Get Ready Now For 2021 With These 5 Marketing & Sales Activities

It’s been one heckuva year, so far, hasn’t it?

And if you believe that we will be getting back to some sense of normal before the end of 2020, it is not too soon to do a little prep work, a little planning, and a little thinking about 2021. To help you get next year off to a strong marketing & sales start, consider implementing these 5 activities…

 

1. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

For example, take look at:

• Your Google Analytics numbers: how many people are visiting your website, where did they come from and what pages are they visiting?
• Did you do any email marketing this year? Look at your open rates and click-thru rates to help you understand what kinds of subject lines and topics resonate with your readers.
• How’s your social media marketing? Are you growing your followers and connections? Are you truly engaging with the marketplace… or do you just have a presence?
• From a sales perspective, are you adding new prospects to your pipeline and tracking movement through it? How about conversions… bids vs. wins?
• And look at your revenue in several ways: year-to-date vs. last-year-to-date, year-to-date vs. goal, by service line and by industry served.

This kind of data will serve as the foundation for your marketing & sales planning for next year.

 

2. Clean up your databases.

I know… not a very sexy activity, but very important.

• Go through your sales database/CRM and clean up any obvious typos, incomplete records, misformed email addresses, etc. Also, get rid of any competitors… or at least keep them clearly segmented.
• Do you have the right fields available (and filled in)? These are needed for list segmentation.
• Look at the “bounce-backs” from your email marketing to help clean-up your email addresses.
• Compare your LinkedIn contacts to your sales database – it will show you who’s changed companies; most people are pretty good at keeping their LinkedIn profile up to date.
• Keep your social media connections & followers clean, too. One obvious place is with your Twitter followers. If you’ve got a follower that you really don’t want to be there (competitor, spammy, or otherwise inappropriate), simply ‘block’ them.

 

3. Is it time to spruce up your website?

Not a full-blown overhaul, but just a little freshening up…

• Make sure any new services/products are listed on the site.
• The same goes for any new employees, clients, locations, recent news, etc.
• Do you have icons on every page for connecting to your social sites?
• Is it time for some new imagery or splashes of color?
• If it’s been a while since you posted on your blog, there’s no time like the present to get back into it.
• Is your site mobile-optimized? With a large percentage of your website visitors on hand-held devices, make it happen before January.
• Go through an SEO audit… then update your content to match the top keywords and phrases.

 

4. Draft a marketing and sales plan for 2021.

This can be a pretty big undertaking, but for now…

• At the very least, write down the marketing & sales activities you’ll commit to next year.
• Create a budget and commit to investing in marketing & sales.
• Make sure you’ve got some basic way to measure your activities… so you know what’s working and what’s not.
• And most importantly, put all of these activities into a calendar, assign responsibilities, and then share the calendar with all involved.

• Note 1: as part of your 2021 plan… commit to “doing something” every day/every week/every month.
• Note 2: as you think about your goals for next year, don’t just focus on the end result… set goals for the activities that will help you achieve the end result. E.g. number of sales calls per week, frequency of social media posts, etc.

 

5. Gather your team together.

Lastly, as a way to prepare to be successful with all of the activities above, consider hosting a virtual retreat with your senior leadership team. Block off a few hours on a few different days and discuss some of the high-level topics that can significantly impact your business:

• New products or services
• New processes or people
• Why you really lose clients
• Competitor activity
• Key account strategies
• New technologies to consider
• Differentiating your firm
• Level of commitment to marketing & sales
• Goals/aspirations for 2021

 

So, even if 2020 turns out to be a pretty good year… now is the time to start working on 2021 to make it a great one! Good luck.

 

Photo by Chris Gilbert on Unsplash