The role of the Marketing Manager is of utmost importance. Without a proper marketing campaign, and a commitment to promote the firm’s products or services as best as possible, a firm is bound to lose its competitive advantage. Needless to say, as the New Year is fresh in our minds, we all want to make resolutions so as to start the year with a bang. That is why we will now highlight the Top 7 New Year’s Resolutions for Marketing Managers. 1. Using Both Traditional as well as Online Marketing Techniques The use of traditional marketing techniques, such as adverts on media like radio, television and magazines, has suffered due to the focus on newer methods. With the surge in the use of the internet, most marketing managers have started to use methods like e-mail marketing and social media marketing. However, it is important that different methods, both traditional and online ones, are used so as to strike a good balance and achieve positive results. After all not all the firm’s customers will know how to use a computer, as there is still a significant number of people, especially over the age of 50, who are not computer literate in many countries. 2014 will be a huge year for mobile ads as wells, so keep an eye on that (it will be hard to avoid them). Speaking of which… 2. Optimize your Website/App for Mobile Devices The use of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones has increased dramatically. Thus it is not enough to have a website. This website will need to have a modified version so as to allow such users to access it with mobile devices. Placing importance on this is very important in this day and age, and marketing managers who have failed to invest in such a project should make sure to place this as one of the top resolutions for the New Year. 3. Directing More Traffic to your Website It is not enough to have a website. The website needs to be SEO friendly, and updated regularly. It is important to implement methods that will help to drive more traffic to the website. Thus promoting the firm’s website should be something the marketing manager gives importance to. 4. Quicker Response Times Having a contact form or an email address on the website will not suffice. Online comments, queries and suggestions often tend to be ignored for some time. Particularly with the impact that social media has had on customer expectation, Customers will not like the fact that they have to wait a long time to receive a reply. So make sure to work on providing quicker responses this year. 5. E-mail Marketing Initiatives E-mail marketing still remains quite popular, but with social media marketing, it has been neglected a bit by some marketing managers. If this is the case, make sure that in the upcoming year you try to invest more on e-mail marketing. For instance, make it a point to send at least one e-mail per week. Conversely, avoid being spammy. Make e-mails interesting and compelling, so as to improve open rates. 6. Work to be More Interesting on Social Media Sites Simply putting up a post with the firm’s opening hours on Facebook is not bound to attract likes or shares. You need to work on ways to make posts more interesting and worth sharing. Inspiring quotes, interesting information or statistics, and posts with photos or videos, are some ways which will help your firm’s Facebook page be more compelling to customers. Also consider launching competitions every now and then as these tend to be really motivational to customers, and attract more people to like your page. 7. Listen More to What Customers Have to Say Finally, this resolution cannot ever be emphasized strongly enough. Make sure that you are open to your customers’ views and suggestions. Do not ignore their comments, but rather strive to collect as many of them as possible, and work on them so as to improve continually.