If you’re like me, you spent much of this weekend spring cleaning your house and hating just about every second of it. After the major clean is done, however, you feel amazing and love your home even more. It smells better, windows are sparkling, and you can find things easier without all that clutter tumbling out of closets and storage cabinets.
Deep cleaning your home is a given, everyone does it. Not everyone thinks of decluttering their business, but they should, and starting with the marketing plan is a great idea. Your marketing is your connection to new and old customers. It’s how you continue to nurture relationships and scale your business.
The following tips will help you spring clean your marketing plan so you can throw out what’s not working and spit-shine what is.
- Dust Off Your Goals
You most likely started the first quarter with marketing goals in mind. Have your campaigns helped you reach, or at least get one step closer to, your goals? If not, it’s time to figure out why.
In our experience, there are usually two reasons why campaigns fall short of reaching their goals:
- You picked more than one goal.
- You don’t know your audience as well as you should.
Let’s take a look at these two reasons a bit closer.
You Picked More Than One Goal
You know what happens when you put too many toppings on your pizza? The slice can’t support the weight, and when you go to take a bite, the slice collapses and toppings scatter everywhere.
Think of your campaign as a slice of pizza and pick just ONE topping. You can have EITHER pepperoni OR Mushrooms but NOT both. When you try to create an ad that raises brand awareness AND tries to promote a new product AND get people to sign up to your list, you end up just creating an unfocused mess.
As a general rule, always make sure each campaign has one single goal assigned to it.
You Don’t Understand Your Audience
If you’re trying to sell products, you’re doing it wrong. You don’t have a product or service, you have a solution to someone’s problem. Every marketing decision you make MUST start with your ideal customer in mind. To do this, you of course must know who your customer really is. This will require a deep dive.
There’s too much noise your customers are bombarded with. If you want your messaging to rise above the noise, then you’ll have to uncover more than just demographics about your customers. Understand why your product will offer value. What do they NEED? What is bothering them? What do the wish for? What makes them scared, happy, and likely to listen to what you have to say?
- Declutter Your Strategies
Take some time to look through your advertising metrics to uncover what is working and what isn’t. Maybe you’re getting a nice return on your newspaper ads but your social media engagement has taken a dive. Maybe your email marketing is getting some nice numbers, but your direct mail campaigns could be doing better.
Once you have this data in front of you and know where you are struggling, you can do one of two things: Cut the strategies that aren’t delivering results and put more of your resources into your winning channels, or spend time fixing the channels that are broken.
If you are handling your own advertising, we recommend cutting the losers and scaling the winners. If you happen to work with a media buying agency, your partner will be able to conduct an audit to find out exactly why certain channels and messaging are underperforming and take the necessary steps to get them on track.
- Give Your Plan a Fresh Coat of Paint
Spring is a great time to bring in something new to your marketing funnel. This could be having new photos of your location and staff taken or printing some new brochures. You might decide to try your hand at digital billboard marketing or sign up to present at the next trade show. Never stop testing channels and being open to new tactics.
You might also want to consider starting a new relationship with a media buyer if you are currently not working with one. A media buyer on your team will ultimately help you save more on ad spend while extending your market reach.
If you’d like to discuss how a media buyer can give your marketing plan a breath of fresh air, please get in touch with us. We love helping business owners reach their objectives at a price they can afford.
