Marketing Initiatives You Cannot Afford to Ignore in 2013

Marketing Initiatives You Cannot Afford to Ignore in 2013:from Business 2 Community by Steve Parker, Jr.
With the impending New Year, many people are discussing what they can do differently in 2013. This is a best practice, as most people want to improve each quarter and year in their marketing campaigns and other business initiatives. Therefore, we have compiled a list of five things you cannot ignore in 2013. Feel free to add those you believe we missed in the comments!
1. Your brand’s social reputation
Is your Facebook fan page full of unanswered questions and/or complaints? Is it because you simply lack the time it takes to engage with them? Then go ahead and delete your page. While we always recommend a Facebook presence (for marketing, sales, SEO benefits, customer service, etc.), having a completely neglected business page is worse. People want to connect with your brand via social media, whether it be to air a complaint or to sing your praise. If you cannot work out the time or funds to manage it, it’s better not to be there at all.
Similarly, ignoring your social reputation includes not participating in social listening. Finding out what your customers are saying about your brand is imperative to understanding what they want and improving your business to fulfill their desires (thus driving up sales/leads).
2. Misspellings + grammatical errors in published articles
Having misspellings and grammatical errors in your published writing is simply lazy. Sure, we all have a typo in a tweet every now and then, but it’s imperative that these are kept to a minimum. Error-free content sends the message that you were thoughtful in crafting the piece and care about how your brand is perceived. And with the plethora of online dictionaries, it really is the simplest piece to clean up. Try implementing a QA (quality assurance) process where no piece of content (such as articles or blog posts) goes out without at least two sets of eyes. Often times it is difficult for the writer to see his or her mistakes–ones that can be easily spotted by another individual.
3. Maintaining the status quo report

Your reporting has no doubt looked the same for a year or more. The same metrics come in and the same analysis and recommendations are produced. Challenging the reporting process (and the document itself) can lead to better insights and more actionable next steps. Asking your marketing team to redesign a report will only be helpful, however, if you give them concrete direction. Once you have decided on your new business goals, for example, you can try to design the report around it. For example, if your business’s goal is to increase sales by 20% this year, the report should reflect how each marketing channel is helping achieve this goal with relevant metrics (hint: clicks, likes and shares aren’t the metrics to focus on).
4. Online + offline integration opportunities
The customer experience has changed drastically in recent years. Before the Internet we, of course, relied on television, radio and billboards to get our brand messages across. Then, with the Internet, our shift focused to paid search, SEO and social media. Now we have to consider all of these channels and how they can work together to send unified brand messages to the consumer. Especially if your business does not have eCommerce, it becomes paramount that your offline + online channels are in-sync in order to capture customers at any point in the purchase funnel. Since they are constantly inundated with marketing messages, it takes more finesse than ever. I recommend you read this article about Social TV to fully understand why marketing integration is important. You can also take a look at this white paper about media accountability.
5. Constant testing
Whether it is paid search ads, SEO tweaks to your website, blog content generation, tweeting or Facebook updates, there is a need for constant optimization. You should be assessing (ie: measuring) these efforts on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly) in order to improve performance across all initiatives. How can you be sure you’re constantly optimizing? Well, you should be constantly testing. Perhaps you start small with A/B tests of email subject lines or testing the best times to tweet for audience engagement. Then you can go big with conversion optimization on your website or restructuring your AdWords campaigns to the keyword level. Whatever you decide, make sure that you are constantly testing new initiatives in order to improve your business. This will ensure that your marketing is never stale, predictable, nor all-around ineffective.
Do not ignore any of the above initiatives and you will be on your way to a more successful year.
What do you think is the greatest marketing sin of 2012 and how does your business plan to avoid it in the coming year?