https://unsplash.com/photos/ya-SNqL9Q-g

Whenever a new year starts, it’s safe to say that you’re always excited to see what the year ahead can bring. That’s definitely the case in business as well as your personal life. Whenever a new year starts, it’s the perfect time to think about where you want to take things – even if it’s not the start of your business financial year. Although you may not want to make any big decisions until you have reached the end of your accounting period, you can definitely look to spice up your marketing. After all, that’s always a lot of fun and it allows you to start to generate more business too. But, where should you start?

Well, that’s the fun of it – you’re not meant to know. Because you’re set in your ways with what you’re already doing with your marketing and you may only be able to think of your usual go-to activities. And that’s not going to allow you to add anything new to the business. Instead, you need new and fun ideas that could really start to spark some excitement for you. Whenever you try a different approach and aim to really have fun with the business, results do tend to start following. So, let’s consider some ideas for that now.

1. Change Your Branding

First of all, if you know that you need to shake up your branding, then this is something that you’ll want to begin with. Nothing says a brand-new start that a more suitable and exciting brand. But, you’ll want to know that you are creating something professional that suits the business and is going to stand out.

2. Be More Design-Lead

Next, you may find that it helps you to be more visual. If you want to be exciting, then grab people’s attention with your design. And not just your branding, but the photography and video that you create. So, perhaps these are two areas you should be investing in?

3. Create More Content

From here, you are going to want to make sure that you’re able to create as much content as you can. More content should always be on the agenda. But, you won’t want it to be poor quality. So, make sure that you have a plan. If you have a content plan and a schedule that you can work towards, it will help you to create things that your audience really values and interacts with – and that gets results.

https://unsplash.com/photos/l5if0iQfV4c

4. Boost Your SEO

Something that you still need to be working on in 2020 is SEO. And, you need to make sure that you’re optimised correctly for 2020 too. Because that’s the thing about SEO, it’s something that needs constant updating. Just when you’ve thought that you’ve updated everything, it probably needs refreshing and looking at again. Just make sure you have a strategy to apply it.

5. Try Paid Options

Now, you’re also going to want to consider some of the paid activities that you can do. Organic is good, but it can sometimes only get you so far. But, when you are able to invest in paid search to support the SEO, and paid social to back up your organic reach, you may notice that you start to supercharge the amount of traffic that you’re getting – or whatever it is that you’re aiming for.

6. Get Consistent On Social

When it comes to your social media, you’ll want to ensure that you’re being as consistent as you possibly can. It’s very important that you can start to build traction organically and the only way you’re going to be able to do that is with consistency. You will see that, over time, the more reliable you can be with posting, the quicker your audience grows and the more they’re interact with you.

7. Go Live

Now, using social media is always going to be an effective way to directly target your audience. But, you can’t just be active or consistent. If you want to connect with your audience, you have to go deeper. Using Facebook live or going live on Instagram can be perfect for this. It allows you to let your customers in, show behind the scenes, and just be a bit more present with them.

8. Give Advertising A Go

It could be that you also need to think about the different ways that you can try out paid social. Advertising can be incredibly effective. But you need to ensure that you’re making decisions based on data, whether that’s with the Whatagraph reporting tool or your own choice. Trying out a few ads on a small scale could get you in front of more people and allow you to boost your organic reach too.

https://unsplash.com/photos/FwF_fKj5tBo

9. Get Creative

The whole idea of being fun here means that you’re going to want to ensure that you’re being as creative as possible with your marketing. And sometimes, that means not being so scripted or strategic. Sometimes, you just need to be reactive in the moment. If there are different trends or events that are taking place, you may be able to really get a PR boost by getting involved creatively.

10. Host Fun Events

Something that is always fun for you and your customers, is events. Everybody likes to feel special, spoilt, and like a secret insider! So whether you throw a customer event in your store or host an intimate dinner, it can be a lot of fun. Planning and hosting an event often seems scarier in theory than it does when you actually do it. Plus, you can often get great content to use on social media too.

11. Entertain Your Clients

If you work solely on a B2B basis, then you might want to think about more of the things that you can do specifically with and for your clients. Entertaining clients can seem like a minefield. But it can be fun. You don’t have to be stuffy and formal. You can invite them to lunch, go to a corporate day, or just do something wacky like go-karting – just so long as it suits your brand, of course.

12. Try A Perfect Partnership

Working with other brands can be a really strong move for your business. Creating a partnership can allow you to harness their reach and connect with their customers – which, should also be people within your target market. Whether you collaborate to create a product, throw an event, or you work on a sponsorship basis, this can be great fun for your audience and theirs.

13. Do A New Launch

Finally, it could be the year that you decide to do a new big product launch. It’s always fun to try out launching different things – and creating buzz around a new product or service can be the most fun of all. But, you are going to want to spend some time really planning this and ensuring that the product or service you create is exactly what your audience needs this year.

And that’s all there is to it! Sometimes, it’s all too easy to find yourself wrapped up in all of the marketing efforts that you’ve done before. So much so, that you just don’t see the same results anymore. And that’s not all that surprising. But when you just try to have fun with your marketing and shake things up, you’ll soon see that it’s much easier to get results than you first think.