2010: The Year of Marketing

One of the nicer things about working for yourself is the control that you have over what you do. And one of the more useful things about a new calendar year is the feeling of starting afresh. Even though nothing really changes, it feels as though we're starting a blank page again, and so is a good time to put some of those "we really should be doing this" things into practice. The problem with new year's resolutions is that they are all too often forgotten or delayed for another year. Get more exercise, finish work earlier and walk the dog/s more often are my personal favorites.

Marketing appears to have become the new year's resolution of many small businesses. We know we should do more of it, we know that it's the single-most valuable activity for a business, yet we somehow never get round to doing enough of it.

So now might be the perfect time to set yourself three marketing goals for 2010. Why three? Because it's a small enough number to be realistic but big enough to make a difference. So why not do your business a favor and pick three items from the following list:

• 1) Move into a new market. Stretch your wings and take that step. Sell your product to a completely different user-base, and if your website needs new content to accommodate them, then you know what to do about it.
• 2) Schedule two new, small marketing activities as a weekly occurrence. Something that's easy to work with and not too time consuming, but that you've been meaning to get to for longer than you care to admit. Perhaps Twitter, writing decent content for your company blog, or engaging in a new trade association or forum. Schedule it into your weekly calendar and stick to it.
• 3) Invest the time and money into using a decent log analysis solution. You know that you should be looking into these things, and you know you should be using the right tool to do so. So stop just sitting on top of your potential and do it.
• 4) Check the exit and conversion rates on your website's main entry page, then optimise the page to improve those figures. Stop throwing away traffic, and start turning more visitors into customers. Most of your visitors are there because they're interested in what you sell, so stop pushing them away with poor copy, ineffective marketing and bad design.
• 5) Marketing is supposed to be creative, so why are you making it into a dry, life-draining chore? Get creative. Take what you have and see how you might adapt, stretch and distort it. But don't just draw up a document and brainstorming chart - put the ideas into practice.
• 6) Define what you sell. Forget about an elevator pitch - they're so 2009. Describe your product briefly enough to fit into a newspaper headline. Then make sure that your main web page communicates it. Time to dust off those old, lifeless texts and turn them into irresistible bait.
• 7) Prioritise. You can't possibly do everything, so why not identify two areas- one that you think really needs work on, and one that you think might produce good results. Then open your calendar and schedule them in. Whether weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly; just make sure they get done.

Whatever you decide to do, just do it. Don't add your ideas to a to-do list, your GTD system or BlackBerry. Don't spend time creating a long 2010 plan document. Just do it. Let marketing be one of the few new year's resolutions that you'll actually keep this year. Be seen, be bold, be sold.