It is now 2012 and the new year presents an excellent opportunity to revamp your business marketing strategy. We’ve compiled some points to keep in mind when planning for the year ahead:

Plan ahead

It’s important to take the time to sit down and review your previous marketing efforts. Decide what worked, what didn’t, and what you need to tweak. Budget for planning, design, printing, and other costs associated with your 2012 branding and marketing efforts in advance and remember to implement an ROI tracking strategy if one is not already in place.

Measure

As mentioned above, plan for a way to measure the success of 2012s marketing and branding efforts. Some basic ways to track marketing efforts can include:

• Asking leads how they heard about your business
• Keeping a record of when a particular marketing activity (such as a mail drop) was initiated and comparing this to your sales within that time frame.
• Implementing traffic tracking (such as Google Analytics) on your website
• Tracking income and expense meticulously
• Utilising website landing pages to direct and measure campaign-specific traffic.
• Create a monthly (or even bi-monthly) customer satisfaction survey

Hire professionals

Taking on an entire marketing plan for the year on your own is a daunting task and let’s face it – business owners have businesses to run. If you are not a professional graphic designer, for example, you likely should not be designing your own flyers. Ensure that your budget allows for the engagement of professionals to handle the design development, and printing of marketing material.

Branch out, but don't spread yourself too thin

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. As an example, your print marketing strategy may focus on mail drops and branded merchandise. Online marketing may focus on a website redesign and taking advantage of social media. Smaller peripheral campaigns may follow, but spreading yourself too thin and attempting to take on everything simultaneously can be damaging to the overall effectiveness of any one marketing effort.

Revisit your brand

Have a look at your brand through fresh eyes. Is it still sending the message that you want to communicate to your clients? Whether it be tweaking your logo or redesigning your entire business image from scratch if required, now is the time to do so.

Be consistent

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when planning your company’s total revamp is to make all promotional materials uniform for consistency and reliability. Your logo, website, business cards, flyers, social media profiles, and other marketing mediums should each send a unified message created through use of consistent branding imagery and overall communication style.