As we look to close off Q1, now is the perfect time to review your marketing strategy to see how it has performed year-to-date.
Having a flexible marketing strategy is essential in today’s ever-changing landscape. While your long-term goals will remain the same over the year, the tools and techniques you use to reach those goals have to be flexible enough to adapt and change over time.
To ensure your marketing strategy remains relevant, it is advisable to review your progress on a quarterly basis and adjust where and as needed to ensure you’re getting the “best bang for your buck”!
To help you get started with this exercise, I have outlined 5 easy to follow steps to improve your marketing strategy and ensure your 2023 goals and objectives are supported.
1. Review Your Goals
Start by reviewing your goals and why you set them in the first place. Using the SMART framework can make your goals more specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. Following this framework will also help you identify realistic goals that may need further consideration.
2. Review Your Q1 Strategy
Have you identified your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? Having KPIs in place will allow you to see at a high level if you are on track to achieving your year-end goals. They are also a great way to keep the Business focused on the “Bigger Picture” and not get side-tracked, as can often happen.
3. Gain Insights From Your Own Data
Many businesses spend considerable time and budget gathering third-party data. But, as the era of the Cookie is comes to a close, this will become less useful. Comparing your own results to industry data can offer insights into specific benchmarks. Most certainly, assessing your own success, should come from your proprietary data. Gathering zero- or first-party data gives you direct insight into your customers’ wants, needs, and behaviours. This will result in more accurate marketing with stronger ROI.
4. Assess What’s Not Working
Identifying and addressing the weak links in your strategy is essential. And while it may be tempting to stop activity entirely if you’re not getting the results you want initally, it’s important to remember that this could be detrimental to your business in the long run.
I wrote a blog about this topic a little while ago, which you can read here
5. Review Your Budget
With the first three months of year almost gone, review your budget spend and see how much is left for the remainder of the year. As a reminder, your marketing budget should include:
- Website Design
- PPC Ads
- SEO
- Content Creation
- Graphics
- Events and Trade Show Costs
- Display Ads
- Retargeting Ads
- Video Ads
- Social Media Tools and Services
- Direct Mail
- Marketing Technologies
- And finally any other costs relating to your marketing.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that, depending on your business, specific quarters may be busier than others. So, make sure you have the necessary budget available to support these busy times.
Top Tip! Don’t leave promotions to the last minute! For example, if June is your busy period, start planning in April and your promotion in May. Leaving it too late will result in wasted budgets and could result in losing customers to the competition.
Conclusion
Reviewing your marketing strategy regularly will ensure it continues to perform and support your business in reaching its 2023! Regular reviews will also allow your strategy to be streamlined and flexible to keep up with the ever changing marketing landscape.
If you’d like to talk more about reviewing your marketing strategy, or indeed if you are looking for outsourced support in that area, please do get in touch. I’d love to chat with you!
You can drop me an email at Lissa@dynamicmarketing.ie
And be sure to check out my website for more insights into the ever-evolving world of B2B marketing!