The end of the year is a busy time for any company — and that’s definitely true down by the nation’s capital in Northern Virginia, where the Christmas season supercharges the usual flood of consumer traffic and ramps up activity in preparation for the new year.
With that in mind, how do local businesses gear up for their digital planning strategies for the year ahead?
Here are some solid ways to make sure that your business is ready for 2018 with good investments in marketing technology and strategic use of data resources.
Audience Targeting for 2018
As technologies evolve, audience targeting changes. Businesses are getting many more new tools and resources to figure out who their customers are, and how targeting works. There is a more granular ability to create classifications and constructs that help marketers to go out and do their jobs well. In 2018, sale is going to be backed by more automation — from Salesforce to open source projects that take business data and give it to the people who make things happen. Make sure your business is on the vanguard of the local community’s effort to enhance this type of targeting in 2018. Consider a Plan for New Upgrades
Considering a plan to move workloads to the cloud? What about a move toward container virtualization? There is also the idea of machine learning and artificial intelligence automation on the rise. What all of these things have in common is that businesses thrive from taking deliberate steps, and sometimes fail by taking giant leaps of faith.
When you want to do an important upgrade, do the research first. Make sure you have a plan for data. Make sure you know how you will train all levels of staff. Make sure you have looked in detail at subscription pricing and everything else. This is a huge component of digital planning — because how you use any tool depends on how you prepare to use it.
Evaluating Web Footprints
Another great big part of digital planning for 2018 is figuring out how you will reach customers where they are — and increasingly, that’s online. Visitors have to always be vigilant in planning and re-planning their interfaces for laptop and desktop computers, as well as smart phones. That’s why we talk so much about responsive design and why it’s important.
In general, companies can get more bang for their buck with marketing online than they can through a lot of traditional media formats. But again, good planning increases that return on investment. You’ll want to know exactly how new investments in your website are going to pay off.
WebSubstance is a premier Northern Virginia marketing company that is dedicated to helping client businesses in the area to really compete in today’s high-tech digital world. We specialize in the modern-day marketing technology and know how to provide all of the marketing consulting and IT support to help a business upgrade its web presence and make sure that it has a competitive model in place. Talk to us early in the new year to get started moving forward and set goals to achieve in 2018.
