So you have planned your marketing over the last 12 months, have reached the end of your marketing calendar and are now looking at what comes next. It is important that you don’t just move ahead guns blazing without looking back at the successes and weaknesses of your last marketing cycle.

So let’s get down to the basics and first outline what should be involved in your marketing cycle. We see the cycle as being broken down into 5 phases. It starts with reviewing the competitive environment and your own brand, then establishing your target, using the learning from the first three steps to create strategies to engage and after implementing, testing, measuring and adjusting for your next plan.

We see testing and measuring as the most important phase for ensuring your future growth. At the end of each cycle, or as your programs complete, taking time to test and measure the effectiveness of your activity will guide you on how to improve and keep pushing for growth.

Sales Data

Looking at your sales data can provide you with valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of any campaigns you may have run. Tests you could utilise include;

• Looking at sales data by comparison to other periods of time, ie. Current data vs data from the previous year.
• Units of sale
• Sales Value

Website Data (Google Analytics)

Your website traffic can provide you with much needed insights into the way your customers interact with your business. You can determine whether they visit your site multiple times, the pages/products they view the most, and you can also gather geographical and demographic information.

You can also find out where they are coming from and evaluate the money you have spent on channels such as Social Media, directory listings, influencer campaigns and paid online advertising.

The stats you should focus on particularly include;

• Users
• Unique Users
• Bounce Rate
• Dwell Time
• Source Traffic.

Social Media

The amount of raw data social networking sites can give you is amazing! It collates not only data surrounding your business pages, but also data surrounding the types of people that interact with your page, and the types of people that like your page. This can give you a clearer picture moving forward of the content that drove results and engagement. Key data to monitor includes;

• Followers
• Engagement
• Growth
• Conversions
• CTR and CPC for paid content.

You don’t need to wait a whole year to assess your marketing activity You can test and measure at the end of each quarter or each campaign. This allows you to make changes to improve the rest of your marketing plan, or better yet continue on as you are due to the effectiveness of your work so far!

We have now reached the end of our Revised A-Z of Marketing! We want to know what you want us to write about next! So contact us and let us know your thoughts and questions and we will do our best to cover it in the coming weeks!

Mary-Anne