Some things never change when it comes to marketing, despite the year. We all have our goals to meet and ultimately money to make. In order to maintain ROI, we need to adapt to the constant change of digital marketing and embrace each year’s newest trends in some way shape or form.

Marketing is evolving even further with technology as we move into 2017. Mobile search, video content, and interactive media are big trends we should expect to see more of next year and start to figure ways to incorporate them into our strategies.

Updating marketing strategies can be a good thing, especially in a year like 2017 when it’s clear things are only advancing. Help stay ahead of the technology curve and market your business in the new year with these tactics below.

Create PPC Campaigns With the User in Mind

Go ahead and advertise on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Heck, it’s one of the most effective ways to drive traffic and calls to a business. But, instead of creating the same-old PPC campaigns as you do year to year, in 2017 ccreate pay-per-click campaigns that aren’t targeted to please bots. Write ads that are worded to attract and satisfy a searcher. Do thorough keyword research to make sure you’re including terms that searchers are actually looking for. 

Creating an attractive advertisement isn’t the only step, though. Follow through with a successful user experience by connecting the advertisement to a relevant and thoughtfully- designed landing page. Keep the user in mind with the design and flow of the landing page. Is it clear what you want them to accomplish?

When in doubt, A/B test different headlines, colors, and objectives to see what works best for your audience in 2017.

Step Up Your Email Marketing Game

If you’ve done any marketing at all I’m willing to bet email marketing is one of the things you’ve tried. Email marketing can truly make a business. It helps capture new leads, re-engage old customers, and help those “leftover” items in carts become purchased items.

Next year, focus efforts on really nailing down an effective email marketing campaign that acts as a funnel to keep engagement and conversions high. Try a few of these tips below to change up your email marketing game:

• Add video to company email newsletters. The video can be as simple as someone talking and introducing what the main newsletter topic is or can be a preview to a larger video that links to a video blog on the website.
• A/B test different email templates to see which one has the best response rate and is receiving the most clicks.
• Re-work the current email funnel to either increase or decrease the amount of time inbetween emails. Track results and adjust accordingly.

Optimize Your Website For Mobile and Voice Search

Mobile responsive websites won’t be enough in 2017. We now need to start thinking about mobile search and voice search. How are people searching on their mobile devices? 

The terms people search and speak on mobile are different than on desktop, and need to be accounted for when it comes to optimizing websites for mobile. This is especially true when mobile search is surpassing desktop, which almost 60% off all searches coming from mobile devices. 

Speaking of mobile, focus on making the entire mobile user experience flawless in 2017. How simple is it to make a purchase on a mobile device? Can people opt in to your newsletter via the mobile version?

We’ve been thinking mobile since 2014, but make 2017 the year your mobile website converts. 

Rethink Facebook Ads

Make 2017 the year your business kills it on Facebook by mastering Facebook advertising. Do so by refreshing old campaigns and trying new objectives. Setup retargeting ads to keep potential customers engaged and create lookalike audiences to reach a larger demographic using Facebook ads.

Plan out your Facebook advertising by defining a quarterly budget and goals for 2017. What do you want to accomplish in Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4? Increasing business is an obvious goal, so be specific and define individual quarterly goals that you can actually accomplish using Facebook advertising. A few examples are increasing newsletter sign ups, website traffic, and new subscriptions.

Make a Branded Snapchat Filter

When Snapchat added filters to their social media app, it gave users a fun and more creative way to snap and share photos and videos. It also gave businesses another outlet to connect with their fans and engage.

The first two variations of Snapchat filters were Community Geofilters, which anyone could create and submit for free, and Sponsored Geofilters for larger brands and companies. Snapchat then created On-Demand Geofilters for everyday people and business. Many people have since used these for parties and weddings.

Businesses can take advantage of these filters and turn them on for events like grand openings, outlet sales, customer appreciation day and more. This makes for a fun and interactive way to market your business to people within your proximity.

You can create a custom Snapchat geofilter to engage customers with on Snapchat’s website. The setup process is incredibly simple, but I highly recommend designing your own branded filter instead of using one of Snapchat’s design.

The design will be the most time consuming part, but once that is complete just designate the day, time, and place and purchase the filter.

Depending upon how large of an area you want to cover (minimum size is 20,000 sqf), the filter can be as little as $15 to $20 for a 24-hour period.

Attend 3-5 New Industry Conferences

It’s amazing the people you’ll meet at conferences. Some of the best connections I’ve ever made have been from attending industry conferences like Pubcon and ThinkGlobal Retail.

Within the marketing industry, specifically the digital marketing industry, there are dozens of great conferences to attend each year that can help make an impact on your business.

Not only will you learn tons from conferences, but the connections you make are invaluable. 

For 2017, register and attend 3 to 5 conferences that you have never been to before. Sponsor a booth, become an exhibitor, and put your business out there. Attend the conference networking events, after parties, and as many sessions as you can to get the most out of the conference for your business.

Join and Speak at MeetUps

MeetUps are a great and low-cost way to market a business in 2017. It’s easy to find MeetUps near you, but I highly recommend extending your reach and attending MeetUps in other cities, as well. Regardless if your business is local-based, you can still increase the business’ exposure by attending business and career MeetUps in other cities.

If possible, contact the host of the MeetUp and ask to speak at their next meeting. Choose a relevant topic based on your business and the overall point of the MeetUp to present on. By speaking, you’ll automatically be seen as an authoritative figure, which will grant your business more exposure and open up the doors for new clients and business opportunities.

Publish New Press Releases

Press releases are a great way to announce new changes, upcoming events, and products. You can publish your press release online to increase links or distribute the release across multiple media outlets to increase print exposure.

If you’re an experienced writer and can handle writing a press release yourself then do so. If not, I highly recommend working with a PR company to draft 2-3 press releases a quarter.

This is an easy way to get exposure to your business across multiple media companies, and increase links if you publish the press release online.

Update Your Local Listings

Has anything changed about your business in the past year? Perhaps a new phone number, updated logo design, or change of address? Update local listings online and in print to allow customers and search engines to easily find a business.

The most important business information to keep updated is the NAP: business name, address, and phone number.

Partner With Local Businesses

If you own a local business, regardless of if it has one location or twenty, it’s always valuable to partner with other local businesses to market with. A very casual way of doing so is by contacting a business near you that is relevant and most likely individually owned. An individually owned business has less hoops to jump through when it comes to developing new partnership and affiliate opportunities.

Once the connection is established, create specific promotions and campaigns that the affiliate business can advertise to their customer base with. In return, you’ll do the same and promote relevant campaigns to your demographic. Just be careful to not overwhelm your customer base with affiliate campaigns. People will question the affiliate intentions and can become irritated, resulting in a potential loss of customers.

Redo Your Website

Whoazer, I know. Not exactly the easiest or smallest way to market your business in 2017, but it is a very effective way. Businesses can fail simply based on their poorly designed website that doesn’t offer an efficient user experience. What’s even worse than a poorly designed site is one that isn’t responsive and/or is slow to load. You’ll immediately lose traffic and potential new customers if the website takes too long to load.

How do you know if your website is failing and needs a facelift? Look at the analytics. How has traffic been for the website? What is the load time on desktop and mobile? Are you meeting traffic and bounce rate goals? If not, it’s time to start rethinking how the website is designed in regards to the overall user experience.

If you’re already slammed with a million and two things to do, hiring a professional website developer / designer is highly recommended. They can come in and design a website based on intent, which will help you achieve more conversions and goals online.

Track Your Rankings With AuthorityLabs

Know what page your website ranks on using our SEO tool. If you’re not making Page One rankings like you’d like to, our keyword tool can help you better optimize your website. Both small and large businesses can track their rankings by country, city, and as a specific as postal codes to ensure they’re reaching their demographic. 

With our Now Provided reports, you can find new keyword targeting opportunities that went missing when “not provided” was rolled out for everyone. We combine data from various sources including our own rank tracking and Google Analytics to show you which keywords are driving traffic to each page on your site.

Use this report to prioritize SEO focus, plan new content, and improve underperforming landing pages.

What marketing tactics do you plan to use in 2017? Comment below with your thoughts!