With the second quarter winding down and the third quarter upon us, this is the perfect time to take a look at your marketing strategy. Here we have ten tips for every marketing executive to use as they review and execute their summer marketing plan:
1. Review
Take a look at your existing marketing plan. Ask yourself:
- What is produced at the end of each step?
- Is this production measurable?
If there is no clear goal listed at the end of each step or there is no way to obtain metrics to see if your target has been met, you need to reshape the plan. With so many operational metrics available on social media and other platforms, measuring efficacy should be the easiest part in any marketing plan.
2. Evaluate
Find out what part of your marketing plan has been getting you business. This can be a difficult metric to track, as often people show up to a business with no real idea of how they got there. However, metrics like leads into your website and number of active Facebook followers should give you some idea of how people are finding you.
3. Keep doing what is successful
This step is incredibly important. Too many times we see executives throwing out entire marketing plans because the overall plan wasn’t effective, though parts of it were working. Be sure to get your team to keep doing anything that was successful - whether that is tweeting at 2PM or running a billboard ad. Keep it going.
4. Brainstorm to fix anything that is unsuccessful
Parts or even most of your marketing plan may not be getting you the leads you desire. Take a look at these sections and see if you should scrap them or fix them. If you would like to fix them, get your marketing team together and brainstorm how to do so - and how to easily track whether or not the fixes are working.
If you are scrapping part of your marketing plan, remember that you don’t necessarily need to embrace something new to replace it. You could, instead, use the funds and resources going to the unsuccessful portions of your plan to enhance the parts of your marketing plan that are garnering results.
5. Get inspired by past projects
Pull out previous campaigns that worked. Are they something you can repeat or do you need to take inspiration from them and create a new campaign? If your best campaign was a big holiday blowout, this could be changed to fit with a summer or “going back to school” blowout.
Just make sure that each add-on to your marketing plan has clear goals and metrics.
6. Find out how each marketing project can enhance other projects that are running alongside
There are so many platforms available now that there is no reason to think one project needs to run on its own. If you have a tv campaign, think about how social media can enhance it. If you are running a series of press releases, consider if a landing page or magazine article might enhance the series. There are many, many outlets available to make your campaign extremely successful.
7. Launch your revised plan
Now that you have cut the fat out of your marketing plan and revived past successful projects, it’s time for a relaunch!
8. Monitor progress
It’s easy to sit back and think “the marketing plan has been launched and all is going fine”. But you need to make sure this assumption is true. Part of this is using the metrics now tracked by your team. If a portion of the plan appears to slump or does not provide the expected ROI, jump on it. Find out what changed or what didn’t work and modify the plan.
9. Do a monthly review
Marketing is an extremely dynamic field that allows for testing and in-depth metrics. Dive deep into the metrics once a month to discover the efficacy of your marketing plan.
10. Reward your team
If your marketing team has come up with a killer marketing plan, provided you with the metrics and is reaching their goals, be sure to reward them. This may be with a “kudos to you” on your website or with a bonus. No matter what form the reward takes, be sure to give them the acknowledgement they deserve.
Building an effective marketing plan takes time, testing, and a lot of tracking. However, all of this will reward you in more business. Contact us today to find out how we help our clients craft the right marketing plan business success.
