Improve Your Business Marketing in 2013 – Five Things to Do

Frankly Speaking, I never make any New Year resolutions or you can say my New Year resolution has always been to not make any resolution. However, now when I realize I am in a wholesale business and I have to achieve its goals, I no more underestimate the importance of New Year resolutions. Now I believe business resolutions help you analyse business performance of the last year, identify the weak areas and think of things which you can do to improve your overall performance in the year ahead.
Marketing - A fuel to Business Enginer
The biggest challenge faced by the wholesale suppliers in 2012 was to build their brand or by getting the desired results from marketing campaigns. Many businesses, even the established ones, had to shut down their operations since their wholesale products could not attract prospective customers because of the inappropriate and insufficient marketing practices. Those who are savvy should learn the lesson from the failures of others and make unique marketing resolutions for 2013.
Never think that marketing is a burden on your financial resources. Marketing is like the fuel for the engine of a business and so you must come up with strong and powerful marketing practices in 2013. Explained as follows are five things which wholesale suppliers must do to improve the marketing function of their business and increase the long-term viability of their venture.
1: Conduct Marketing Auditr
Before deciding your marketing plan for 2013, make sure you analyze and review your branding, marketing consistency, quality of wholesale supplies and frequency of marketing campaigns in the previous year. It would help you to identify the trends of the market, the weak areas of your business and discrepancies which you could not know otherwise.
Now in this year you have the opportunity to not repeat your old mistakes and come up with more effective marketing strategies to engage customers. On the basis of marketing audit results, make a comprehensive marketing plan and set realistic marketing goals.
2: Win through Freebies
No matter how up-to-date are the practices of your competitors, you must never underestimate the importance of wining customers through freebies. Wholesale suppliers must begin this year by offering unique promotional items like T-Shirts, note pads, touch screen gloves, pens, hats, bookmarks, cups, calendars and several other things to potential retailers.
Imagine if you would not be the owner rather the customer of your business - what would you like to take as a free gift and how would you like to be regarded? This approach would help you to be creative in choosing freebies according to your customer’s demands and the nature of your business.
3: Improve Your Blogging
If you are already running a blog, it’s the time to double your blogging efforts. In 2013 you must try harder to improve customer response rate from your blog. Since content is king, you must not only improve the frequency of posts but also improve its quality and usefulness for your readers.
Remember, if you want to double the response rate from your blog, you must blog 6-8 times in a month rather than just twice. Evaluate your success from blog, increase frequency of blogging and get ready to engage more readers.
4: Progress in Video Marketingr
Try to win more customers by taking one step ahead in your video marketing efforts. Observe what makes a video to get viral, how to make funny, interesting, and useful videos and where to place the links in videos to drive more traffic to your business website. If you had been creating one or two videos in a month, try to produce as many as 4 videos a month.
Make sure you make a short, valuable, interesting and memorable video that compels the viewers to share it with friends and colleagues. Moreover, you must also work on the SEO of videos since it increases its chances to be viewed by millions of people.
5: Incentivize for References
A reference from your regular and loyal customer is worth 100 times more than trying to win new customer through regular marketing practices. If you have been asking references from your customer for free, this year you must give some incentive to your references in return for the favour the offer to you by spreading the word about your business against some incentive.
You can ask your customers to take part in the marketing campaigns like ‘Bring one customer and get 10% discount on the purchase’ or refer a friend and get free delivery for the next 3 orders.’ This is the most effective way to hunt new customers at the least cost.