End of Financial Year Marketing Tips

Take stock of your marketing strategy

The End of Financial Year (EOFY) can be mad rush to get all your financial ducks in a row so you can submit your tax return on time.

There’s very little time for reflection on what went right in the business, how effective your marketing was or what needs to be done for the next year. And that’s understandable.

Small business owners are busy working ‘in’ the business so they have little time to work ‘on’ the business.

That’s where a couple of hours spent taking stock of your marketing strategy at the end of the financial year can pay huge dividends in the long run.

Tip 1: Use Google Analytics

Google is pretty good at indicating how people use your website. Harnessing that information to analyse your clients’ responses to your marketing activities is a must.

Now, don’t freak out if the thought of learning how to use Google Analytics seems daunting. Start small and build up your knowledge slowly. For example, you might have:

• offered a discount for a short period of time,
• run some ads and
• held a workshop during the year.

By looking at what effect each of these marketing efforts had on your website visits and conversions, you’ll easily be able to see which activity was the best at generating sales. These simple statistics will show you which promotions to repeat the following financial year, which to tweak and which to out on hold.

And given that many small businesses don’t even do that, you’ll be way ahead of the game…which leads me to Tip 2.

Tip2: Check out your competition.

Looking at what your competion is doing is not an excercise in FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

There’s no point in comparing yourself to other businesess that have bigger pots of money than you do. However, looking at how your competitors present themselves to your shared ideal clients can give you great insights into how might be able to showcase your offering better.

Questions to ask yourself when you look at your comptitors include:

• Is it immediately clear how they help our shared ideal clients?
• Are they offering something better, worse or just the same as what I do?
• What does this mean for my clients – why would the they choose me over my competition?

Which also leads nicely into Tip 3.

Tip 3: You don’t need to be unique

Lots of websites will tell you that they are the ONLY business who can do the job you want done.

And that’s plainly ridiculous. Unless you have a completely new idea, there will be thousands of businesses offering what you do, so it’s madness to say you’re unique. It’s much more effective if you can be seen by your ideal client as ‘chooseable’.

Take my business as an example. If you Google ‘Copywriters Melbourne VIC’, there are 1.3M results provided in 0.69 seconds. For me to claim that I am the only person in Melbourne who can write your website copy would be patently false. So, how do I convince clients to work with me? The short answer is…I make myself chooseable.

And I do this my asking myself the following questions:

• Is it really clear what solution I offer my ideal clients?
• Does my website show a glimpse of the ‘real’ me?
• How can I make it easy for my ideal clients to buy from me?

My own website does all these things, so it gives potential clients an opportunity to decide whether or not they want to work with me. If you ask yourself the same questions, you’ll find opportunities to improve your marketing so that your potential clients feel that they know, like and trust you…which means that they are more likely to buy from you.

Tip 4: You don’t have to do it all yourself

I know I said three tips, but this one is just some advice. You really don’t have to do it all on your own. There are plenty of skilled marketers out there who can help you get all your marketing ducks in a row, analyse your marketing and plan for the future. I’m one of them.

We could start with a Web Copy Audit, throw in a Competitor analysis, or create an action plan.

Or perhaps, you’d prefer a some marketing strategy support to help you to get back control of your marketing dollar and see results from a few simple tweaks?

Remember

• Use Google analytics
• Check out your competition
• Be yourself and give people a reason to choose you over everyone else
• Get help from a professional (like me!) if you’re stuck.