It's a new year, so let's revamp your digital marketing strategy. Time to engage your current followers, capture new ones, and improve your online presence. Here's our 7 resolutions to start the year off right!

1. Get into Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the best ways to build a strong relationship with your audience. This form of marketing pulls the focus away from your product or service and instead offers valuable content that either educates or entertains the reader.

Why would it makes sense to do marketing that doesn't focus on what you're offering? Because it creates trust in your brand, builds your reputation, and drives traffic to your site.

For example, a make-up company might make a series of tutorial videos using the company's products. The video is not explicitly selling make-up, but instead showing viewers how they can get more value out of the product. A great example is this John Deere video educating viewers on the company's history:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbKvoKeu4vc[/embed]

How you can take advantage: Content marketing comes in a number of forms. You can start a blog, create videos and share articles on social media, or send out email newsletters. Here's a list of great pre-written content that you can share online to get started with content marketing.

2. Make your marketing purpose-driven

Purpose-driven marketing is the feel-good aspect of your marketing campaign. If you are connected to a non-profit or charity, this is your opportunity to showcase all the wonderful things you do!

Purpose-driven marketing is creating content that promotes your charitable work. This provides a platform for bonding with clients based off of your shared interests, such as supporting a worthy cause. According to a study by Deloitte, 91% of millenials would switch to a brand that supports a cause.

How you can take advantage: Does your company do any volunteer work in the community? Do you support a charity? Then let everyone know! Post images on social media, write a blog post about what you're up to, or share articles related to the work you're doing.

3. Increase your social media game

Social media is a great way to connect with clients in an informal way. It takes work and upkeep, but that doesn't mean it has to be hard! Here are a few tips to ensure your posts on Facebook or your latest tweets grab reader's attention.

• Join groups: Facebook and Linkedin have active groups where you can join in on conversations and Twitter has a similar feature called Twitter chat. In these groups you can join conversations related to a specific topic. Groups help establish your name and demonstrate your expertise.

• Mix up your content:  You want to use different mediums on your social media. GIFs, images, and video will capture your audience's attention and will increase engagement through likes, comments, and shares. Here's a list of sources where you can get great images to use on social media.

• Maintain a consistent posting schedule: Take a look at what time you post content on social media. Are there certain times that result in a better response? Prime-time for most posts is usually after-work or after-dinner (i.e., between 5pm-10pm). This may differ depending on the behaviour of your followers, so pay attention, and experiment with different times. Once you've figured out which times create the best response, stick to that time and be consistent with your posts!

4. Offer something valuable

Everyone loves free stuff, it's one of the best way to get people's attention. People are more likely to engage with your content when it's obvious there'll be an instant reward.

Free stuff could include a free consultation or downloadable content. To make offering free stuff a win-win, include a form for individuals to fill out first. The form could ask people to sign up for your newsletter or to follow you on social media before they receive anything free.

How you can take advantage: Think of what would be valuable to your current clients or potential leads. Maybe a free consultation? Discount on a service? A downloadable how-to guide? Whatever you think of, make sure it's something that grabs people's attention. Double that with a call-to-action (e.g., asking people to follow you on social media), and you can improve your online presence and also make people happy.

5. Recommit to email marketing

Email marketing is a great way to communicate with clients, it can be highly targeted and personable. Clients in your email list have actively signed up for your newsletters, meaning they're interested in what you have to say! So make sure your emails are providing value to clients. Your emails need to be strategic and include a strong call-to-action.

How you can take advantage: Try using an email platform to make your emails engaging. Platforms like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Emma are a great way to make your emails stand-out and easy to read. Try offering exclusive offers in your emails and communicate these offers constantly.

6. Personalize your messages

Think of personalization as the best possible targeting method for digital marketing. In today's market, targeting is essential for attracting new clients and retaining current ones. Different forms of personalized marketing include: customized promotions, personalized emails or direct mail, or answering questions on social media.

How you can take advantage: One of the best forms of personalized marketing is through email. Depending on the size of your client base, you can consider grouping clients into categories specific to the services they use. These groups can have their own email list, where you can send off emails that include specific information or promotions of a service they already have. Another easy way to take advantage of personalized marketing is by answering questions and responding to comments on social media. If someone mentions you on twitter, reply!

7. Take advantage of A/B testing

A/B testing is a method of evaluating two variables (like webpages, taglines, images etc) against each other to determine which performs better (like which gets the most clicks) .

"AB testing is essentially an experiment where two or more variants of a page are shown to users at random, and statistical analysis is used to determine which variation performs better for a given conversion goal." - Optimizely

For example, you could test two different call-to-actions to see which performs the best, such as "Buy Now!" versus "Buy Today!" Even if one call-to-action has a higher conversion rate, results of an A/B test might indicate that the higher conversion rate is not actually statistically significant.

How you can take advantage: Let's say that you're considering changing the call-to-action from "Sign up today for a free consultation" to "Book a free consultation today." A couple weeks after changing it you want to see if the new call-to-action is better than the old one. Put the variables into an A/B testing site, like Unbounce or Five Second Test, and take a look at the results. If your results have a less than 90% certainty, you should consider running the new advertisement longer until you have more data.

 In Summary

The 7 digital marketing resolutions that you should adopt for 2017 are:

1. Get into content marketing
2. Make your marketing purpose-driven
3. Increase your social media game
4. Offer something valuable
5. Recommit to email marketing
6. Personalize your messages
7. Take advantage of A/B testing