Pinterest, billboards, Instagram, websites, television, LinkedIn, emails, Tik Tok, blogs.

In marketing, there are a bazillion different ways to communicate with your audience.

In reality, it can be overwhelming for those of us with ‘marketing’ in our job description, not to mention it's very noisy for the customer who is bombarded daily with companies trying to sell them the next best thing.

While checking the morning news headlines, I have seen advertisements for a new food festival, eyewear, furniture, car sales, real estate, and a calendar. This was just on the first page.

How do you cut through the clutter? How do you connect with your audience? How do you reduce the endless list of things to do, especially when you are also wearing the hats of financial controller, customer service team, and product development manager?

The answer is simply to get back to basics and focus on just three ways to show up for your customers, serve them really great content that is worth their time engaging with, and that you will enjoy doing!

1. Your website

Is it looking a little blah? Your website is your home on the internet. Here, you want to welcome your customers, show them around, share with them some insights about your business, and suggest the products or services that you think they’d enjoy and benefit from.

Our website is looking pretty average, but it’s about to get an overhaul as we rebrand Cake Marketing. A simple way to do this is to cut your website back, to a simple template while you work on your full site. There are many great templates out there that are not expensive but are functional and look great. All you need to do to start is:

One page that lists your products/services
One page for your contact information and social media links
A section for your customers to share their contact information with you

We love Squarespace templates and they work seamlessly with MailChimp, Shopify and are so easy to customise. You could literally get a site up and running in one day!

Just take a look at these beautiful templates for Professional Services, Home decor and local businesses.

And remember, sometimes done is better than perfect.

2. Your customer emails

Let’s get the excuses out of the way. ‘I don’t have time to do monthly emails’, ‘I don’t know where to start’, and ‘it all just seems too hard’.

Set a goal to email your database once a month. Your emails can start lo-fi by being simply text and where appropriate include links to relevant products, articles, or the like that you are sharing.

If you feel your emails need a little more pizazz, jump over to Canva, which is an online design program for non-designers, and use the free account to create a newsletter template.

Once you have this setup, sign up for a free account with Mailchimp to house your database and to send emails.

3. Social media

Stop trying to be everything to all people. Focus on the platforms you love and that your audience loves, it will make social media easier and more fun!

If you love the written word, and professionalism then LinkedIn is for you.

If you can’t wait to connect with your audience via live video, Instagram might be the perfect social media platform for you.

Or, perhaps you want to build a community, in which case Facebook groups are your best bet.

And there you have it: just three things to focus on for your 2023 marketing plan, not a bazillion. Start with your website, get it up and running, and move onto your email list to nurture your existing clients and finally, social media to reach new people.

Check out the business tools we use to help us automate and simplify our marketing in 2023.

We’d love to hear how you are simplifying your marketing. Slide into our DMs on Instagram or Facebook or leave a comment here.

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