It’s a new year, and after almost two “challenging” years, get ready for tougher competition. Businesses need new marketing ideas for 2022. Why? While a record 200,000 businesses have closed their doors for good during the Pandemic (WSJ), you’re facing more competition every day, according to the US Chamber of Commerce:
– Over 4.3 million business applications were filed in 2020, an increase of over 24% over 2019
– during 2020, about 380 out of every 100,000 adults became entrepreneurs each month
What can you do to survive with so much new competition? Here are a few…
Marketing Ideas for 2022
Marketing is “the way that businesses communicate” with the world, and with your potential customers. It starts by understanding marketing. It’s not just selling. It’s everything that you do in your business, often summarized in what’s known as the “4 P’s.”
Most of us just focus on one part of marketing: Promotion. That’s a simple way of saying how you promote and sell your products or services, including advertising, selling, and other ways of making the world aware of your products.
A New Year is a good time to consider new ideas and new approaches. So here are some marketing ideas that can improve your entire marketing approach that you can start working on today.
Who is your customer?
Do you know who your customer is? Successful market starts with identifying the consumers who are “most likely” to be interested in your product. Promoting your product to the wrong people is a waste of time and money.
– Suggested plan: Analyze a list of your past customers for the past year or two. Do you see any patterns? Any similarities in who they are, what they do, where they live, what they earn, what they need, or why the buy your product? Learn from this experience and use it to target you marketing.
Why do your customers buy from you?
Do you know why your customers buy from you and not your competition? It’s probably more than just your winning personality or witty jokes. It’s also what they think, not what you think.
– Suggested plan: Ask them. You can learn valuable lessons, be more professional, and use this information to attract new customers who value the same thing.
Remember existing customers
Don’t forget about existing customers. There are three ways to increase business: get new customers, increase your average sale, and get the customer to buy more frequently.
Most businesses focus on the first way. Unfortunately that’s the hardest and most expensive. So don’t forget about existing customers: give them ideas that will encourage them to increase their average order, and come back more frequently.
– Action Plan: Try “Suggestive Selling.” Use a mix of marketing tools to
– Educate customers about more uses of your product
– Benefits of your premium product line (create one if you don’t have one yet!)
– Give them reasons to come back more frequently
– “Cross market” other products that your customers might like
You can do this with direct mail, email blasts, blog posts, Tweets, text messages and marketing messages on hold.
New Year
It’s a New Year: a time for beginnings, and for rethinking what you’ve done in the past. Try two or more of these ideas and see how you grow in 2022.
