5 Ways to Make 2023 the Best Year Yet for Your Business

Combining the following tactics will help to increase your brand awareness and attract the right people to your business

By Jessica Alex

I always say, if no one knows about your product or service, how are they going to buy from you?

Your business absolutely needs awareness — specifically brand awareness — to get people to learn about what you offer.

But knowing about your product or service, is just the first step. It doesn’t mean people will automatically buy from you. It’s a process.

The iconic Steve Jobs once said, “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.”

So first understand that if you are just starting out, it’s going to take some time to build your brand — but with strategy, consistency and a clear vision it will happen sooner rather than later. Or perhaps, if you have an existing business, you’ve put in the work over the years and have learned a lot along the way and now you are ready for your breakthrough year.

Whichever business stage you are in, you can execute on the following tactics to make this year the best year yet for your business.

1. Get strategic

This year, it’s no longer about “winging it.” It may have worked out in the past here and there, but more often than not, playing it by ear in business won’t get you consistent results.

What will get you consistent results is having a strategy. A strategy will help you have clarity on the vision for your brand, which will then enable you to execute on your goals.

Be clear on who you are serving (your target market and audience)
Be clear on what your offer is (and how you solve your ideal audience’s problems)
Be clear on what your brand message, values and story is
Be clear on what differentiates you in the market
Be clear on how you are going to execute on your strategy and your deliverables

2. Create a content plan that will help you execute on your strategy

Content. Content. Content. Everybody is talking about content these days, but it's with good reason.

*Quality* content is a very powerful tool to help create trust and nurture relationships with both your future and existing customers.

Andrew Davis, best-selling author and digital marketer has a very popular quote that about sums it up: “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.”

Content builds trust and helps you execute on your strategy because you have the opportunity, for instance, to use content to provide value to your audience, educate your audience (and therefore show your expertise and knowledge), and you can even use it to provide social proof, by way of user-generated content. Social proof is key, because people often make purchases based on others' feedback on the product or service.

Being timely, relevant and consistent with your content will go a long way as well in increasing your brand's awareness and increasing leads.

Download The Ultimate Guide to User-Generated Content for free!

3. Advertise your brand

I am all for organic. I shop organic and I use organic marketing tactics all the time 😅. But it’s time to set aside a budget for advertising.

Steuart Henderson Britt, a psychologist and a professor of marketing, once famously said, “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does.”

Whether you can relate to the winking or not, you get the gist of what he is saying. Advertising can help you reach new customers — at least to warm them up.

But you shouldn’t just randomly advertise for the sake of advertising. Everything you do should go back to your strategy.

Then you need to decide what you are going to promote through paid channels for the buyers journey. So for instance, running an ad campaign to warm up people to your brand (brand awareness) and then run an ad campaign to start getting those same people to take an action (for example, buy your product that’s on sale).

Before running any ad, take a moment to review your strategy. Understanding what your goals are and who your audience is, is critical before you start advertising, and when you do it with intentionality and purpose you have a better opportunity to increase your brand’s sales.

Note: You don't have to break the bank on advertising; start small, and run tests, to see if you are getting the desired results that you are looking for.

4. Use Good old trusted public relations (PR)

First, let me point out that public relations isn’t just about getting media coverage. It’s about communicating to the public in a way that will help them to see your brand in a positive light. Understanding that, in its most basic form, you may be dabbling in PR through your social media, newsletters and other communications to your target audience as we speak. PR is crucial for your business.

With that being said, don’t sleep on that good, ol’ media coverage as well. Whether it’s magazines, blogs, podcasts, or television programs, being featured in media is a fantastic way to increase your brand awareness. By adding a PR strategy and tactics to your marketing strategy and plans, you can continue to get new people to learn about your brand and what you have to offer.

5. Have the right mindset

Now this last one may surprise you because it’s not a ‘marketing tactic’ per se, but it is necessary to have the right ‘tude to build your brand. A winning mindset will create winning results.

As a content marketing strategist and publicist, I have expertise in various strategies and tactics, but it wasn’t until 2020 when I worked on my mindset that new and even unexpected opportunities came my way consistently.

Everyone has different life experiences, but just some simple tweaks to your mindset can have a major impact to your life and business.

Sign up for my free Boss Up Your Brand™️ newsletter to receive exclusive tips and offers. Speaking of which, my newsletter subscribers will be able to join a free, private ‘2023 Mindset & Goal-Setting Workshop,’ coming up on January 25, 2023 hosted by mindset expert, Narley K. Sign-up to my newsletter before January 23, 2023 to get access to this event!

Recap

Applying these five tactics will help lead you on a path to start achieving your goals this year (and beyond).

Having a strategy to begin with, creating a content plan and quality content to execute on your strategy, dabbling in paid ads to help increase and expand your reach, investing in PR to promote your brand and having the right mindset to set out and smash those goals (and be open for unexpected opportunities), are all great ways to help increase your brand awareness and attract the right people to your business.

The question is, are you ready to make this your brand and business' best year yet?