Are you getting everything you want out of your marketing? Is it building the company you always dreamed of? Do you have as much business as you can handle? It might be time to take a look.
The first question to ask is how you define "working".
What you consider working and what someone else considers could be two completely different things.
Are you looking to build brand recognition? Leads and sales? A community of brand ambassadors? Your goals for each piece of marketing should be looked at to help determine whether something is working or not.
If it’s not working, change what you’re doing, not your goal.
David Hall, CEO, Trustway Marketing
If you missed the goals of marketing and how to break them down, you can review it here.
You need to figure out what your goals are, and what your focuses should be in order to reach those goals efficiently. You may have a good business strategy, but if there’s no goal driving it then you need to establish one, and change strategies if necessary. That would be like driving with no destination in mind. Sometimes people do this to clear their mind, but in all reality, it’s a waste of time and money. In business, you need a goal before you do anything; otherwise you are wasting your time, money, and efforts.
There are 3 key things you can do to help determine if it's working
Click on any for more details
Analytics Review
An analytics review is the process of going through the actual numbers and metrics to see what is happening. Often, we hear acronyms like ROI, PPC, CPL, CPC, CPD, CPQC, CPA, CPO, LV, etc.
It's like alphabet soup! Not all metrics matter. The only thing that matters is what is relevant to your goal. Often, marketing companies will overwhelm you with data that doesn't help...it just looks good.
Branding Strategy
Brand strategy is simply a long-term plan for the development of a successful brand for your company in order to achieve specific goals that you have. Whereas many parts of marketing focus on short-term goals, branding is the long-term.
By developing an appropriate long-term strategy, you are truly focused on building a business that will be around for years to come. All marketing should have a mix of both branding and business goals.
Marketing Plans
Marketing plans are one thing that often get missed as we work in the day-to-day of the business. A strategic marketing plan is like a GPS. It is designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be in your marketing.
Just because you're doing something doesn't mean you're doing the right thing. It also doesn't mean that it's getting you any closer to reaching your end-goals. By creating and implementing a strategic marketing plan, you have a map to work from.