When the madness of Christmas is over, January is not a month to sit back and do nothing. In fact it is a very important month for your marketing strategy; a good strategy at the beginning of the year can set up your business for the year ahead.
With consumers still feeling the effects of the cost-of-living crisis you should look for ways to innovate, stand out from the crowd, and be there to help people. Those businesses that get their messaging right and in front of the right people will be the ones who can weather the storm best.
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Create a New Year email
Let’s start by looking at your communications. You can send your email list a Happy New Year email and thank them for their interest in your business over the past year. You can even offer a discount code if they purchase in January 2024. If you are having a sale, include some links to the products you are selling off and create urgency with a limited-time offer promotion. We have a blog dedicated to the dos and don’ts of email marketing which will help you plan a great email.
Post a Happy New Year message on social media
Social media is important to get conversations flowing with your potential and existing customers. Did you know that over 70% of people research a brand on social media before purchasing? Even if your business is closed over the festive season, you should still send out comms on social media. You can even schedule your posts before the festive break. We suggest that you include your updated opening times on social media and when you expect to return to work. A simple ‘Happy New Year’ post should go out thanking your customers for a wonderful year just gone and that you look forward to seeing them in the new year.
Traditional colour schemes include using a mix of dark colours with gold (and fireworks) however, you may want to try something a little different to stand out from the crowd; remember that most businesses will be putting out New Year messages.
Image credit – Canva
As well as the standard new year message, you can also try creating conversations with your clients on social media. You can post a poll or just a question asking their opinions on something (excellent for market research), or you could run a competition (get them to share your posts for a chance of winning a prize). All this will help with your conversions on social media and by interacting with your audience, you will stick in their minds when they are ready to make a purchase.
Explore new marketing opportunities
Take the ‘new year, new me’ slogan and apply it to your marketing too. What marketing avenues have you not tried yet? Maybe you want to try making videos or advertising on TikTok? Perhaps you feel now is the time to try paid ads on social media and ads on search engines. Whatever you decide to try, make sure you have a plan of what you are going to do and WHY you are doing it.
Have a sale or create a special offer for January
Offering your products/services at a discounted rate is a great way to encourage consumers to spend money post-Christmas, it’s also a great way to sell off old or seasonal stock.
You could offer a sale on individual items or a discount across the board. While you may not generate the sales that you had during Black Friday or indeed December, it is still a terrific way to entice people to your website or store and turn them into lifelong customers!
Look at New Year trends
People’s New Year’s resolutions usually revolve around health; from exercising and dieting, to quitting smoking, so if your business operates in these fields, now is the time to capitalise on these trends with campaigns aimed at helping people solve their new year woes. Another popular resolution is to save money and with the recession looming over us, a lot of people will be looking to cut back this year and make savings where they can. If your product or service can genuinely save the user money then that is your unique selling point (USP). If you sell any of the products that help people with their resolutions\a, then these should be in prime place at your physical location and if you are online, make sure that some of the products are listed on your homepage. If you fancy running an ad campaign for a certain product, ensure your landing page is curated with just that one item on it.
Give away a freebie
Again, yes times are tough, but a freebie doesn’t have to cost you too much money. These suggestions here will cost you time and effort but no physical money. They don’t even have to be physical products. Your freebie can be something that you have written or made. Here are a couple of ideas:
- Financial industry – Why not design a budgeting calculator/energy calculator to help people out? This won’t take you a whole heap of time and will help many people out…people who may want to use your services in future.
- Beauty industry – If someone has had their hair done or a beauty treatment, they will want to know how to care for that. You can offer them a free guide on say caring for their nails, which will protect your work and give the client longevity.
- Legal industry – If you have a particular niche, why not offer a free guide in that area? Obviously, you won’t be able to cover every issue, but a small guide can help.
- Building industry – free easy repair guide. Remember when the Beast from the East hit the UK? Many boiler pipes froze, and it was often the outlet pipe that stopped the boiler from working. Some boiler workers posted an easy fix on social media and save themselves time in callouts and gained positive responses from their customers. This year why not produce a guide on basic repairs/keeping warm etc?
A lot of the free suggestions do include guides. Guides are a fantastic way to get your brand seen and recognised by more people. You can even have these guides be a gated resource so that someone will need to give you their name and email to receive them. You can also include a tick box to offer them the chance to sign up for your emails, and you can then market them with any offers you may have.
Here are some additional ideas that may incur a small cost for your business, but will likely generate money for your business.
- Gyms/health centres – If you already have clients, why not get them to do the work and bring along their friends? You can offer a free weekend pass to the person thinking of joining and for your current client a discount on something if the newcomer signs up.
- Catering industry – A way to entice families into your establishment is to offer kids to eat free with every adult meal. Alternatively, if you do not want children in your establishment, you can offer a free glass of house wine with every 3-course meal.
- Retail/online stores – If someone orders over a certain amount, you could offer them free delivery or a free item (of overstock).
- Motors – We love getting a new motor and for some people keeping that motor shiny and new is a necessity. Why not offer a free car cleaning kit to keep their car looking new? Alternatively, if you do repairs and servicing too, you can offer them one at a discount price.
- Hotels/accommodation – You could offer a discount on a stay in January or February.
How can I design images or guides on a budget?
You don’t need to be a whizz in graphic design to design some stunning promotional imagery. A lot of businesses use Canva which has free and paid versions. You can find a preset for any occasion. You can even change the colour scheme to suit your brand.
Another great idea is to use your own images. If you have taken photos of the products, you are selling online, you can re-use those images on social media (and again using Canva to add some text to them.)
When it comes to creating guides, Google Docs is a powerful free word processor that will allow you to create a document and export it as a pdf. Perfect for creating professional-looking documents that you can share with your audience.
So, there you have it, 6 wonderful ways to market your business this new year. If you need our help with any aspect of marketing, feel free to contact us today. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter which is packed full of useful information and industry news.
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