave 3 of them into your planning this year.

For email - personalisation

Big brands have some amazing marketing automation software that presents users with very personalised messages based on the actions they take (i.e. if they opened an email or clicked a link, they will see different information to someone else who hasn’t). However, there are ways for those doing DIY marketing on a smaller scale to jump on this trend.

If you send out newsletters and e-shots, have you thought about spending time segmenting your list of contacts? That means sorting out your contacts into useful categories. For example, can you filter your list so that you know who is a customer, who is an ex-customer and who is a prospect? That will enable you to send each segment more personalised content, like sending an ex-customer an email that’s a great reminder of your product or service that you might not want to send to an existing customer. If you have a national customer base but travel to different areas for workshops or networking (for example if you are a specialist accountant) you could filter your list by area and let people know when you will be nearby.

For social media - storytelling

Storytelling should be a key element of any social media strategy in 2020. It’s a great way to engage with your audience because it helps them connect with your ethos and is so much more interesting than constant sales posts (never plan in more than 20% sales content!). So, what is storytelling? Here are some ideas:

  • Tell your brand story – post photos from the early days of your business or take a behind the scenes video. Link to a blog which talks about why you started the business and the successes and challenges you faced along the way.
  • Share your customers’ stories – this is a brilliant way to share the features and benefits of your products in a way that people will engage with.
  • Show don’t tell. Think of ways to demonstrate why your product or service is brilliant without simply writing it in a post.
For blogging and web content - voice search

Now this one might seem really crazy on the face of it! I imagine you some of you are sitting there thinking why on earth should I, with (for example) my glamping business in the middle of nowhere, need to think about voice search? Well here’s why I think it’s worth considering. We’re now seeing the third generation of smart speakers and even if you’re not keen on them, they are increasingly popular, and people are searching the internet using them. Most of the commands that people give their smart speakers are requests for information, such as “glamping sites near Cirencester’. In order to come up as a result if someone is voice searching for a business just like yours, you’ll need to have created some SEO-friendly blog and web content that is designed to answer the specific questions they are asking.

Well there you have it – 3 simple ways for rural businesses just like yours to weave some of the key marketing trends into your plans in 2020 and beyond. If you read all this and wonder you’ll have time to get it all done and where to get started, why not pick up the phone for a quick free chat to see how I can help? Click here to view Tara's profile on our Directory.

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