Your Marketing Performance Check Guide

• Update business listings. Your marketing performance is only as strong as the ability for your clients or customers to find you. Many businesses have changed locations or operating hours in the past three to four years. Be sure to take the time to update your online (and offline) listings to reflect your correct location, hours of operation and web address.
• Audit your product and service offerings. In today’s fast-paced environment, businesses add new products or services and discontinue them at lightning speed when landscapes change.  Take a step back and outline what your products and offerings are right now. This is also a good time to review what is to come in the near future.
• Refresh employees with training materials. Now that steps one and two are complete, it’s time to get your team up to speed. Even if it is simply a review, your employees will be re-invigorated by clear communication of the business’s objectives, priorities, product/service offerings and expectations.
• Review your website content. Your website is often the first impression you make on your prospects and customers. If it does not accurately represent what you do TODAY, not last year or month, you can be leaving sales on the table. Take the time to review the content, look and feel of your website and make corrections where needed.
• Update and organize your digital assets. This marketing performance audit initiative should also include a review of your digital assets. Your audit of digital assets should include archiving old iterations of creative, labeling and organizing current assets, as well as creating a backup system to protect those assets.

• Identify KPIs – Key performance indices are the compass by which you measure your marketing performance. Here are some high-level considerations for your KPI dashboard:
  1. Not every business will use the same set of key performance indices. The metrics relevant to your neighbor’s business may not be the same for yours. Determine the KPIs that show results that truly matter to your bottom line.
  2. Shy away from vanity metrics. It’s a trap that businesses all too often fall into. They are focused on likes, pageviews or new followers when none of those activities are converting into what they really need to grow their business. Make sure that the KPIs you add to your dashboard are the ones that drive your business goals. 
     
  3. Keep it simple and clear. Another common pitfall for businesses evaluating their marketing performance is to measure too many things. Data and the insights these data points provide can be interesting, but too much of a good thing can be problematic. Stay focused on a few core metrics, and then once those are mastered, branch out.
     
• Set SMART Goals – When you set out to evaluate your marketing performance, one exercise that will help you is using SMART goals. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Applying the SMART methodology to your marketing campaigns will add an impactful layer of direction and measurability to your efforts.
  
• Create a Data-driven Culture. By encouraging key players on your team to be data-driven, you can slowly create a data-driven culture. This mindset of using data to make decisions and measure marketing performance, when it permeates through your organization, can make your team more productive, successful and empowered.

Jackie Awve Marketing & Design specializes in helping businesses create marketing initiatives that drive results. Our industry experience includes commercial real estate, retail properties, executive suites, trade associations, contractors and agency consulting.

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