Hey – great job, pal! You won the Internet over the holidays. Black Friday – killed it. Cyber Monday – owned it. But now what? How in the world do you keep your sales onward and upward more than two months a year?
That’s easy. Do shit.
No, really. You have to continuously do stuff. Online marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. You likely don’t run a seasonal business, so don’t act like a seasonal business.
Conduct a quick audit of your last 12 months. What do you see? What’s not there? Have you been diligent and consistent in your efforts the 10 months besides November and December? Probably not. Why not take a little of that holiday magic with you the rest of the year?
What have you to lose really? We think you should:
- Outline a content calendar for the rest of the year and follow it. New Year’s Resolutions aren’t just for eating better or working out. It should occur to you to exercise your business acumen starting fresh in this new year. You’ve probably heard that putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard – somehow committing your goals/plans to writing – already make you 50% more effective in achieving them, so let’s get it done. We’ve talked about how useful content calendars are to content marketing before, so now’s the time to create one quick and easy. (Find some ideas and templates curated by Builtvisible.)
- Delegate content to your staff. Of course you should author some of the content, but you probably have a business to run or something, so maybe delegate that out. You likely have a few (or even many) great employees who are willing to pick up the ball and run with it. You just have to relinquish control. Give them the calendar or the ideas and let them go. Stop trying to control the universe; it’s making you impotent in production.
- Partner with a client or customer on a content project. You’re both trying to solve many of the same problems. If you both look hard enough, there’s bound to be an opportunity to illustrate some insight for the wider world about your shared business. It could be a white paper, a case study, an infographic, an experiment – anything.
- Refresh your evergreens. Take a trip over to your analytics for the past year or two. Have any of your blog posts continued to generate a steady flow of traffic? If so, they’re likely ranking well and present an opportunity to create engaging content following the same theme. You can write an update, follow the discussion thread further, or address the subject matter with new examples or in a new context. Update the old post with a link to the new post, and vice versa.
- Improve your purchase/signup pages. There are any number of things you can under this heading, and any number of stages of your marketing funnel you could optimize. Here are a few examples to get you started:
- Improve your e-commerce page by eliminating barriers that might hold customers back from clicking the “buy” button. This was the subject of a recent episode of Moz’s Whiteboard Friday that’s worth watching.
- Refine your email marketing by gathering more fine-grain analytics. Many providers, like Mailchimp, have rich options for integration between analytics properties.
- Optimize your paid spend by updating to the latest options. In the past year, Facebook introduced a new tracking pixel that consolidates its other tracking scripts, and Google introduced expanded text ads. Make sure you’re wringing every last measure out of the hard-earned dollars you’re using to promote.
You can do this! Use our handy infographic as a reminder. Download, share, print, pin it up and keep reminding your marketing team to capitalize on the traffic you earned in November and December. Let’s make it work for you throughout the year.
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