Read This Before You Create Your Strategic Marketing Plan for 2021

What a year it has been! 2020 has certainly delivered more shocks and challenges than was expected, and almost all Australian business have been ‘thrown in the deep end’ with the impact of coronavirus. While some digitally-focused brands have flourished, other traditional and physical brands have flopped, meaning 2021 will be a determinative year for the fate of many Australian companies.

Considering how chaotic this year has been, it’s no surprise that time has flown by (you might be looking at your calendar right now and gasping that Santa Claus is on his way) and we are now almost reaching the New Year. As a busy business owner, you probably know that the end of the year is an ideal time to pause and reflect on the previous twelve months and recoup for the next twelve months to come.

As well as evaluating the financial and operational factors of your business, it’s critical that you use this period to reflect on your marketing, advertising and public relations areas. Many Australian businesses develop an annual marketing plan that outlines the key areas of growth and effort for the year ahead. The essential aspects that need to be outlined in your marketing plan include:

• Re-cap and reflection on the successes/failures of 2020
• Your total marketing budget for 2021
• Where/how the marketing budget will be split
• The list of focus areas for your marketing plan (ie. social media, events, website, or whatever marketing efforts are used by your brand)
• Details on what must be done to accelerate these focus areas
• The goals/KPIs and expected return on your focus areas
• Who is responsible and accountable for the return of your efforts
• Timelines and timeframes for projects

Just like you, our team will soon be sitting down and thinking back on the year that has been in order to determine the best moves for the year upcoming. Before you settle into the conversation with your teammates, be sure to read our reflection on the trends of the 2020, as well as indulging in our 10 tips for a successful 2021 marketing plan.

What can we learn from 2020?

Marketing is an ever-evolving field that requires continual analysis and reflection to understand the best direction moving forward. Every industry is different, every business is different, and every unique group of consumers is different. Therefore, copying the work and ideas of your competitors won’t necessarily work. You need to examine and reflect upon your own successes and failures to know what the best steps for you are. When it comes to marketing, it’s essential that we can learn from our mistakes and remain open-minded to change.

So, before you begin writing anything down for your 2021 marketing plan, it’s essential that you look back on how your marketing went in 2020. If you work with a Sydney digital marketing agency, you should request an annual report to properly analyse your progress over the year. If you are a business owner with an in-house marketing team, this is something that your team should be presenting to you.

Obviously, if there are elements of your marketing plan that were successful, these should be carried forward into the new year (and perhaps even have more money/time allocated towards them if possible). However, if there are elements of your marketing plan that didn’t deliver results, some of the questions you may need to ask yourself include:

• What were the positive and negative outcomes of this?
• Why didn’t this deliver results?
• How can this be done better in 2021, or where can the effort and budget involved with this be allocated more effectively?

Every marketing plan is unique, and the details will depend largely on the nature of your business. Though, there was an obvious and substantial event that affected every single business in the world in 2020: coronavirus.

Undoubtably, digital and online brands were most fruitful considering the impact of the virus, and many traditional companies needed to transition to the online world to stay afloat. Our team has identified some of the key lessons to be learnt from coronavirus, plus upcoming trends for the new year, and the below helpful advice may ensure your marketing plan will have all the key qualities for progression and success in our ‘new normal’ world.

10 tips to accelerate your 2021 marketing plan

If you’re interested in working with a skilled digital marketing agency that’s ‘in the know’ with all the latest trends and ideas, you can contact Generate Your Audience now to start planning your 2021 strategic plan. We can work closely with you to outline some ambitious and practical targets for the new year, ensuring your business has the potential for success.

If you have the resources to go it alone and drive your own marketing, then you should read the following ten tips to gain some handy advice.

1. Consider switching all your traditional marketing to digital

For reference, traditional marketing refers to old-school advertising methods (like billboards, flyers, door-to-door sales, etc), while digital marketing refers to modern methods (like social media advertising, online content, SEO, etc).

In previous years, many small businesses have kept a balance between their traditional and digital marketing methods. This means their budget and effort has been split between the two types of marketing. Businesses that were still using traditional marketing methods in 2020 found that they were generally wasting their time and money when the public reverted to the online world during the pandemic.

Considering how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted businesses and individuals across the world in 2020, we recommend that you consider converting all your traditional marketing budget to digital marketing. As we’ve learnt, digital advertising is a more stable and certain way to promote your brand – while traditional marketing may lose it’s effectiveness during a pandemic-like situation, digital advertising only becomes more prominent and successful.

2. Start investing in app development before it’s too late.

The previous twelve months have been enormous for app developers in Sydney. More businesses than ever before are investing in the mobile app development, allowing their brand to expand and delve into a new audience.

At Generate Your Audience, our team has successfully developed apps for a range of companies, and the results have been impressive. As we’ve mentioned in previous blog articles, there are a number of ways your business could benefit from a high-quality app. We’ve even listed the 11 hottest tips for developing the best app ever, as suggested by our Sydney app development team.

If you’re looking for the best app developers in Sydney, contact our team today on 1300 889 840 or hello@generateyouraudience.com.

3. Get ahead of the SEO game.

Any business that has ever tried to increase their brand awareness and online sales with search engine optimisation will understand what we mean when we call it an ‘SEO game’. Getting your brand to rank on the first page of Google, or in the top three results, can be a great challenge – especially if you have other businesses in your market to compete with.

Our top tips for improving your website’s SEO include: increasing the loading speed of your web pages, engaging with Google AdWords, using backlinks to drive users to your website, and splattering keywords throughout your site to grab the attention of the Google search engine.

Even with these tips in mind, SEO can require an enormous amount of time and effort from yourself or your in-house marketing team. Search engine optimisation is practically a full-time gig, so you might find that the energy needed to succeed is drawing you away from other important tasks within your business, like coordinating the day-to-day operations and handling staff.

Thankfully, there are specialised Sydney SEO experts who can help to drive your website up the Google ladder. Generate Your Audience is one of them! Our team of experienced search engine optimisers have managed to secure first ranking places for a range of businesses in Australia. We can do the same for your business too. Just contact us on 1300 889 840 or hello@generateyouraudience.com.

4. Keep your branding as simple and modern as possible.

The trend of clean, minimalist, and simplistic branding has been growing since the beginning of the 20^th century. Large corporations like Apple and Google are great examples of minimalist branding. Their straightforward logos, website designs and general company feel allow the public to have a comfortable and easy experience when engaging with their brand. Modern branding is much more appealing and enticing for a consumer than old-school, clunky and cluttered marketing designs.

If your logos, marketing materials and company branding is getting outdated, you may need to consider a company rebrand. Don’t worry – this is something that all businesses will have to conduct every now and then. We recommend evaluating your brand every two years, and seriously considering a rebrand effort every ten years.

Because there are a variety of materials and documents that will need to be updated during a rebrand, such a project requires the knowledge and expertise of a range of professionals. You may need to initially talk with Sydney designers and marketing strategists to brainstorm and plan your new branding, and then you will need the assistance of sign makers, digital marketers, website designers, social media experts, and office stylists to complete the replenishment.

By choosing to work with a comprehensive digital marketing team, you can get all this help streamlined from one agency. At Generate Your Audience, we have specialists from a wide range of digital specialties, including social media, website building, search engine optimisation, app development, and more. If you want all the support you need under one roof, come to us!

5. Make these five areas subsections for your marketing plan.

There are five key sections that need to be incorporating into your marketing plan: social media, search engine optimisation, app development and app publishing, website design and maintenance, and digital content marketing. These digital marketing tools are the way of the future, and they are essential to making your presence known in the online world.

6. Know your audience and tailor your marketing plan to them.

Your consumers must be at the heart of what you do. Everything you do should be centred around the needs and desires of your target market. Each element of your marketing plan must directly relate to them… nobody else!

For example, if you are choosing to develop an app in 2021 as one of your key marketing projects, you need to be questioning how each element of the app is relevant to your consumers. Is the app going to drive more action or attention from your consumers? How does the app benefit your audience? Will the functionality and features suit your consumers? If it’s not doing any of these things, what’s the point of the app development project?

7. Stop procrastinating content marketing and blog writing.

Content marketing in the form of social media posts and online blogs, whether done through a mobile app, website, or desktop app, is a key way to give your brand credibility and boost your SEO.

We understand that some businesses simply don’t have the resources to develop online content themselves – blogs can be extremely time-consuming, especially for people who despise writing. That’s why content marketing is one of our popular services in our digital marketing agency. Our team of writing specialists can do the job for you!

8. Take advantage of your data base.

2021 is the year to make the most of your online data base. With most people still spending large periods of time at home and online due to the coronavirus pandemic, email marketing is an effective way to reach and call your audience to action. For more information about email marketing, visit our website today.

9. Aim for long-term goals instead of short-term wins.

The best marketing agency plans consider the present and the future. Ultimately, you want your business to be successful in the long run, so you should be preparing and planning for that entire period.

10. Discuss and share your marketing plan with as many people as possible.

Not only will presenting and sharing your marketing plan with other people allow you to gain feedback and find ways to improve or enhance the plan, but it will also hold you accountable for the goals and targets outlined within it. The more people than can hear your plan, the more motivation you will have to do the groundwork and achieve it!