Resolve to make 2015 the year of marketing success

Many of the resolutions we make for ourselves at the beginning of the new year can be adopted at work. Our job as marketers regularly requires us to start with a clean slate and be clear, accommodating and successful in helping others make (and save) money.

Some of us need a little encouragement and guidance when it comes to sticking to our marketing goals, or a simple reminder of the benefits that await us when we follow through. Well, here they are. And here’s to the new year.


Resolve to clean the slate. Our resolutions are motivated by past choices we’ve made and subsequently deemed poor. But it’s important to remember (and remember and remember again) that the consequences of the past should not spoil your attempts to correct the problem. If you smoked a cigarette on your lunch break yesterday, don’t beat yourself up about it. If, as a marketer, you are disappointed by last year’s conversion numbers, know that you have 95% of the year left to make them right in 2015. Clean your slate and tackle your goals with renewed optimism.

Establishing marketing goals early in the year can help you avoid repeating previous missteps. If your goal is to reach more people using last year’s budget, take the time to learn about content marketing, which can connect prospects with your services by providing them with information they’re searching for, or explore email marketing, which is both cost-effective and far-reaching.

Resolve to be helpful. People often equate this resolution with volunteering at homeless shelters or donating gently used items to families in need. When it comes to marketing communications, marketers can resolve to be helpful by laying out all the facts. Marketers should employ the practices they know to yield measurable results. For example, a successful content marketing strategy from last year helped clear up many unanswered questions and provided useful information about a client’s services through blog posts, studies, ebooks and surveys. People responded, because they need relevant information and like being helped.

When paired with other marketing channels, content marketing can help bulk up your communications by empowering customers with facts and stats to guide their actions. More and more companies are making the move to provide customers with self-service options to streamline the checkout process and make shopping online less daunting.

Resolve to try something new. New doesn’t have to be scary. It doesn’t have to mean skydiving or other attempts to be daring. And for marketers, new doesn’t have to mean trying the latest and flashiest advertising gimmick. But marketers can adopt new or different approaches to dispensing information. They can opt to send out a more interactive communication such as a fun dimensional mailer if the campaign calls for it, or other unconventional yet reasonable marketing tactics. Trying something new can also help marketers analyze and track results to determine which methods worked well and which didn’t in their year-end assessment.

Another way to achieve this marketing goal is to collaborate with other creative professionals who can provide services that you don’t already have in-house, such as a videographer or a PowerPoint expert. Doing so not only showcases your willingness to stand out from the pack but also proves that you’re open to outside proposals.

Resolve to be clear. This resolution can completely transform personal relationships. When you make a statement without ambivalence and when you clearly lay out your points in a discussion, you avoid confusion and potential social gaffes. Marketers always benefit by being clear. Sometimes a campaign can be upended by an act as simple as failing to explain the purpose of a mailing or email. Customers want to know what they’re reading and why they’re reading it, especially if the marketing communication is their first point of contact with a business. Marketers know more than anyone else that clarity is king.

Content marketing can also help clear up a lot of misinformation. It can be especially helpful for industries that sell a product customers can’t see, like energy. These types of industries often enjoy a boost when more information is made available about them.

Resolve to save money. Forgoing those daily lattes could slowly add up to the value of an iPad by the end of the year if you stick to a budget. But cutting corners here and there on the job doesn’t always yield positive results. Marketers can save money by assessing their work on a regular basis. This might include sending out surveys for feedback, reviewing the financials of a project that didn’t live up to expectations or opting for more cost-effective channels of marketing. Marketers who take the time to reflect on the past year, with all its ups and downs, will more than likely discover how they might better assign their marketing dollars to future campaigns.

If you’re worried about accomplishing your 2015 marketing goals, don’t fret. There are several support systems out there. And marketers, listen up!