The top 5 marketing New Year resolutions for 2012

Thursday, January 12, 2012

2011 was a bumper year for marketers, potentially one of the most exciting and fast-changing years since t'internet went mainstream. Bearing in mind everything that happened last year, what are the top five marketing resolutions for 2012?

1. Resolve to get your site in shape for the ongoing mobile revolution in 2012: mobile web hit the big time in 2011 and 2012 will see more of the same. You don't necessarily need a special mobile site. It depends how your existing site displays on a small screen. In an ideal world your site will be so simple and 'flat' in structure that it already displays perfectly well on smartphones and tablets.  
2. Get your conversion analysis act together: 2012 saw online marketing continuing to mature as, like generations of direct marketers before them, online marketers discovered the value of analysing visitor and conversion data. Familiarising yourself with your webstats puts you in a position of power. Including tracking in every campaign, in one form or another, is vital if you want to plan your marketing properly and allocate your budget sensibly. You need to know which marketing initiatives work best.
3. Keep your eye on Social Media Marketing: you might want to dive right in during 2012. Or just keep your eye on how things unfold. SMM is still very new and the jury's out as to whether it's the best way to spend your marketing energy. There's nothing wrong with holding back until the social media picture clears
4. Treat keywords with respect: search engine algorithms are much more sophisticated than they used to be. They can spot keyword stuffing a mile off. Which is good news all round. Keyword-stuffed copy sounds like shit, pardon my French, and while it used to give sites high prominence and win more visitors, it didn't exactly have a beneficial impact on sales. So feel free to write really well in 2012, pleasing search engines and human visitors!
5. Aim for the best possible quality online content: Google carried out thousands of algorithm updates over 2011. The most noticeable, named Panda and Caffeine by the SEO industry, were concerned with 'quality' and 'freshness'. And you can bet your last quid that updates in 2012 will also have quality-related aims like freshness, usefulness and relevance at their heart. Resolve to put the visitor first in 2012 and you won't go far wrong.