Why My Marketing Will Be Different in 2022

As we make our way into the New Year, it’s time to reflect back on 2021 and make a plan for our brands and businesses for 2022. When doing an annual review, most businesses focus on the bottom line and how much money they made - but it should really be more than that. We should focus on our achievements and downfalls outside of finances too! Information is key when making a roadmap for your 2022 marketing plan. What worked? What didn’t? What will you change? What will stay the same?

Audit your business.

When making your plans for 2022, you need to do a full year-end audit. Maya Angelou said it best, “You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.” Here are a few things you should plan to evaluate from 2021.

Your messaging and language.
Your connection with your audience.
Your current social media platforms.
Your advertising and email marketing.

...and your overall happiness with what you have achieved.

You might be surprised by the results !!!

Messaging and language.

Though there are a lot of elements that can make up a solid marketing strategy, the messaging and language behind your business is the foundation. I have chatted about branding before and how important it is to develop a “brand voice” - but just like other facets of your business, your messaging and language need to adapt with the times. Recently, the world was shaken by an unexpected and unruly pandemic - that is still affecting many businesses and the lives of people all around the world. How did this affect my business? Well, there was a huge influx in folks who were new to the world of Social Media and entrepreneurism. This is one reason, throughout the year of 2021, we knew we needed to do more for the content creator community. We already were provided services to help businesses create content on their Instagram, Podcasts, and YouTube Channels - but what about those folks that are still in the beginning stages of their businesses and brand?

That is one of the reasons we launched the Creatorly Media Instagram account, which is directed towards content creators. We wanted to make sure our messaging and language were relatable, educational, and inspiring to those in the beginning stages of growing an online business. We also launched a content creation workshop, the replay is still available on our website if you want to check it out. We plan on continuing this into 2022, and even expanding this through other social media platforms and products.

Speaking of messaging, the overall purpose of this is to build a real connection with our audience.

Connection with your audience.

Connecting with your audience is another foundational step in building a successful marketing strategy. As I mentioned before, money isn’t everything - but it all starts here… with your audience. It is up to us as the creators to build authentic relationships with our community, because honestly, they matter the most. We have chatted about the “know, like, and trust factor” here on this platform before, but in case you missed it - this concept is the journey that your audience makes when they are getting to know you and your brand. First, they have to know you, right? They have to find you on social media, follow you for a while, maybe hop on over to another platform you’re present on, etc. Once they feel like they know you and consume your content, they will make that decision if they like you. Once they like you - then you have the opportunity to build trust with your audience. The importance of this journey is building trust, your audience will not purchase your products or services if they don’t trust you. This shows you how important it is to build a connection with your audience.

We do our best to reply to comments and DMs, both on Instagram and YouTube - but going into 2022, we want to make efforts to engage more with our audience. There are small things you can do to make that connection deeper, you can reply to a DM via voice memo or video. There is even that new feature on Instagram, where you can reply to a comment via Reel - this might be a fun thing to try in 2022. We also would like to be even more present in our stories. Currently, we have pre-created stories that go live each day around 9am, but I believe adding one or two more stories each day would be another great way to connect with our audience. This might be sharing our posts from that day, sharing a post from another creator (maybe one from one of our followers), or making a quick story about a new update we learned about that day. We could also make some engagement with our current audience on their own profiles, giving back and showing our support.

While we are on the subject of Social Media, let’s chat a bit about our current social media platforms and our plans with that going into 2022.

Current social media platforms.

We are all in different seasons of our business and can only take on so much. If you are new to social media and are balancing other big time consumers in your life (like a full time job or house full of little ones), you might want to just start with one social media platform. Each year, I think it’s important to evaluate how well your social media platforms are performing and what steps you should take based on that information. Is there steady growth? Is it helping your business reach its goals? Is it worth keeping or should you scrap it? Do you have the time and energy to add another platform into this rotation? With Creatorly Media, we started our Instagram account in early June of 2021 and soon after, launched my first video on the Creatorly Media YouTube channel in late July of 2021. We also have this Podcast, of course, and with that - we post the show notes as a Blog each week. Going into 2022 - we will be making minor changes to our social media marketing strategy.

The biggest change will be that we are adding TikTok into our rotation! We will be creating TikToks, and also sharing them as Reels on Instagram and maybe even as shorts on YouTube. I would say that most of you have heard the phrase, “more bang for your buck”. When making decisions for your business, try to lean towards those that can be repurposed. Creating a TikTok once or twice per week will give us content for both Instagram and YouTube.

Another change is our consistency and content on YouTube - though we already started our channel in 2021, we have a new system in place that helps us generate new YouTube ideas, involve those on the Creatorly team who wish to participate, and give our audience the quick wins that can help them develop their online businesses on social media.

We are also going to start sharing carousels or graphics on Instagram regarding any platform updates and trends. We pay a lot of attention to the changes constantly being made or released on social media, so we are going to start sharing those more often on the Creatorly Instagram account.

Something else that is going to take a shift in our business come 2022 is email marketing and advertising.

Advertising and email marketing.

This is a perfect example of how important it is to pull data from all areas of your business. We recently tried running ads to one of our smaller services, the Instagram Audit. We found that the data pulled from those ads were average and honestly, didn’t result in any sales. This led us down a rabbit hole of pulling data from other areas of the business, including our email marketing. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the open rates were high and it made us realize that we should be putting more focus on email marketing in 2022.

In 2022, we are going to be sprucing up our email newsletter by moving over to Flodesk and providing higher value to our current (and future) email subscribers.
We are also going to be reworking some of our current email sequences, making sure they are current and provide the most value as possible.
We also want to add a few new email sequences, possibly training on Instagram Reels.
Lastly, we want to update the call to action on our emails, to make sure they are leading readers to more information about our various platforms, products, and/or services.

Regarding advertising, we are going to put this on hold for now - but once ready to start this up again, we are going to focus more of our funds on sharing our freebies/lead magnets, instead of our paid products/services. This will help continue to build our email list, so we can build that know, like, and trust factor - which could eventually convert into a sale. I think this was the biggest takeaway from our advertising experience. The folks seeing our ads didn’t know us yet, so why would they trust our expertise? Instead, we can use ads to expand our reach, provide value, and then down the road - share our offerings.

Overall happiness with what you have achieved.

At the end of the day, you really need to ask yourself if you are happy with where you and your business are at this time. Are you happy with the content you’re producing? Are you happy with how your business is being represented? Are you happy with the financial achievements you made? If not, it’s time to make some changes to help you reach overall happiness in your business. Oh, and a little nugget of wisdom - you will never be 100% satisfied with your business or brand. That is because we are closer to it than anyone and we inspect it for flaws. Just like no person is perfect, a business isn’t either. As long as the core values and essence of your business are strong, the rest will come in time and hard work ...and maybe a few late nights on the computer.

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I hope this helps give you an idea of how my marketing will be different going into the New Year and hey, if there is something you want from us - let us know! We love hearing from our community about how you think we could do better and provide you with more value. This is the last podcast of 2021, but we will be back again Monday, January 3rd, 2022 … where I will expose my Instagram Strategy for 2022! Speak to you then!