How is your marketing working for you? Did it help you increase visibility, generate more leads or find new lucrative clients? Even if you feel your marketing was successful, you should conduct a simple marketing review every 90 days.
A quarterly marketing review is important for the following reasons:
- It helps you determine which marketing activities are working
- You get data on those activities that are not working before they cost you time and money
- The right activities help you continue to move towards your outcome goal
But why so often you ask? There are many reasons to do your planning in short, 90 day segments. The following are just a few examples:
- The market for your products and services can change rapidly. Reviewing every 90 days ensures you notice the changes before it’s too late
- Marketing changes rapidly. What worked yesterday may not work today (look at Facebook Business Page organic reach).
- Your channels to reach your target audience may have changed. The faster you notice where your audience has moved can help you adjust.
- Activities you are spending time and resources on aren’t aligned with your vision or aren’t getting you closer to your outcome goals.
Difference between marketing review and marketing audit
The words audit and review can be used interchangeably. However, for our purposes, there is a distinct difference:
- A marketing review is a simplified assessment of your activities and how they are helping you achieve your goals.
- A marketing audit takes a deep-dive look at all of your existing marketing assets and activities to determine how well they are serving your business.
So on a quarterly basis, you should do the simplified marketing review to make sure your effort is paying off in new leads and new customers.
What to look for while conducting your review
When you conduct this simple review of your marketing activities and results, what should you be looking for? What are the signs that things aren’t going in the right direction?
You can get the process to conduct your marketing review in this post.
The first thing you look at are your results of your current activities. If your marketing activities aren’t driving inbound leads and sales, then we need to determine why.
Tracking your results helps you understand how each marketing activity is contributing to your success. You can make informed decisions about whether to continue with what you are doing or try something else. For each marketing activity, answer the following questions:
- Does the activity help your business achieve its marketing goals?
- Has the activity resulted in new leads, brand visibility or sales?
- How much did the campaign cost in terms of dollars or resources?
- Was the return on your investment worth the effort?
For those that are working, great. Keep doing what you are doing.
For those activities that aren’t working, we need to figure out why.
Reasons why your marketing isn’t working
Your target market has changed
Have you noticed a difference in the type of clients you now attract? As your business grows and matures, your ideal client will naturally evolve. As you get a clearer perspective on your business, you begin to attract an audience that:
- Values what you have to offer
- Enjoys working with you
- Is willing to pay more for your expertise.
Not only do you thrive working with this client, these clients truly benefit from working with you.
Maybe it’s time to focus your target market and cater your services to this new, more lucrative market. These changes will require you to adjust your messages, content, service offerings and marketing activities. But by focusing on a particular niche, you can be clear on exactly what you offer and how it helps them.
Your messages miss your intended target
Getting noticed in a crowded market is difficult. How do you create a message that cuts through the media clutter and captures the attention of your target audience? When you can be this clear about how you serve your audience, visitors to your website will see that “this person really understands what I need”.
Customers want solutions to their problems. Your core message needs to demonstrate how you solve their biggest challenge. It should make them understand why they should trust you and choose your business over the competition. Talk about the experiences your ideal customers will have and how they will benefit from working with you.
Your products and services are not relevant to your target market.
Correctly pricing and packaging your products and services for your target audience is one of the more powerful marketing activities that you can do. Are your products and services:
- Created to help your ideal client overcome some critical need?
- Packaged such that they highlight your unique skills aimed at your ideal client?
- Priced to fit their budget while maximizing your revenue?
Value packaging your services to align with their needs reduces their perceived risk of working with you and makes their purchase decision much easier.
Your brand is inconsistent across all your web properties.
Your brand is everything you do and say, not just the visual image your business projects.
- Do you project the same image and message across all web properties?
- Does your website accurately reflect who you work with and what you offer?
- Is what you say on your social profiles consistent with what is on your website?
If your marketing tools are inconsistent, you confuse your prospects which reflects poorly on your brand. It is important that your brand be consistent every place your business has a profile so that no matter where someone finds your business, they are left with a compelling, lasting impression.
Your website needs a face lift.
In addition to an inconsistent brand, is your website fresh and does it properly project your expertise? If not, it’s time for a website makeover. Without a well developed, quality website, your visibility is compromised.
Creating a compelling website and investing in search engine optimization helps you establish a strong web presence. As the hub of your web presence and the central focal point of your inbound marketing strategy, your website is where you can regularly develop and promote relevant, brand-related content that can drive more inbound leads and increase your revenue.
Now create your next 90 day marketing action plan
Your simple marketing audit has given you the valuable information you need to adjust your marketing action plan for the next 90 days. Keep doing what has worked and reassign resources (money or time) to new activities that may produce better results.
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Article source: https://masterful-marketing.com/simple-marketing-review/
