My Top Marketing Recommendations for 2022

Post/Pandemic marketing, and business in general, have taken quite a few turns since 2020. We all know that. Many businesses have been hit very hard. Others are doing record business levels. As we enter 2022 and get our feet wet I wanted to offer my top marketing recommendations for 2022…FREE OF CHARGE. Since this may be read by people from many different business sectors, I will keep this very general in nature. If you want specifics…a specific marketing plan for you and your business, then lets talk in person. These will be in no specific order. Just good, sound marketing ideas. These are just to get you thinking.

Reduce Your Dependence on Social Media

This is the first time I have EVER made this recommendation, but this is #1 on MY list for 2022. Notice I didn’t say stop doing social media. I believe it can still serve specific purposes. Here’s the deal. More than ever before, I believe that medias like Facebook and Twitter (and the news media) are completely polarizing people. People either love them, or they have sworn off of them, even for short periods of time. That is one reason people in droves are stepping away from them. Just like actors, athletes and musicians taking political stands, Facebook and Twitter have too much self-granted political and editorial assumed authority. That’s not what they were created for. Like actors, athletes and musicians, they were supposed to be for entertainment purposes. They have long-since overstepped those boundaries and power. The problem with the polarizing effect is that most people will either identify with one side or the other. That’s not a healthy place for business to be. That means you may be alienating 1/2 of your potential customer base. Our job is to provide products and services to our customers and potential customers. We don’t want our customers to be polarized against our business because we have been perceived as taking a particular stance du jour.

I believe it is still appropriate to advertise on whatever social media meets your business purposes, but please consider your business purposes carefully and the social media sources you choose to advertise on. Try to choose neutral media sources, unless you are trying to take a stance. There are plenty of liberal or conservative places to choose from if you are trying to polarize your customer base. Consider the source(s) that you advertise on and whether they will be helpful or detrimental to your business based on your target demographics and their potential for polarizing your customer base. Perhaps it is time to consider lowering your advertising budget with these polarizing and politically-minded media sources and choose some other social media that is decidedly healthier and less biased. There are other ways to stay in touch with your client base. In 2022, business will continue to change, and we shouldn’t risk offending any potential customers.

When it comes to business, remember the old days when there were certain subjects not to be discussed in polite company? I will leave you with this thought. The success of LinkedIn and Alignable is partly because because they are based on good old relationship building, and helping to forge alliances…not about political stances or highlighting our differences. Some of the most successful businesses I know of are successful because they are based on good old customer services, helping their customers with their needs and relationship building. These commodities are in short supply these days. Bring them back in your business.

General Website Review

During the winter months, I always recommend that businesses review their websites. Whether your business is busy or slow in winter, we all have slow times (which I call shoulder seasons). Prior to, and entering into your business’s shoulder season is one great time to do some of your most marketing.

In my opinion, your company website should be the most current source of information in your entire company. Even your employees should be able to go to your website and find the most current information. Review the following things:

Is your content relevant for your customer demographics?
Is the look of your website fresh and are the most searched items easy to find? (Do you know what your most searched items are?)
Is your information (brochures, information and other collateral material) current and easy to find?
If you have pricing or special offers on your website, are the prices current and still in date?
If you have job posting on your website, are they current?
Do you have call-to-actions on your website?
Are you easy to contact by phone, e-mail or contact forms?
Do you have new products and services listed on your website that may be new since last month/year?
Do all your customers even know about your full range of products and services?
Are your hours of operation still current?
Do you have a correct phone tree of appropriate contact information?
Do you have awards to promote?
Have you considered a “back-end” of your website where you have policies, procedures and other employee communications listed?

This is important!

As part of your website review, you need to check with an independent source that does SEO (search engine optimization) and have them do a review of your business listings on the major search engines. If you “Google” your business with a basic search on your products/services and your business doesn’t come up on the first or second page of the results, you have work that needs to be done. More importantly, if you “Google” your business name and it doesn’t come up either, you need to have a lot of work done.

This is SEO 101. We offer that as our most basic SEO service. That’s done before you get into the advanced SEO operations. Start there this year. You could have the best website in the world, but if potential customers can’t find you, then it’s all in vain. Oh yes, don’t forget to check and see if your SEO search results are set for your proper “local search area”. If you have moved, all of this information could be incorrect.

I categorize our SEO services into 3 areas of service

Basic: This is the least expensive service, but absolutely should be done for every business and website initially. It involves making sure your business is “registered” properly with all the MAJOR search engines. It involves assuring that the search engines have absolutely correct basic information about your business such as address, phone, hours of operation, and your business is correctly categorized in terms of the products and services that you offer. It should be updated as information about your business changes. Think of it like ensuring your business card for your business is properly listed with ALL the major search engines. If they don’t know you are there, how do you expect people to find your business? Yes, you can do this yourself, but it can be really time consuming. You really should be sure that your business is listed correctly because this also involves your “analytics” and statistics (the way we do it) that are collected on your business, which involves your ranking in search results. That’s the goal. My analogy I like to use is think of your business like a book in a library. It can be set on a shelf, and if someone happens to walk by it and see it, checks it out, great. But until that book is listed and categorized properly in the card catalog (to use an old reference) or database, it will not be effectively and regularly found and checked out. That’s what this basic service does for you. I recommend this is done by a professional.
Advanced: This entire process can likely last 6 months or more. Your business has already been listed properly in the basic service. Now is the time to begin the process that involves doing everything you can to improve your business ranking in the search engine results when people search for your business or your products and services. Yes, it does involve advertising dollars as well (on a monthly basis). It involves a lot of research on keywords and searches. It also involves a lot of testing and modifications to achieve the desired results. This is not a 1-month process. It requires researching, actions, reviewing the results (over a month) and modifications. Then repeat. That’s why this process will likely take 6 months or more to complete. There is a financial commitment to this process over those 6 months. The goal is to get your business into the 1st or 2nd page of search engine results consistently. Remember that your competitors are doing this, and they are paying for their advertising, attempting to take away your business share. You can see why this is a time consuming and more expensive process. But it is worth it if you want results. I recommend this is done by a professional.
All others: This could involve other methods of promoting your business and SEM (Search Engine Marketing). It could involve things such as promoting your business on such things as Google Maps, Waze, Yelp, etc. This involves getting your business appropriately listed and displayed on all other methods. This is dependent on your products and services you offer. This is the heavy duty advertising aspects of promoting your business, and could include radio, TV and some heavy duty search techniques and tactics. This could be expanded to include telephone call tracking and more.

There are many other avenues and service offerings of professional SEO/SEM companies. Basic service should be done by all businesses, early on, before a lot of bad information ends up on the internet. It is better to do this service early on and get it correct the first time, rather than repairing bad information later on. Remember, that if your business has moved, your name has changed, or perhaps you have changed your offering of products and services, you should have this service performed again. Advanced services should be done consecutively for a number of months (recommended 6 months). Then, you may be good for a couple of years before it should be reviewed again. Other services can be done at any time, but should be reviewed regularly as new services and opportunities to advertise change regularly. You should consider and plan for all of this as part of your marketing budget every year.

Offer Your Customers Real Value

If a business offers a customer a 5% or 10% discount (on a smaller purchase), do you think that customer perceives that as a real value? Would they think that’s just already built into the price?

Consider that 5-10% offer against the following offers:

A car dealership gives a free car wash with every service (even a basic oil change)
A garage door dealer has their service technicians take the time to fully explain the repairs (or recommended repairs), along with complete pricing to the customers, along with the work that they are doing. They also charge very fair pricing, and may even leave a can of lubricant for the door rails at no charge. They many times help their customers program their car remote controls at no extra charge. They are truly helpful. Do you think that is a value to their customers?
An internet company misships an order. Instead of making the customer send back the incorrect item, they tell them to keep it and reships the correct item at no charge.

Did any of these items cost the company big money? No, not likely. But when you consider the true cost of obtaining new customers these days, I can tell you for sure that keeping your customers satisfied and coming back to you, year after year, is much cheaper than hiding behind your company policies and alienating a customer. I recommend an older book on customer service by Bob Farrell called “Give ‘Em The Pickle”.

Whether your product or service is large or small, are you providing real value to your customers? This year, competition will be more fierce than ever. Set your business apart by ensuring you are perceived as providing real value to your customers.

Customer Surveys

Are you and your business perceived as “professionals” in your field? What did your customers think of your customer service, your products or your services? Do you know? What is your ratio of happy customers to unhappy customers? What did you do to follow up with the unhappy customers to regain their satisfaction? Do you talk with customers in person? Would you be surprised to know that both the unhappy and happy customers like to share their opinions with you? You may only get one chance to regain the satisfaction of the unhappy customer. And as we all know, they are the ones that will tell 6 of their friends about their bad experience.

Make happy customers, then make it easy for them to tell you about their experiences. Encourage them to do so. Then, confidentially leverage that information to gain new customers and make them happy too. Rinse and repeat. Use the information gained from unhappy customers to continually review and revise your business practices, policies and procedures.

Nobody loves this process, but it is worth it. How else will you find out about mistakes that you are making that are causing you to loose customers? There are two keys here. Taking a genuine interest in your customers and their satisfaction AND promptly and correctly addressing the problems and their concerns. You will likely find that doing this properly, they mostly want to vent and be heard. Then, normally small concessions on your part may turn them back into a happy customer. Since they were the vocal ones, they will likely become your advocate to their friends. In this day of “social media influencers”, this can make a big difference for your business.

Expanding Your Marketing Areas

Consider this pandemic scenario. In my particular area, restaurants were hit especially hard by our local regulations, and especially the sit-down, fine dining restaurants. One day they were open, the next closed. For those of you in the restaurant business, you know what that does to your inventory and your employees. Planning is a nightmare. But the ones that were really flexible were the ones that were only dine-in, sit-down restaurants, and they quickly learned how to rebrand themselves and do take-out successfully. In my area, that even included the fast food restaurants making major changes.

My point is this. In this post/pandemic era, we have all learned how to adapt if we want to survive. That may mean doing things in your business that you have never done before, or at a minimum, doing them differently than you have done them before. It may mean getting smaller again, before you can grow again. 2+ years into the pandemic, this is no real new news to anyone. But use this as an opportunity to consider where (the locations) you market to, what your products are services are. Be prepared if this pandemic goes on for still more years. In what appears to continue to be a shrinking labor force, how will that affect your business, and what can you do differently? When the pandemic ends, what lessons have we all learned about our businesses that can help us be more flexible and adapt more easily in the future?

Above, I recommended we all reduce or change the way we think about and utilize social media. How does that thought coexist with “expanding your marketing areas?” It’s really pretty simple. In a similar way to the way we have learned to adapt our businesses, we must also learn to adapt our marketing plans. All businesses should have a marketing budget that is a percentage of their total sales. As I have always stated, “Marketing is not any one silver bullet. It is the sum total of everything and every avenue a business uses to promote their business, products and services”. They break down their available budgets and allocate it to each marketing avenue. They evaluate their successes and failures, and then reallocate the budget again the next year. That’s what you should do every year. That is what you should do this year in 2022.

Consider new advertising sources. Consider things you haven’t done before, both large and small. Keep investing in the successful ones. Evaluate your most-to-least profitable products and services. Then you have a decision to make. Do you invest in the most profitable items, or do you bring up the least successful and profitable things, and improve on them? Or do you cut them? Do you change your sales mix? Do you make changes in the way you sell? Do you change your prices?

I can tell you this. All businesses, of all sizes, wrestle with these problems. Let me conclude with this thought. Above I talked about Customer Service and providing real value to your customers. In 2022, I believe that as all businesses continue to evolve and change, or they close their doors, the ones that are the most successful will be the ones that provide the best customer service, provide the best overall real value to their customers, and manage their expenses, labor force and supply chains the very best.

All the best to you in 22! Let me know if I can be of assistance to you.

Of course, if you can think of someone that might benefit from this information, please, feel free to send them this link.

Sincerely

Allen Beck, AKOR Services