With a New Year comes new resolutions. There’s the usual suspects – lose weight, take up a new hobby, make more time for quality time with the family, etc. But what about your marketing program? Which bad habits will you kick to the curb come January 1st and which underperforming tactics are on their way out the door? Here are five marketing resolutions to get you started:
Resolve to…put your audience first
For complex organizations, there is no limit to the depth of information that can be communicated through a marketing campaign. This is where differentiating between the “need to know” and the “nice to know” becomes crucial.
At the crux of effective relationship-building, is demonstrating a keen understanding of your target audiences. This includes, but is not limited to, the information that is most salient to them and the education that will help to build their trust in your brand. To maximize the effectiveness of your 2017 marketing program, resolve to put your audience’s needs first, from the channels through which they like to be communicated to the types and format of information they want to receive.
Resolve to…take an integrated approach
At the risk of being redundant, great marketing doesn’t happen in a silo. By bringing together sales, marketing, and PR teams along with company thought leaders, organizations can benefit from the collective skills and expertise of an entire organization and ensure their marketing strategy is aligned with the overall goals of the organization. An integrated approach is key to achieving clarity, maintaining consistency and maximizing ROI.
Resolve to…focus on impact
Do you make widgets or do you make tools to help CEOs increase their productivity? Do you serve meals to the homeless or do you reduce the number of residents without food or shelter by 40 percent? While these scenarios may be conceptually the same, the latter focus on impact. From strategic partners and prospective employees to donors and community partners, people want to be aligned with successful organizations so a laser focus on communicating impact can rank among your most valuable marketing assets.
Resolve to…let data inform your strategy
How did you measure the success of your marketing in 2015? What does that data tell you about the strategies and tactics that are most effective for marketing your organization? What needs and interests did your target audiences express for information/content that you haven’t yet been able to address? All of this data – quantifiable metrics and audience insights – should play a leading role in defining your marketing plans for 2017. By resolving to lead with data, you set a baseline for measuring success and can benchmark your efforts month over month, quarter over quarter, and year over year.
Resolve to…adapt in real time
We live in a real-time media world. As news breaks, opportunities arise and some of the most successful organizations increase their marketing ROI by tactfully aligning themselves with timely news stories and industry trends. For 2017, focus on identifying opportunities to enhance the current news cycle with thought leadership, industry insights and relevant news from your organization. Further, resolve to seize seasonal opportunities in your business cycle or changes in your competitive environment that allow you to enhance your expert positioning and increase your market share.
With a New Year comes new challenges and opportunities for maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing program. If you take an audience-centric approach, use data to inform your tactics and adapt to seize real-time opportunities, your ability to demonstrate measurable results and a meaningful impact on the bottom line will be limitless.
What marketing resolutions will you be making to improve campaign performance and maximize ROI during the upcoming year?
