6 Essential Marketing Questions to Consider in Your 2023 Planning

1) What are your 2023 marketing goals and how are you tracking them? 

Everyone knows the new year is a time to create resolutions, and it is no different for businesses. Gather your team together to decide on the goals you have for your business in 2023. To help you formulate your goals, consider these marketing questions to get you started:

• Are you seeking to expand your business into a new market this year?
• Are you looking to redesign any of your marketing materials such as your website or logo?
• Are you consistently establishing your brand’s identity across multiple channels?
• Have you migrated to Google Analytics 4?
• Which platforms are you using to tell your stories?

Once you have answered these marketing questions, the next step is to determine how you will track their success. Google has a suite of services such as Google Analytics, Google Ads and Data Studio that help assess your digital footprint and performance across platforms. Additionally, popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube have reporting elements to help you understand post performance, page visibility and engagement rates. Our digital strategy team specializes in evaluating which channels you should be tracking, how they are performing and how the reporting details may increase your overall performance.

2) Are there any changes in your target audience? 

As markets evolve, you must adjust to the ever-changing needs of your consumers. The months leading up to the new year are a great time to examine your key performance indicators (KPIs) and retarget for any emerging audiences. An emerging audience may be a subset of your current target audience, a new generation of consumers or an unexpected new audience attracted to one of your new offerings.

Google Analytics is a great tool to address these potential audience shifts and pinpoint why a new audience may have emerged. With the release of Google Analytics 4, the platform places an added focus on how consumers interact with advanced engagement metrics such as time spent on a page, device origin and form submissions. It also includes improved customer journey tracking to visualize buying journeys and evaluate emerging trends with new audiences.

3) Do you have a brand identity? 

As the embodiment of almost everything your business is and does, brand identity is crucial for your future. Whether your brand is undefined, emerging or established, your identity is more than a print ad in a glossy magazine or a commercial during primetime. It is the face of your business that has the power to attract new consumers and delight existing audiences with engaging words, visuals, data and experiences.

Your brand identity guides the entire direction of your marketing strategy, whether that be in your tone of voice in messaging or core design elements. A consistent brand presentation has been seen to increase revenues by 33% compared to brands that do not maintain consistency. If you need help with finding your story, our talented team of strategists and storytellers are here to guide you on your way in 2023.

4) What is your content strategy? 

As the Bill Gates saying goes, “Content is King.” Without a strategy for content, what does your brand have to connect with your audience? A content strategy gives your brand the power to attract, the security to retain and the ambition to inspire others to commit to  your product or service. But, that does not mean your business should publish content with the hope it sticks.

A consistent and high-quality content strategy has the potential to impact your audience’s decision-making and instill trust in your business. It may include one channel such as a blog with an editorial calendar or a social media strategy, or it may include multiple touch points in a year-long campaign, extending your brand’s voice to a broader demographic.

5) How are you ranking in search results? 

Rankings in search engine optimization (SEO) refer to your website’s position on a search engine results page. Having your website or landing page show up high in search results gives you increased visibility to further funnel traffic to your products and services. All search engines are robotically trained to calculate their results by looking for optimizations such as keywords, backlinks, URL structures and site speed.

If you’re not seeing as many clicks to a particular web page or your blog, it may be because of your keyword planning. Keyword planning is the process of searching for keywords to add to your website, landing pages and digital advertisements. Another portion of the planning process is to consider what your target audience will actually search for and what word choices work best with the content you are creating. While a long-tailed keyword with high search volume may be easier to choose, targeting reasonable keywords with high search volumes and low difficulty percentages may flow better with your content and work to help improve your rankings in 2023.

6) How are your platforms performing? 

Giving your website, app or other platforms a quick check-up is essential to maximizing traffic and boosting engagement. If you are seeing less traffic than previous years, it could be due to your website having slow load times, broken links or a lack of ADA compliance. The new year should be a signal to not only check through your website for inadequacies but also to see where your visitors are viewing your website.

With over 62% of all website traffic coming from mobile devices, you must also check how your website is loading on your mobile device and if your website’s design adapts well to mobile users. Image sizing, text length and how everything shrinks onto a handheld device should be taken into consideration as a website is built from scratch or adapted in a new redesign.

Your Partners in 2023 Planning

No matter what your marketing questions or goals are for this coming year, our team will meet you in the middle to plan for the days ahead. As a full-service marketing agency, we offer customizable plans for year-long marketing campaigns, rebranding projects, digital and content strategy and more to give your business an edge in your marketplace.

Start building a stronger year — contact Paradigm today.