Marketing Resolutions: Your 2020 Checklist

With the new year’s highly anticipated arrival, comes high hopes for many companies. As we enter the roaring 20’s, businesses are excited to give their marketing strategy a serious makeover.

You’ve probably polished off your personal resolution list with the usual “exercise more” and “eat healthier,” but what about your business resolutions?

1. Optimize Website: Rapid, Responsive, Remarkable

This will always be on our resolution list – especially since website technology moves so fast! Styles and trends are always changing, foundational website tech updates, and user patterns transform. How is your website keeping up after 1, 2, 5, or 10 years? Soes your website deisgn still look fresh?

Let’s look at the 3 “R” Goals of Websites: Rapid, Responsive, Remarkable. Your top goal for your website should be speed. After all, a website that doesn’t load in under 3 seconds will lose over 50% of its visitors. The new year brings technology updates and so, your website may see fluctuations in speed. Always be on top of it and revisit your hosting and webpage optimizations. Mobile-friendly websites are leading the pack by A LOT so a website that loads fast on mobile is everything!

The next R to look at is responsiveness. How does your website look on an iPhone, Android, iPad, Pixelbook, Macbook Pro, Dell Desktop? Flawless hopefully. And how about different browsers (Safari vs. Chrome vs. Firefox)? Every year, tech companies release new gadgets for people to view your website on. Check often if your site looks right on all devices and browsers.

Finally, is your website design and functionality remarkable? Does the user feel inspired, curious, and captured by the design and format? Users should effortlessly navigate your website to find the information they need – but they should also be hooked by the beauty. Style changes every year (we’ve all seen it with shoulder pads). What’s hot now might not be later. Freshen up your web design when necessary and keep visitors interested.

2. Improve Search Ranking

Another long-term resolution that can be a serious headache – especially when Google’s algorithm changes and your rankings start to tank. When you decide to play the SEO game, you’re in it for the long haul. This year started with yet another Google algorithm update and so we dove in ready to take on the challenge. Will you accept the SEO challenge in 2020? With an aggressive SEO campaign, you can be on track for higher rankings by the end of the year (like we said, it’s a long-term game).

A new trend in SEO that we’re seeing more and more of is SERP Position Zero and Featured Snippets. If you have asked Google a question recently, you probably saw a few answers at the top of the search result page. These featured snippets are becoming more popular and are referred to as “Position Zero.” Getting website content to appear in that region of SERP is a major goal for many companies in 2020. One way you can reach this goal is by understanding the importance of voice search. SEO has started to include conversational speak due to the growth of voice search. Is your website content optimized for voice search?

3. Grow Social Media Presence

3.2 billion people are on social media. 90% of millennials, 77% of Generation X, and 48% of Baby Boomers are on social media. Is your business on social media? 2020 should be the year your business THRIVES on social media. Take this opportunity to get front and center with your audience with a social media marketing strategy. Social media is a great trust builder – tell your potential customers who you are and stay top of mind.

And this year, don’t just focus on selling on social media. The goal should be to engage and connect – after all it’s called SOCIAL media marketing. Engage with the audience, respond to comments and messages, like their content, and make connections.

4. Become ADA compliant

This is one of those hot topics right now and overlooking it can lead to serious business problems – think thousands of dollars in fines. We recently wrote about the importance of ADA compliance and now it’s time to take action. How accessible is your website? For example, can users with limited eyesight navigate your website? Do the images on the website have alt text and does the color contrast meet the required ratio? Read up on these ADA compliance requirements and more by checking our blog, Everything You Need to Know About ADA Compliance & Websites.

The next steps you can take involve hiring a professional marketing company to run a page-by-page analysis on your website for ADA compliance and then make the suggested changes to your website design and functions.

5. Humanize Marketing Strategy

Today’s consumers are buried in marketing messages and they’re starting to tune them out. How are companies supposed to reach their audience? Traditional advertising is losing the game and the most human company is winning. Gone are the days of lies and secrets in company behavior. Today’s consumer will research and take time to find the right company that aligns with their values.

This year, humanize your marketing strategy – tell your story, and more importantly, let customers tell THEIRS. Interactions between your brand and the consumer should be authentic and real. Your company culture should enable connections, storytelling, and community. The 1930’s Cigarette-Smoking Santa is not fooling anyone. (Read our blog, 4 Lessons from Social Media Marketing World 2019, for a refresher on what we mean). Apply this strategy to all aspects of your business like social media marketing, website design, advertising, etc.

There you have it, your 2020 Marketing Resolutions List. Remember, every new year brings about technology upgrades, new digital marketing trends, and a transformed consumer audience. If you want to beat the competition, you have to play the game – from small website design updates to complete strategy overhauls. Will you check these items off your list? Or will you risk falling behind? Now is the time to launch your business into the roaring 20’s!