Welcome to your user-friendly guide to marketing in 2023.

February is here already. To be quite honest we’re not quite sure how that happened,  given that Christmas was only yesterday. Did you get all your marketing ducks in a row last year to create a stellar marketing plan for 2023? If so, we hope you’ve been busy putting a line through all the things on your To Do list that you’ve achieved so far.  

Or, perhaps not.  

“Proper” work may have got in the way, obliging you to focus on keeping your customers happy, or on closing that big deal over and above your online presence. 

It’s easily done. 

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Our 2023 Marketing Advice

At the risk of stating the extremely obvious, the longer you leave it, the more you’ll fall behind. 

How your current and future clients perceive you is vital. For example, people who’ve been referred to you by satisfied clients are checking out your website. Strangers who search for your expertise and services need to find your company’s website on Google over and above your competitors.

If you want to get noticed by the people who buy from you, and in a good way, it’s time to take stock.

To help keep you on track, the Sprint Online team have put together your bite-sized guide to marketing in 2023, with actionable tips to motivate and inspire – including the reasons why we think, no – that we know – they’re so essential to your success this year, and beyond.

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Heads Up - Just saying:

Don’t forget: trying to do everything yourself may lead you down the path to nowhere. 

Digital marketing DIY may not be your core skill, and all that website and social media effort could take your focus away from growing your business. Sprint Online offers know-how and skills in all the elements we will mention here. So, take a view. An investment in digital marketing could be the best money you ever spend. Get in touch to find out more.

To keep you on track, the Sprint Online team has put together some actionable bite-sized tips to inspire and motivate you to considerable success in 2023. 

Another critical note: We're scratching the surface here with space restrictions in this blog getting in the way a bit. We could, and at some stage, almost certainly will write separate blogs about some of the critical aspects below. 

There’s a lot to all of this. But, it all makes sense, and even a few tweaks could make all the difference. 

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Website

Let’s start with the most obvious one. Any meaningful guide to marketing in 2023 should be about your website.

If you don’t have one, it’s a must. 

A website demonstrates that you care about your customers, and that you are committed to your marketing. How else will people know what you do and how you do it? It’s your shop window, open 24/7. Without one, you will fall well behind your competitors in your prospects’ minds. You don’t have to spend a fortune. We can create something simple for you, with easy functionality and navigation.

However, a small website should only be a starting point. And yes, we have put that sentence in bold.

More is more, and here’s why:

As a business owner, you’ll want to impress, educate, inform and persuade. You need to create trust and confidence in your ability to deliver what you offer. Therefore, your web visitors are dying to LOVE you, put their faith in you, and instinctively plan to do business with you before they even press the Contact Us button.

And, this is how you do it: 

• A site with lots of pages, full of great content and images
• Each service needs a separate page
• It’s super-easy to find everything 
• Your contact details are ultra, ultra-obvious
• FAQs, About You, How We Work, Why Us-type pages will layer up that all-important reassurance‍

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‍Your Content

We can’t emphasise this enough: 

it’s ALL about the content in 2023. 

If you want to speak directly to your audience, you’ll need great content all over your website. Videos are excellent, but written content will continue to take centre stage for the foreseeable future.

Awesome web content, case studies and blogs have been a mainstay of all the best websites out there, and that’s because they work. 

Aside from fabulous user engagement and what marketers call “conversion” (in effect, when someone contacts you via your site), high-quality content comes to the attention of Google. That is, your website could, and most probably will, rise in the search engine results pages – see below.

What makes brilliant content?

Aha, well. 

It’s this type of thing:

• Shorter sentences
• Using “you” and “your” more often than “we”.
• Paragraphs with snappy headings to grab people’s attention
• Transition words (where the human brain sees where the idea is going)
• An understanding of your target market’s challenges…
• And…how you solve them
• The creation of trust, security and confidence
• In-depth content – at least 350 words per page

The look and feel of the site should be memorable, and the Sprint Online team can support this essential part of the website build. So, don’t forget to include fabulous graphics and/or loads of images of YOU and your team doing what you do best. Avoid stock images if possible. They’re a bit…meh.

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Search Engine Optimisation

We’ve already written in-depth about SEO, and you can read more here, but if you’ve not yet considered search engine optimisation, 2023 could be your Year of the Google.

With 93% of market share in the UK, Google is where it’s at. We sort of thumb our noses at Bing, in a nice way.

Right, so…in a nutshell, Google’s mission is to “organise the world’s information to make it universally accessible and useful”. In other words, to marshal and sort out the billions of websites in the ether – that includes yours – to place them naturally in the order they deserve to be placed in the SERPs. 

Regarding organic SEO, Google favours large websites with loads of applicable, authoritative content, easy to navigate, with each key page telling it clearly and explicitly what it’s about. Not least, legitimate backlinks from other high-domain rated websites.

Why?

Why indeed. Because Google wants to add value to the user experience, ranking websites that are trusted sources of information. Backlinks prove this, as do the content, structure and in summary, the hard work that’s gone into your website.

Need to learn more? No problem. We can help.

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Your Social Media

Social media has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, and you could be missing out if you don’t have a presence. Did you know that nearly 90% of people in the UK use some sort of social media?

Therefore, this year is when you get social media savvy.

Pick the right platform. A high-level assumption is here: 

• LinkedIn and Twitter – for business, with Twitter being good for b2c, too
• Facebook – for b2c (mostly, but not always)
• Instagram – b2c
• TikTok – for the “young people”

But, social media platforms are also vying to become the next shopping destination, so if you sell products, they’re worth considering. Managing three to five social media platforms is realistic; any more, and you may dilute your message. 

Bear in mind that your clients may use these platforms to register pleasure or displeasure about the service you offer, AND that, as with your website, the right type of content will be vital.

Which is? A quick, getting-started guide:

• People love NEW, so keep your audience up to speed with new products and services. But, don’t bombard them every day, twice a day.
• Mix promotional posts with educational ones
• Avoid a Sales Prevention System by linking through to pages that enable your target market to make a purchase, or whatever you want them to do.  
• Business owners love helpful information, so use LinkedIn wisely and don’t promote yourself too much. NB: LinkedIn is NOT Facebook…so don’t post stuff about your weekend trip with your family. Nobody cares. Harsh, but true
• Humans are visual. Meaningful, engaging and endearing images are essential

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Above all:

Whatever you do, you must understand your audience, and your target market in depth. Unless you know who is most likely to buy from you and why you’re less of a marketing ninja than you deserve to be. 

To expand on the above point, your marketing should focus almost entirely on your demographic; it should be customer-led, not product- or service-led. It’s not about your operation. It’s about your business development.

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So.

There you are. A non-scary guide to marketing in 2023

Need some help? We’d be delighted to support your plans, and even help you to put them together. Get in touch with Sprint Online today. We’re at your digital service.