It's time to get strategic in 2025

OK, strategy has been a buzzword for forever. Any business serious about its growth works the strategy. But I'd argue that it's particularly important for 2025. So much has changed in the marketplace. These changes are happening at lightening speed; as soon as you get to understand one seemingly important innovation, something else has taken it's place. AI has everyone tied up in knots - some loving the opportunities it brings, others simply overwhelmed or panicking that they are losing out.

With such a different playing field, the game has changed. We're playing by different rules. The strategies that used to work no longer do. If you are serious about staying in the game, a clear and sensible plan of action is called for.

Any business owner knows that the only constant is change. In the over 20 years that we've been operating, we've seen our fair share of change.

Our starting point

We started as the Internet was just emerging and our most requested service was copywriting for printed newsletters. Even as digital marketing started to be a thing, our MNC clients refused to take part so we were spared that change for a while.

But of course the change to digital was inevitable. Yet still clients would protest about placing a blog on their website because, and I quote, "we're not a travel firm". (I heard that a lot in the early days!)

Change 1

Nevertheless, we had to move with the times and offer copy suitable for online consumption. That's a different way of writing.

Change 2

Google became the preferred search engine and its insatiable demand for new and quality content aften in the form of blogs drove the need for the role of copywriter to be a full-time corporate position. The competition was everywhere, and with it came a deep-rooted distrust of anyone's copywriting capabilities - a case of once bitten, twice shy. With the influx of writers, the standards inevitably went down. Anyone with a keyboard claimed they could write.

Change 3

Next came social media, primarily Facebook at first. Now there was the need for a new type of content that had to satisfy algorythms, yet no one knew the rules. For a while, the message was that you very much had to pay to play. But over time, while that's still the fastest route, lack of reach started driving people off the platforms so now the emphasis is on keeping people engaged and on the platform as long as possible, mostly through video content.

Change 4

A multitude of all-in-one marketing tools started to spring up - crude in the beginning, but as more came onto the market, it was clear that the developers knew the problems they were solving and anyone, it seems, could market online.

I've been through them all - loved some and hated others. Adored some aspects of favourites and other aspects of others, wishing, as I do with supermarkets, that one brand would just get it all right - that I didn't have to shop from multiple stores. One can hope.

One particular app I blame for turning my hair white, but that's another story. A request for my money back and an email to support with 50 reasons why it didn't work for me secured the refund and I still shudder at the name 15 years later!

But these technologies have improved by leaps and bounds. As it stands today, I love one for its sheer simplicity and ease of use, and its ability to build landing pages in a flash. But its support system sucks like no other. Upside, because it's so easy, it's rare that you'd need to contact them. But when you do ...

Another I love for the support, literally like none other, and the features are awesome and well thought through. The price, which you could argue is worth it, and I think it is, is way beyond its competitors. But it's one I'll still recommend to my coaching clients as an option worth considering.

Another has all you could need to market your business, so many bells and whistles that it's complicated beyong measure, so it has a steep learning curve. It takes the level of tenacity that many don't have to stick with it, but when you do, it's worth it. But you'd expect to spend a decent amount of time on their helpline. That's going to eat up time better spent elsewhere.

Change 5

Artificial Intelligence or AI. Need I eleborate here? It's the fastest distruption to marketing there has ever been, and we are just at the dawn of it all right now.

Back to the plan

I took a wee detour there because these online marketing tools and AI developments are such a passion of mine. I've been told my eyes light up when I start talking about them. But the point I'm getting to is that, at Proof Perfect, we're embarking on our next stage of evolution driven by the need to change to meet the market where it's at. We've been using these tools for so long in our own business and have been training our coaching clients to use them too, that we've decided that in 2025 we're offering the full digital marketing Done For You solution to our writing clients as well. Why just create the content when we can do it all:

Survey most business owners or small businesses and the majority will tell you that online marketing is the bain of their existence. They know it has to be done, but there are so many moving parts and it takes so damn long, and if most are honest, they don't really know what they are doing!! It's a case of anything being better than nothing. And even though AI tools make things quicker, you still need a team not a single person to do it all. The idea generation; the research; the planning; the creation: filming, editing, writing; the analysis; the tweaking; the repurposing. (It's tiring enough to read let alone do!)

And that's assuming you've got your strategy and your messaging correct before you begin, and not many businesses do.

Unlike advertising on social media platforms where you are interupting someone's scroll, Google Ads works primarily by attracting people already actively searching for your services (although there is also the element of interruption with display ads and YouTube ads).

From when Google Ads first came to be, we have always advertised on the platform and brought in a steady flow of clients with a crazy ROI. Paying for advertsing for us was a no brainer, so we never really focussed on social media to grow our business. That may or may not change this year. We are still exploring the need. If you have the budget and people are searching for what you offer, it's a quick and easy way to be found. Yes, there is a monetary cost, but the time it saves is well worth it if you can get an easy ROI.

I'd argue in 2025, you need to be on social media and not just using it for paid ads either. A large part of your promotional strategy should be focussed on organic marketing - free posting with content designed to engage your audience and drive conversations so you can sell off platform.

It's no longer about likes and follows, although these help. It's about engagement and keeping people consuming your content for as long as possible. The more people consume, the more you are rewarded with new traffic. You no longer have to rely on "your" audience. Reels will get you reach far beyond your followers and bring new people into your world. Build the relationship online and guide them to continue the conversation off social media platforms. Here's why ...

Now like everything else, things change. Sure, email isn't as popular as it used to be, especially for small business owners, and especially in Asia, where small businesses rely almost exclsusively on mobile devices and expect immediate responses via social mobile messenging tools like Whatsapp.

But I'm starting to see the backlash on this begin. Yes, it used to be convenient. It was easier to sort through and deal with than email. You didn't need fancy and expensive project management solutions - simple reply to messages on Whatsapp. Personally I've never understood how a business can run solely on Whatsapp if organisation and customer service are a care. But it has it's place for urgent matters.

What's happening now, of course, is that people find themselves sifting through a deluge of data, multiple group conversations, files buried in one of them (but which one?) and an increasing demand for urgent responses from EVERYONE! Plus, there's more spam and marketing messages coming through in these apps, just like was experienced with email. They'll find you wherever you choose to hang out. Accept it. They've all just transferred over from email so you're dealing with the same volume, but with the added heat of having people expect an immediate reply instead of one in the next day or so. It's no wonder we're in a mental health crisis.

Dealing with larger companies, while you can expect a group messaging app set up to deal with urgent matters, most correspondence is still handled via email.

Another salient point: everyone has an email address. Not everyone is on Whatsapp, or any other messaging app of choice.

So while you won't get immediate eyeballs on your email messages necessarily, they will at some point get read. In other words, email is not dead (as has been touted for years) and is still responsible for converting the majority of leads for any business that cares to try. Partly because it's simply more respectful of people's time and sanity.

And here's one more nugget as food for thought. If you aren't including email marketing into the mix, you are potentially leaving 97% of your leads (people that will buy from you at some stage) unserved and forgotten.

A lot of the heavy lifting in online marketing is done through automating the customer journey through marketing/sales funnels. Does it take a lot of planning and building and connecting to set up a funnel?

Let me backtrack a bit and address what a funnel is. It is a set of automations that take a potential client from a curious browser of your wares, provides some value to start building a relationship, moves them through a series of offers and emails/chat messages so they grow to know, like and trust you before they eventually buy from you. The automations continue through a series of nuture emails until a new offer attracts their attention once again and they enter a new funnel with the promise of a new outcome.

So, back to the question, does it take work to build a funnel? Yes, it does. I can vouch for that as I've built hundreds of them. It takes careful planning of the customer journey, then the creation of the offers and content and then the build out, before the testing to ensure nothing breaks the automation along the way.

The good knews is that, once it's built, you can pretty much leave it to run itself if it's an evergreen offer. But even for new offers, once you have a funnel in place, duplicating it and editing it doesn't take as much work as the first funnel build.

Imagine building something once that will feed your customers through your designed customer journey without you having to do a thing except serve them when they buy? That's funnel automation for you!

What are the signs that outsourcing your online marketing at least in part is a good idea?

If any of that resonates and you'd love our help or at least a conversation to explore the options, book a free 30-min 7-Step-Method Strategy call with us today.