Getting ready to create your annual marketing plan and need a little inspiration? Here are 12 simple, powerful and proven ideas to grow your business next year.

1. Tania Mulry
DDx Media, Inc.

2. Founder of edRover.com
USC Professor
Award Winning Mobile Apps
Best Selling Author of “The Cause: The
Power of Digital Storytelling for Social
Good”
Worked for
MasterCard, AT&T, JCPenney, GameSt
op, Nintendo, State
Farm, Chili’s, Huggies, the US Air
Force, tech start-ups, local
businesses, professional sports
teams, schools and non-profits

3.  Put a sticker on your product: “Get the most out of your
experience by calling this number or scanning this QR
code”
 Captures the contact information of your customers
 Deliver an audio or video message to train them on
more reasons to use your product and service
 Up-sell/cross-sell services

4.  Design a program to attract new leads and builds loyal
customers for your business
 Provide a juicy incentive to capture their opt-in
 Deliver special offers, discounts, samples, exclusive
access or premium information via email, text or video
 Easy to automate and inexpensive to promote

5.  Hold a drawing for a killer prize
 A free service
 A gift certificate
 A hot product like an iPad, Kindle or an XBOX One
 Enter by text, email, Twitter, Facebook or an online
form
 Reach out to friends and complimentary businesses to
help promote the contest
 Make sure you are compliant with rules & regulations

6.  Create a valuable free gift that can be delivered easily
when someone opts-in to your website
 Free report
 Video course
 Audio course
 Workbook or template
 Discount or coupon
 Set up an automatic message to deliver the gift
 Follow up with a series of messages to build trust and
offer additional services

7.  Plan your core social media content for the year
 Program the posts in advance so that you don’t have to
worry about being clever every day
 Promote key Facebook posts for added reach
 Spend your time on social media interacting and
providing great customer service
 Depending on your target market and goals, I
recommend building a plan for the big 6:
Facebook, Twitter, Google
+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest

8.  Everyone of your customers is going to be glued to a
mobile phone for more than 2 hours today, and 2/3 or
more have powerful smartphones
 Do you have a mobile strategy?
 Get noticed and reach new customers through:
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Text messaging
Mobile website
Mobile advertising
Mobile application with push notifications

9.  You are an expert in your field
 You have a message to share with the world
 Your training would be a dream come true to many
people who want to know what you know
 Package it up as a book, video or audio lessons with a
workbook and sell it as a product
 Sell it on a website, and make money while you sleep

10.  Forget business cards – no one ever follows up
 When you meet them, ask people to text, email or scan
a QR code to get your free gift
 Reply with qualifying questions about their business
 Send a series of trust building information and regular
newsletters

11.  Do you speak in front of groups?
 Chamber of Commerce
 Professional Networking Group
 Conferences or Meetups
 Tell the audience that you have a free gift, or that you’ll
send the slides
 In the reply message, prompt the people that the first
one to ask you a specific question will win another free
gift (a book, a gift card)
 You can get 50-80% of the group to opt-in

12.  Grab a microphone and start recording talks about your
expertise
 Add a logo, professional intro and outro
 Publish them to iTunes and your website
 Transcribe talks and turn them into blog articles
 Incredible search engine value

13.  Host an educational talk answering FAQs about your
subject and broadcast it for free on Google +, YouTube
and your website
 Automatically stores the session as a video on
YouTube
 Turn video into a book or eBook
 Turn video into a podcast
 Break it down into mini-video series

14.  Less expensive than recruiting new customers
 “It’s my fault, but I want to make it up to you”
 Significant discount
 New program
 Bonus products and services
 Follow up a few ways: mail, email, text, voicemail, card,
video

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