Whenever someone asks me for free marketing advice, I give them a shortlist of things to do. Most of them are highly administrative — which I think surprises people. While I believe in creativity and inspiration, you won’t have time to do that if you can’t delegate some of the day-to-day branding tasks. The best thing you can do for your brand? Getting organized in 2021.
Develop Your Brand Guide
Whether you’ve been in business for year or just started out, you need to make sure you have a brand guide. It doesn’t have to be robust. In fact, most small businesses can get by with a few pages or even a one-page sheet. In general, this will save you a lot of time as you manage your brand.
Why?
It makes it easier to delegate. Instead of going over all the details of your brand you just hand any content creator a document. This shortcuts the process of questions about what you like, what fonts you use, your brand’s message, etc.
Read: How to Define Your Brand on One Page + Free Template
Create a Content Calendar
If you google content calendars, you can find a million different formats full of inspiration to fill the daily cycle. It can help you post regularly. Also, it will challenge you to focus on quality content, over quantity.
Improve Your Landing Pages
When is the last time you got a lead or sale online? If your website is a second thought, take a look at your conversion funnel in this new year. You should have landing pages set up to generate leads or sales depending on your service model.
Read: How to Build an Evergreen Marketing Campaign Around Your Service Business
Rework Your Email Strategy
Currently, I’m enjoying a process where I am helping one of my clients build up their email list. We have a 60% open rate because I have been careful to only include contacts that have opted into the offers. Additionally, the emails are infrequent and valuable. This leads to more opens and clicks because the list only includes engaged contacts.
Read: Want to Improve Your Email Marketing Open Rate? Try This.
Promote Your Brand in 2021
If you’re looking for more ideas to promote your brand this year, check out my other articles. I often post about communication ideas with a focus in small business marketing.
