In this guest post, Sonia Majkic (pictured below), co-founder of 3 Phase Marketing, offers her tips to help you fulfil your marketing New Year’s resolutions…

A new year brings about the ideal time to assess business performance, review marketing initiatives, which let’s be frank, is the critical driver for every business.

Now I certainly don’t expect you to read all the marketing blogs and listen to the hottest marketing podcasts, that’s my job as a marketing professional. Therefore, I have neatly compiled the top 3 marketing predictions for 2020 – based on by our experiences in 2019 and predicted by the world’s best marketing experts. Packaged up right here for you to read while you are hopefully lounging by the pool this January.

Here are the three key marketing areas you need to be focusing on in 2020.

1. Personal branding

Think about some of the most successful brands in the world right now. Tesla, Amazon, Facebook – most people know who their founders are. The days of flying under the radar are well and truly over. And choosing to remain mysterious (because this is a choice) costs you more money in the long run.

Here is a great case study from our agency. We manage the digital marketing and personal brand for a leading vasectomy doctor in Australia; Dr Snip (Dr Nick Demeduik). Dr Snip (Nick) has been investing in personal branding for over ten years through traditional channels, unique online content and collaborating with key influencers.

Today, he is reaping the rewards. Search volumes for Dr Snip are through the roof and outperform all other ad groups and search terms such a ‘vasectomy’ and ‘contraception’. Prospective patients searching for ‘Dr Snip’ yield a lower cost per click, drive higher conversions on the website and deliver the most economical cost per acquisition compared to any other channel or Google ad group.

Patients are looking for Dr Snip (Nick) because they know him and trust him as a leading expert. Make no mistake: your personal brand drives sales.

2. Introduce Automation. Now. 

How many times have you heard that companies who successfully deliver outstanding customer experiences consistently do better than their competitors? Now automation is nothing new but so few companies actually fully utilise it and its ability to enhance their customers’ experience online.

Basically, if you want to do well in 2020, you are going to have to leverage automation. Understanding what your customers value and expect in every touchpoint of the customer lifecycle in your business is essential for retention, satisfaction and repeat business. You don’t have an option if you wish to stay competitive – its critical and customers pretty much expect it nowadays. There is a bit of work involved upfront with journey mapping and content development, but once you’re set up you a right to go. Some leading automation platforms in the market for customer retention and upselling are Infusion Soft, Active Campaign and Hubspot.

3. Conversion Rate Optimisation 

What does conversion rate optimisation even mean? Conversion on your website is just a long fancy word for making a sale or generating a lead from your website. You’ve always been driving traffic to your website, right? But you may be wondering how you increase the rate of conversions on your site. Well, you need to optimise what’s already there. Constantly.

Think of your website as a living form; it’s not a set and forget. It continually needs refinement and optimisation.

Here are some tips on increasing CRO on your website:

• Personalisation. Build landing pages within your website for specific audiences
• Strong headlines and opening statements
• Site speed; make it lightning fast
• Easy to use, custom enquiry forms that encourage conversions
• Calls-to-action buttons everywhere, make it sticky (buy, share, call)
• Gated content that is actually meaningful
• Unique reports and downloadable free reports

For 2020, it’s not about spending more money on ads to increase traffic and conversions. It’s about improving what you already have to gain more sales and conversion on your existing site. CRO is an on-going review that requires regular testing and optimisation that needs to be factored into your monthly marketing activities and budget.

With a new year comes all new opportunities and challenges, and of course, brand new trends taking the front and centre spot of the marketing game. As marketers, you need to know what’s key for 2020 and there’s no better place to start than with personal branding for leaders and branding for companies, upping the automation and investing in conversion rate optimisation.