Over the past year, there have been many changes in the world of marketing. As technology continues to advance and businesses find new ways to be creative with the way they promote their products and services, other companies are faced with the choice to keep up or fall behind.
Throughout 2021, entrepreneurs learned some important lessons about how to market themselves. Below, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council each share the best marketing lesson they learned last year and discuss how this lesson will impact their approach to marketing moving forward.
Young Entrepreneur Council members share what they learned about marketing in 2021.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Pivot Your Marketing Investments
As competitors crowd advertising channels and push up costs, you should pivot. We’ve seen costs for the same advertising inventory rise as much as three times over the past year. Competitors are in a constant battle over who’s willing to pay more for ad space to get in front of the same customers. Yet, while the cost of advertising has increased, the actual traffic quality has not. Over time, we learned it was a poor use of our marketing dollars to follow suit. Instead, we decided to pivot and deploy our marketing spend toward other initiatives that would deliver a better return on investment. That has allowed us to operate on healthier margins, which we can use toward better customer service and more research and development. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep Mattress
2. Anticipate Customers’ Needs, But Be Flexible
This is by far the most important lesson I have learned because 2021 was so unpredictable. Online orders have been a priority for most of our customers, so that’s what we have been prioritizing. Planning enormous marketing campaigns right down to the last detail was never an option. So much changed at the last minute, and we had to move with it all. That didn’t mean that we couldn’t plan, though. In fact, planning was integral to everything we did. We just had to be willing to change things at a moment’s notice and not get too dragged down into the tiniest details. We kept a customer-centered approach throughout, which is something we are definitely going to carry into the future. – Nick Venditti, StitchGolf
3. Focus On What’s Actually Working
Don’t fix what’s not broken! Last year I learned that we need to be laser-focused on the strategies that are actually working and double down on them, instead of trying to do so many different things at once because of FOMO and then not really seeing an impact or return. Once you are getting traction in one channel, make sure you have a good process to immediately follow up on your leads and start closing some deals. – Adrian Romero, Cápita Works
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4. Get Creative With Your Outreach
A huge lesson we learned is to make sure you are being creative in your outreach. We switched up the whole idea behind our email campaign and it has tripled conversions! Not only did we change our script, but we also changed the whole base of the campaign. While the previous efforts were effective, there was some room for improvement. It’s easy to stay complacent, and we would have still succeeded with the old method. However, now we are considering growing our sales team due to the explosive growth caused by this one change. We will always continue to A/B test and try to be as creative and different in our approach for the future. – Jack Perkins, CFO Hub
5. Personalize Your Marketing Efforts
I’ve learned how important extreme personalized marketing is to build relationships with email subscribers and existing customers. Although we have an email list upwards of 500,000, our email communication is customized according to interest. For example, most of our segments are only 500 to 1,000 subscribers. This makes building relationships a lot easier than sending the same email to everyone on our list. – Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC
6. Use Push Notifications
In 2021, we started using push notifications to reach our audience on desktop computers and mobile devices. At first, I wasn’t sure if we would see a substantial number of conversions, but I was surprised. We reduced our cart abandonment rate, boosted engagement and secured more sales by making push notifications a normal part of our marketing strategy. In the coming year, we will continue using this strategy. I believe that we can create targeted campaigns that will help convert visitors into customers, regardless of their phase in our sales funnel. – John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC
7. Practice Empathy
Empathy is king. It was probably true before the pandemic, but it definitely is now. People want empathy. They want to be heard, they want to be listened to, they want to have their problems solved. Get those things straight and you’ll be set up for success in the long term as far as marketing goes. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
8. Build Trust Before All Else
Last year in business emphasized the importance of building trust and credibility with your audience before anything else. You can’t expect to make sales or build your email list without first establishing a solid relationship with customers. Prioritize getting to know your audience and building a relationship with them before introducing them to campaigns and content where they have to spend money. Offer value and solutions and watch your audience naturally respond and grow. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
