With 2022 just around the corner, it’s time to jump start your marketing strategy for the new year. So, in the spirit of the holiday season, we’re giving you 12 marketing tips and tricks to help you along the way. Let’s get started!

1. Take the Deep Rooted Marketing Approach

Brand strategists, small businesses, and nonprofits alike need a marketing strategy that is dependable and easily adaptable to change. With a deep rooted marketing approach focused upon the values of collaboration, problem solving, and communication, you can dig deeper to stand stronger. Grow your engagement and take your marketing to new heights using the deep rooted approach.

2. Keep Your Audience at Top of Mind

Understanding your audience is a crucial step toward growing your engagement. As a small business or nonprofit, it’s likely that you reach many groups of people and it’s important to cater to them all. So, keep your audience at top of mind. Who are they and how can you bring value to them? Let the answers guide your marketing strategy.

3. Embrace Authenticity

Authentic marketing begins not with tactics or strategy, but with the self. It asks the question, “What do we, as an organization, believe?” and then requires that you relay that message to your audience. When you shake it all down, authenticity means you’re being true to who you are as a brand. By expressing your core values, authentic marketing creates a dialogue between you and your audience that is natural and genuine. As a result, you’ll grow a community around your small business or nonprofit that makes it stand out from the crowd.

4. Look for Opportunities to Diversify

Feeling stuck with your marketing strategy? It’s time to look for opportunities to diversify your content. Use your analytics to determine what kinds of content have consistently high engagement rates, and think about the forms of content that will appeal to your target audience. Perhaps it’s time to experiment with long-form content, such as videos or a podcast, or maybe it’s worth trying a new social media platform. Whatever it is, diversifying your content can help to attract new audiences, while keeping the attention of current ones.

5. Just Because Everyone Else is Doing it, Doesn’t Make it Right for You

There is no one-size-fits-all marketing strategy. At Evergreen Strategic Communications, we’ve seen it first-hand; what works best for one small business or nonprofit, may not be effective for another. Instead of following the pack, first ask yourself: Who is my audience and what do they need to hear from me? What is my message? What will or will not be effective for conveying this message? When it doubt, remember: just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t always make it right for you.

6. Build Social Media Strategy Around Your 3 Content Pillars

Social media has become one of the most important aspects of marketing. When used to your advantage, it can help you connect with your audience, build brand awareness, and boost your sales or engagement. Differentiate your brand by building social media strategy around your 3 content pillars. These are 3 areas of focus related to your small business or nonprofit’s core values and important strengths. Who are you? What areas or services are valued and endorsed by your audience? Reinforce your organization’s overall brand by solidifying these 3 content pillars.

7. Apply SEO Best Practices

In simple terms, SEO (aka Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving your organic web content to increase visibility when people search online for products or services related to your small business or nonprofit. A few SEO best practices include using keywords that Google can identify and correlate with your website, writing unique titles and descriptions, and optimizing your site’s title tag and loading speed.

8. Implement Storytelling & Video

While marketing trends come and go, one technique withstands the test of time: storytelling. A good story activates empathy, builds connections, and drives listeners to action. Storytelling is a powerful marketing tool for connecting with your audience– and video is a great method for it! Whether you’re a small business or nonprofit, the visual aspect of video can help bring the central characters and sensory details of your story to life.

9. Use the Right Tools

With so many different tools out there to help you measure, test, and evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, it can be difficult to identify what you really need. Manage and optimize your marketing efforts by using the right tools for your small business or nonprofit. It’s a process of trial and error. Learn and try out different tools. However, make sure you’re not just using marketing tools for the sake of it, they should always be attempting to solve a specific problem you are tackling with your marketing strategy.

10. Learn from Your Analytics

Marketing is a long game. It is about building brand trust and engaging with your audience on a consistent basis. Like anything in your small business or nonprofit, you want to see growth in your online metrics when evaluating how a blog post or email newsletter is performing and how your audience is engaging. Thus, it is important to use the analytics of your website, social platforms, and/or email campaigns to determine your current performance, as well as areas for growth.

11. Bring it all Together

Your email campaigns, social media, and website or blog should all be talking the same talk. By integrating your marketing across all platforms, it strengthens the message and overall reach of your small business or nonprofit. Bringing it all together will also prevent the “what should we do now?” question that undoubtedly arises when it’s time to publish the next post or send out the next email. If you use a monthly content calendar, incorporate each month’s theme across all of your marketing channels to ensure your audience is receiving clear and consistent messaging.

12. Create & Nurture Strong Partnerships

As you work to build your audience and grow your engagement, don’t forget about the importance of partnerships. Creating a brand that sustains the test of time requires a network of allies, advisors, and partners. So, create and nurture strong partnerships by supporting other organizations in their endeavors. You can engage with their social media content, donate to their cause, or collaborate on a project. The possibilities for maintaining strong partnerships are endless!

Ring in the new year with a new and improved marketing strategy. Is your small business or nonprofit in need of help implementing any of these tips? Let ESC serve as your guide! Schedule a discovery call with us today.