You have your strategic plans, your 12 month plans, now put this to the side and focus on what you can make happen in the next 12 weeks. Sometimes we stay in the big picture and forget about the small things that can make a massive difference. They also keep the ship moving. We just want to make sure that’s it’s moving in the direction you want it to go.
Here are some questions to get you thinking about how you can make small changes in how you approach the year and create an edge that takes you beyond what you produced last year.
What do you want to achieve for the first quarter of the year? Two things. Customer growth, Value growth, brand awareness, internal morale, database growth, etc.
Now take it a little wider and look at the remaining quarters, what are the 1 or 2 things you can achieve in quarters 3 & 4 that will make for an impactful 2018?
How can you build on the customer experience through-out the year? You might break it down into, as an example: Quarter 1 – Education, Quarter 2 – Inspiration, Quarter 3 – Participation, Quarter 4 – Reflection
How can you increase your knowledge of your customer? What do you know about them, what don’t you know about them? How can you find the answers? By asking, social media, research, etc.
Is there an opportunity to improve your communication to your customer? Is your customer interested in what you are saying? Do they look out for it? Does it add value?
What can you do around your brand to keep it fresh, contemporary and relevant? A brand will continue to grow if you water it. So keep watering it. It might not need a lot of water, but it still needs water.
What systems in your business need to be refreshed? Systems could range from how you launch products to how you work with your agency partners. Shake them up, in a good way, to see how you can improve on last year and ignite a new level of momentum.
Every man and his dog is doing or has done notepads. A long standing promotional product, that continues to grow. Year on year the notepad holds a top 10 position in the most popular promotional products. People still love stationery; despite being constantly tied to our phones. The great thing about the notepad is that you can make it work for your brand and your customer. It comes down to the type of notepad, the accessories you team it up with (e.g. pen or pencil), and the design. How and where you position your logo. What message do you want to convey to the audience? Is it a message that inspires and motivations? A message that people want to Instagram?The target market is wide, so it’s just about finding the right style.
This is to help you with your event planning for the year, whether it’s within your business or with your customers. Go low key or go all out. If you need any ideas around for promotional products, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Australia Day: 26th January
Back to school: 30th January
Valentine’s Day: 14th February
Chinese New Year: 16th February
Australian Women’s History month: 1-31st March
Worldwide Wildlife Day: 3rd March
Start of Rugby season 8th March
International Women’s Day: 8th March
St Patrick’s Day: 17th March
Australasian Promotional Products Association Tradeshow: 21st March
Earth Hour 8:30pm: 24th March
Easter: 30th March – 2nd April
Harmony Day: 21st March
National Youth Week: 31st March-9th April
Administrative Professionals Day – 4th May
Mother’s Day:13th May
Word Refugee Day: 20th June
End of Financial Year: 30th June
International Youth Day 12th August
World Humanitarian Day: 19th August
Australasian Promotional Products Association Tradeshow: 22nd August
Australia Day falls on a Friday in 2018. Making for a long weekend … just how we like it!
If you are looking for ideas to celebrate with your staff, clients, business partners, please get in touch with us before Christmas so we can get your order underway, so you don’t miss out.
In 2018, Chinese New Year will be celebrated on Friday, February 16.
With a growing Chinese community in the past few years, Chinese New Year is becoming a more and more prevalent celebration of culture and tradition in Australia. Families gather and festivities are held in the Asian communities to welcome the new year in.
With the upcoming Year of the Dog, which signifies fortune, career, health, and love prospects, this is what we can expect to see as we have seen in the past few decades.
Lots of red.
Street festivals and markets are bustling with people and noise and displays of food, art and entertainment.
The exchange of well wishes and chattering can be heard above the beating of the drums and the cymbals clashing for the lion dances.
Occasional firecrackers exploding in the distance.
A trade of red pockets/envelopes (which also happens in both a physical and digital environment) and blessings occur between the elders and the young at home
A delicious feast is prepared and eaten before families visit the temples to pray for a prosperous future.
So why not join in the celebration by participating or gifting? To the Chinese, gifting is seen as a nice gesture and effort made that shows your level of involvement. And the key thing to know here is that the Chinese LOVE their red. Anything red will capture their eye and will be kept as a symbol of luck. At Turnkey this is one our favourite times of the year, so we are more than happy to help you with this.
Whether you work on a financial year or calendar year, the start of a new year brings a new vitality and refreshed mindset. It’s a good time to review both current and future performance in respect to activity, results and investment/spend.
Healthy marketing practices to bring in the new year:
Where did you enjoy your best results? How can you not just replicate, but do this better? The wheel doesn’t always need to be reinvented. A slight change on a good performer – whether it’s a product or campaign can be very effective.
Reach out to your finance team. Have a bit of healthy sparring session with them. They thinking differently to the marketing team and the collaboration of thinking can bring new ways of managing your marketing dollars.
If things are a little tight, and you didn’t achieve the results you were after, instead of cost cutting as being your first point of call, shift the thinking to what would we do if we doubled our expenditure expenditure budget. What this does is change your mindset to think a lot wider and deeper, beyond where you currently are. This helps prompt more strategic solutions that can deliver higher returns.
Think quality over quantity. What content is resonating, impacting, cutting through with your audience? Keep doing this. The content that is not having any impact, ask yourself if it’s worth continuing?
Evaluate the correlation between marketing projects and business goals. Are they aligned? Have conversations with other departments. Are you all aligned on the business direction. How can you work even better together in 2018?
Is there an opportunity to enrich your marketing activity – both in respect to content depth and results by collaborating with new partners? Who do you share a similar audience with? Can you mutually benefit from working together through adding value to them?
Spend some time with your current business partners. What are they doing in 2018 to improve their business. What do they think you should be doing in 2018 to improve your? An opportunity for reflection and authentic relationship building.
How, as a marketing team, can you bring an elevated energy level to 2018? More enthusiasm, leads to better ideas, working relationships and results.
Include the key actions from the list above to your weekly marketing meetings, so they don’t become a ‘conversation I remember once having’, but they lead to actionable outcomes that drive marketing and business improvement.
