3 Quick Tips to Refresh Your Marketing in 2019

Marketing for your business can be hard. There are so many platforms you can utilize to spread your business’ message. How do you know which one is right? With the help of these three resources, you can refresh your marketing game just in time for the new year. Don’t forget, you can always see one of our SBDC Consultants to help you up your marketing game at no cost to you!

1.Get Yourself a Handy, Dandy Social Media Calendar

If you are a social media manager or you’re ready to give social a real shot in 2019, the  Ultimate Social Media Holiday Calendar for 2019 by Hubspot is designed for you or your team – complete with schedule templates, holidays lists, and hashtags to draft your posts. Why do you need a social media calendar? To stay organized and ahead of the game. Organize holidays, special events, plan your promotions and more. Then, use hootsuite or sprout social to schedule your posts in advance and build in time to analyze the outcomes. Sound hard? No way! It takes just a few minutes on the front end to set up the system that can bring thousands of impressions to your content for very little investment.

Download the calendar here.

2. Refresh Your Look with Stock Photos. Did We Mention These Are Free?

Why stock photos? They’re accessible, many are free and it significantly raises the profile of your business and the way your customers perceive it. Yes, it’s time to put away the mobile pics or even that stock photo of all those folks shaking hands. In 15 minutes or less, you can download a few photos that can change the way customers perceive your brand and leave them delighted. But hey, we won’t leave you hanging, here are five websites you can start using now to download photography for use on your website, to accompany your blog posts or refresh your header images for example or use on your social media, email marketing or advertising. Remember, stay consistent in your imagery across your brand and use that new, fresh momentum you gain throughout your marketing in 2019.

This free stock photo site offers the best quality imagery for your team, these are high-resolution, beautiful photographs of food, people, teams and more. The best part? Many of these require no attribution. Check out: Unsplash, Lifepix and Negative Space.

3. Get to Class. Stay on the Marketing Trends, Boost Those Sales – We Promise It’s Fun!

Maybe you’re a freelancer, maybe you have 2-3 employees or 10-30, whatever the case may be what better way to invest in your business than investing in your team (or yourself!). Hubspot Academy offers courses taught by Hubspot certified trainers and Educators from all over, not to mention, we love this website because of all the great resources available at no cost! As you turn the corner in 2019, consider some professional development for your sales and marketing staff through the Hubspot certification with their Free Inbound Marketing Certification Course;this is sure to help boost up those online sales. We also recommend the Social Media Certification Course and the Email Marketing Certification Course to discover ways to reach new revenue streams and perhaps great some inbound leads. Hubspot offers free training courses for Sales and Customer Service as well. Just in case you need more, here are some favs on learning more about: SEO from Moz, Content from iMPACT, Growth Marketing from Mention and Automating Marketing for Small Businesses from Lead Pages.

Get to class, but have fun doing it!