3 Marketing Must-haves Now

by Ryan McMullen

‘Tis the time of the season when we look back over the past year at our businesses to celebrate our wins and try to learn from our losses as well as look forward to an improved and fresh start next year. As a consultant who works across a variety of industries with a number of clients, I’ve got the luxury of having a diverse and large pile of marketing data our team can sift through to determine what is working, what’s not working and “what were we thinking?”

Admittedly, not everything we do is a home run, but there are lots of recurring success themes that run across our clients’ businesses. We took a close look back over the past 11 months and asked ourselves, “If you had to choose only three lessons learned from 2015, what are the most important things a business needs to do to just get up to speed with its marketing?” We didn’t look to the future. We kept it simple and said, “If you’re not using XYZ, then you can’t even think about moving forward.”

Here’s what 2015 taught us:

1. Mobile is proving to be a monster when it comes to local marketing, so stop ignoring it. 60-plus percent of searches for local businesses are done on a mobile device. What you’ll need:

a. Responsive website so Google stops ignoring you.

b. Optimized listings on directory sites, especially Google+ Local.

2. Video marketing is quickly becoming king. Did you know that YouTube is now the second most popular search engine? With all of the choices given to your prospects these days, nobody has time to read anymore, so incorporating videos into your marketing is now mandatory. What you’ll need:

a. A smartphone with a good camera. Unless your phone is 2-plus years old, you should have what you need. Full motion pictures are now being shot with iPhones, so there’s no excuse.

b. A face with a working mouth or PowerPoint/Keynote. If you’re not comfortable on camera, find somebody who is or shoot a narrated slide presentation.  

3.  Online advertising is becoming more expensive. The word is out and the days of 1-cent clicks on Google are long gone, so the longer you wait, the more you’re going to pay to get into the game. What you’ll need:

a. A budget to hire somebody or the time to learn online marketing. Of course, I recommend the second option, as it will save you a lot of time, money and frustration.

OK, so now you know what we learned this year and what will surely continue into 2016. The next step is for you to get up to speed immediately.

Here’s the bonus lesson we learned looking back at our clients’ true opportunities: If you understand the importance of these three simple things and adopt them, you will be ahead of 90-plus percent of your competitors, so the opportunity for you to be the dominant player in your space online is very real and hopefully very exciting.

Ryan McMullen (ryan@stlouismarketinglab.com) is the owner of St. Louis Marketing Lab.