The fresh calendar year means it’s time for a fresh start, and now can be an excellent time to evaluate your marketing programs. Here are the top five ways you can infuse your marketing programs with new life for 2023.
1. Conduct an audit
Audits sound about as fun as root canal but conducting a marketing audit in January can save you a ton of lost time and resources for the rest of the year. Take your 2022 budget and spend some time going through each line item to evaluate what worked and what didn’t last year. If you aren’t sure how to measure a program’s effectiveness, recruit a marketing expert who knows how to evaluate how the different marketing programs should perform to move prospects along the sales funnel.
2. Recalibrate resources
Top of the funnel marketing programs tend to be the most expensive and the least able to quantify return on investment. Does that mean they aren’t worth the budget? Of course not, but many organizations may be over or under spending on these programs. Lower funnel activities may need more focus, but unless you take a sober look at how your customer acquisition and marketing sales funnel programs produce results, you won’t know.
3. Balance your social media
Social media tends to be the Goldilocks of the marketing program. Organizations must get their social media “just right” and not over or under invest in their social media efforts. Because social media platforms are free, organizations may grossly underestimate the investment needed to make them flourish and help the organization look strong, healthy and worthy of business. Occasionally organizations overinvest in social media only to realize they cannot see the customer actualization on the other side, so getting social media properly calibrated can be beneficial.
4. Get email marketing on a cadence
Strong marketing programs are the drumbeat of the organization, and an email marketing program can be a very cost-effective way to stay in front of your top prospects and even your own customers. Decide how frequently you want to communicate with your key audiences and put a program in place to create the meaningful content that will be engaging. You can create an editorial calendar now and get the templates created to help this be less of a burden to manage throughout the year. Or you can offload this activity to an outside resource too.
5. Rethink your face-to-face opportunities
The most powerful marketing activity can be the face-to-face meeting. The initial meeting can be at a networking event or industry conference, but when you can continue the conversation in person or over a video conference, it’s critical that you can put your best foot forward at that time. Sloppy presentation materials or an unorganized team can send a very bad impression and quickly lose the opportunity you worked so hard to get. Take a close look at how you present your services to prospects and invest in a little team coaching and an objective opinion to help troubleshoot what’s working and what’s not working for your presentations. Coming out of the pandemic, it could be time for a refresher on how to interact with each other in person again anyway.
Getting 2023 off to a strong start can help you take your organization to new levels this year. Recruiting an outside perspective also might give you and your team just the shot in the arm to revitalize your marketing programs. Contact us today to explore ways Cumulus Communications might be able to help you.
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