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It's a new year and a wonderful time to reflect on your business and how it worked during the past year. If you've had a lot of activity, it's a great time to look over sales and marketing goals, traffic reports, current procedures, sales data and the products and services you're offering to determine how well you did.
For inspiration, we've included a chart from HubSpots article titled "8 of the Top Marketing Challenges Marketers Will Face This Year" for some of the area identified by marketers from their recent survey. They polled thousands of marketers on the challenges they face, as well as the tactics they’ve used to meet those challenges head-on.
Take a look at some of the most common challenges marketers reported struggling with this year.
Image from the report, "The State of Inbound"
The thing that jumps out from the chart is that 63% of marketers state their biggest challenge is in finding traffic and leads. Was that a challenge for your business as well? If so, sign up for our free traffic and lead generation masterclass. This webinar will give you lots of tips and resources that will enable you to not only generate more traffic, but convert that traffic into leads that you can follow up with.
The second thing that jumps out is that 19% said one of their business challenges was training their team. Training (or lack thereof) is one of the primary reasons cited for the high percentage of small business failures (over 50%) within the first four years of operation. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Training is one of the most overlooked areas when it comes to evaluating success criteria. But it's one of the most important factors when it comes to employee satisfaction and overall company success. You can't succeed for long if you don't know what you're doing.
Providing training on how to effectively promote and sell products and services online will lead to more successes in the coming year. Learning about traffic and lead generation, affiliate marketing, marketing online using social media, using online tools to organize, measure and track data, one-on-one coaching and daily, weekly and monthly follow up are included in Elite Marketing Pro's Insider Training Program.
This training is facilitated by expert trainers and leaders in building six and seven figure businesses. If you like to get your hands on the exact same system and tools used by top internet marketers to grow your online business, sign up today and train for as long as you feel it's needed. You can cancel at any time.
The State of Inbound report also shows that marketers are taking the leap and moving to visual content within the next year. 48% of respondents stating that You Tube will be added as a content distribution channel in the next 12 months. Facebook Video and Instagram trailed behind You Tube.
How did your business do with video marketing this year? How well are you doing when it comes to creating and distributing marketing videos to your audience? Do you find that you get better results with videos over other digital media? If video marketing is a challenge, take a look at our article, "Use a Video Marketing Strategy to Attract More Traffic and Leads", for some great tips and resources to help you move forward using this growing and popular medium.
Last but not least, the sales portion of the State of Inbound report revealed that old ways don't work with today's customers. Reps admitted that prospecting is getting more and more difficult. The take away from that is that consumers are not utilizing salespeople in the same way that they used to.
Salespeople (online business owners) should take note of customers who shop through social networks, live on their mobile device, and research products on their own. To address this change, sales people have to adopt new ways to reach consumers through social media, entrepreneurial social channels like LinkedIn, and industry resources.
Given this information, it's important to note that if you want to sell anything, you have to learn as much as possible about your prospects, (who they are, what they like and where they hang out) and place your products where they are. The days of the hard sell and shady practices are long gone. Becoming an expert in your field, and your customer's trusted advisor and you'll get a lot more in return.
Marketing Opportunities for You
The report above will give you some ideas on things that you can improve for next year. You may think of more things to improve, or you may already have a handle on how well things went. It's still a good idea to review your data, because it doesn't lie. If you don't have data, that is one of things you should place at the top of your to-do list.
If things went well, you can feel confident about 2017, and you're ready to rinse and repeat for 2018. If they didn't go so well, you might be feeling a little nervous and unsure of your next move.
Create a Marketing Challenge, To-Do List and Action Plan
No matter how things went last year, this is the time to regroup and think about how to improve the area that created your biggest marketing challenge in 2017. Of course, you should make note of those things that didn't work, and improve those processes.
Pick at least one area that didn't work, and decide that you will improve it during the coming year. There are probably a few things that "kind of" worked that might need a little tweaking, as well.
Once you have a list of what works best, create plans, processes and systems that will enable you to do more of whatever it is. If you need training, take a look at our self paced online training that will enable you to learn about network marketing. You can take these courses on any schedule, from any location. Check our services page for help installing blogs, themes, apps and plug-ins.
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Your Feedback Will Help Us Create Great Content!
We can help your business by creating content that will help you generate more traffic, convert more leads and create systems that will enable you to follow up on auto-pilot. This survey will help us understand your biggest marketing challenges for the current year so that we can help you find solutions that will move your business forward. Make sure to sign up for our free resource library, were we're adding free videos, worksheets, guides, webinars and more!
Social Media Tip
Search engines, social media sites and blogs love engagement. The amount of engagement you receive from your pages and posts will be used to provide more exposure for your content. The engagement factor is used to rank your pages, profiles and blog posts, thus the popularity of sites like Tribepro. Tribepro is not as active anymore, because people have formed their own tribes instead of sharing content from strangers.
Engagement includes liking, sharing and commenting on blog posts and social media. It's not enough these days to post on your blog alone. You should also have a strategy that includes participation in communities to receive more traffic, appear in more news feeds and therefore reach more people.
What’s your biggest marketing challenge? Join our Facebook group to find other entrepreneurs who are going in the same direction as you. Share your blog posts, Facebook pages, network and request feedback. Share what has worked, as well as things you’ve learned even from the things that didn’t work.
