10 Ideas to Improve Your 2021 Marketing Plans

Since this post won’t go live until shortly into the new year, let me break my own rule of saying “Happy New Year!” too late in the new year!

But I’m like everyone, hopeful that 2021 will be a bit brighter than 2020.

As we head into the year and start to ramp up our business engines for the year, I wanted to take a moment to share 10 ideas that I hope everyone can incorporate into their marketing for the new year.

1. Make sure you are market oriented:

By market oriented I mean that you work to bring the customer inside your business and look at the business from the point of view of the folks that you are selling to.

This simple act can lead you to being closer to the challenges that your customers are facing, leading you to introduce products and services that are closer to what folks need, and allowing you to make more money.

2. Get comfortable with market research:

Data is on most folks’ lips and it can become overwhelming pretty quickly.

This can limit your likelihood of doing the necessary research to push your business forward or it can put you in a position where you think you have all the data and research that you can possible ever need.

Last year I learned this incredible technique that has changed my relationship to research and data called “Backward Marketing Research” and it is pretty simple and allows you to take control of your research.

Here’s how it goes:

You figure out what you are trying to figure out. Decide on how you want to see the answers to your questions displayed in numbers, graphs, and charts. Then you design your survey and research around those two answers.

Let your research be a tool to help you understand what is going on around you better, not to drive you in circles.

3. Segment your market based on behavior:

I’m sure the next great generation we are going to hear about is “Generation Z” and how they are so different than everyone else.

This is bogus!

Just like everything “millennial” was a load of BS, everything about segmentation that is built around demographics is weak tea.

As a white man in my mid-40s, you could get me in the room with a group of other 40-somethings of different shapes, sizes, and incomes, and we would have a lot of different behaviors, interests, and habits. But we’d all be around the same age.

That’s the challenge of demographic segmentation, you are lumping people together that only have one aspect of their being in common, age.

It is better to segment based on behavior so you can take into account tastes, financial situation, location, or other important factors that drive actions.

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