It’s November; Christmas music is playing on the radio, pumpkin spice lattes are a thing of the past, and whether we like it or not, 2019 is just around the corner.  Smart business owners are already thinking about how the coming year will affect their company.  What marketing trends will appear (or disappear) in 2019?  What new technology will surface?  The possibilities are limitless, so we’ve put together a list of steps to take in order to ensure 2019 doesn’t catch you off guard (like the holiday tunes on the radio might have).

  1. Familiarize yourself with Google Adwords

Young Entrepreneurs Forum suggests that Google Adwords will be the most powerful tool in 2019, so if you don’t know what that is (or aren’t currently using it) now is the time to start.  It’s been known as one of the best online tools for paid advertising, and here’s why.  It’s great for lead generation and has the ability to send specific, targeted leads right to your website.  You only have to pay for the ads that people click on, so it has an extremely high ROI.  Adwords can give you information on your customer’s habits, such as their location, keywords, and what devices they search from, so you can take that information and use it to adjust your marketing strategy.  And as if this wasn’t all enough, Adwords lets you see results very quickly with their easy to use dashboard, so there’s no guessing whether your hard work is paying off.  If you aren’t using Adwords for your business, or aren’t using it to its fullest potential, do something about it before 2019!

  1. Reevaluate your budget

The end of the year is a great time to go back and reflect on your budget.  Did you invest enough for marketing?  Do you see a need to increase or decrease your marketing budget in the coming year?  Set goals for how much you want to sell in the next year, and then try to forecast your expenses.  Obviously this won’t be exact, but it’s good to get a rough outline on paper of what you think you will need to spend money on.  Don’t forget to consider manpower; do you plan to, or will you need to, hire or fire anyone in the next 12 months?  Finally, remember that a budget is a working document and should be amended as time goes on.

  1. Improve the quality of your photos

Quality photographs are essential to almost every aspect of small business ownership.  From website photos to social media marketing tools, no one has the time (or desire) to look at a sub-par image, not to mention the quality of the photos you publish directly impacts your brand’s image.  And nowadays, there’s just no excuse to not have great photos in your marketing campaign.  Apps like Mendr and SnapSeed can help you edit your photos like a professional, and PicsArt has a ton of free options to add text and other design elements to your photos.  You can also find great quality, FREE, stock images on sites like Pexels, Pixabay, and Shutterography. This article from No Risk SEO explains the differences between photo giants Visme and Canva so you can determine which tool is best for your business.

  1. Analyze the impact of your advertising on Facebook

Image 2: facebook.com/yourcreativecompass

Facebook recently came out with a new tool called “Creative Compass” which helps users measure the impacts of the advertising their doing on the social media platform.  The tool looks at things like information content, call to action, believability, brand association and more.  The goal of the tool is to help entrepreneurs understand how likely it is that their audience will take action after seeing an advertisement on Facebook.  The tool is still currently being tested but should be available to the general public in 2019.

  1. Survey your customers

The beginning of a new year is a great time to survey your customers to get their opinions on your products and business in general.  Are they satisfied with your service?  Are they happy with the quality of your product?  Do they have any tips or recommendations for improvements?  Listen to your audience and using their responses as a starting point for coming up with new and innovative ways to improve your business in 2019.  It’s also important to pay attention to how your customers choose to communicate; some analysts say that 50% of all search queries will be done through voice search by the year 2020.  Remember, if your customers aren’t happy then your sales will drop, so their needs and wants should be at the top of your priority list.  Satisfied customers will bring more and more satisfied customers to your door.  Not sure how to elicit insightful responses from your customers’ surveys?  Check out this article by No Risk SEO!

  1. Integrate automation into your business

Image 3: recurpost.com

Business automation isn’t something that’s going away any time soon; in fact, it’s only becoming more popular, so if your business isn’t using automation chances are you’re going to fall behind your competition.  A good way to start is by using automation to fix specific problems you already have.  Too many customer inquiries and not enough time or team members to handle them?  A chatbot is a great way to start using automation to handle your customer service.  Email automation is a great way to collect new leads with minimal effort, and Google Cloud has built in tools for automation that are very user friendly.  There are also a ton of tools out there to automate your social media posts, including RecurPost which does it for free.

These are just a few tips to hopefully help you out as you think ahead into the next year.  Can you think of any more ways to improve your business model and boost sales as we prepare for a new year?  Comment in the section below.